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‘Summer House’ Stars Kyle and Amanda Broke the “No Couples” Rule — and Have No Regrets (EXCLUSIVE)
Sorry, not sorry! On Season 1 of Summer House, Kyle Cooke tried to enforce a strict “no couples” rule at his summer share in Montauk. But as fans saw on the Monday, Jan. 22, Season 2 premiere of the hit Bravo reality show, the handsome entrepreneur broke his own mandate as he and girlfriend Amanda Batula nestled into a new rental in Long Island’s seaside enclave.
In an exclusive interview with Life & Style, the adorable duo revealed why they have no regrets about ignoring Kyle’s former ordinance. “Honestly, for me — and I come from a completely different side of things — the whole ‘no couples in the house’ [rule] originates from my being in houses where the couples just brought down the mood,” the FENIX founder explained. “Like, they wanted to turn down the music and turn down. Meanwhile, everyone wants to turn up. So I kind of felt myself trying to straddle this thing like, ‘Hey, I’m still fun ‘Party Kyle,’ liking to make sure everyone’s having fun. For me, it was just like a little role reversal and just trying to prove to me and everyone else that I could still be in a relationship and still be fun.”
Amanda and Kyle at the Summer House Season 2 premiere party at Fishbowl at Dream Midtown in NYC on Jan. 22.
According to Amanda, she and her man had a blast vacationing together. “It was a lot of fun!” the blonde beauty — who spent a good amount of time with Kyle and his roommates in their previous share — said of officially joining the crew as a housemate. “I’ve said this before, but it’s weird coming into any group of friends as someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend. You always feel like there’s that boundary or that line that you need to try to cross. So this summer, I just tried to focus on breaking that line and climbing that wall to get over it. Everyone enjoyed having me last summer as Kyle’s girlfriend, but I wanted everyone to enjoy me as Amanda this year.”
Though Kyle did his best to maintain his single status throughout the first season of Summer House, he couldn’t resist inviting Amanda over night after night. Following months of up, downs, and rosé-fueled fights, the Manhattan-based couple finally realized that they were made for each other. “I didn’t have the certainty I needed going back two summers. But I kind of found myself late-night calling her and I was probably thinking in my mind that I was going to be single and I really wasn’t,” Kyle told Life & Style. “This year it was like, we’re not breaking up and I’m not just going to disappear for the entire summer. So it was just a very natural evolution for her to be coming into the house as a housemate as opposed to ‘Kyle’s girlfriend.’”
Asked to describe the challenges of living under the same roof — and with six other people — Amanda was quick to call out their lack of alone time. “It’s one thing when we would spend every weekend together in the fall and the spring and the winter,” the stylist said. “But it’s different when you’re spending all that time together during the summer and you’re not having any time alone by yourself. If there was an issue, everyone knew about it. Kyle and I were always with everyone else. It was just never the two of us having what we may call ‘romantic time’ together.”
Despite the troubles they may have faced, Amanda told Life & Style that she believes spending the summer with Kyle definitely strengthened their relationship. “I think we learned a lot about each other, a lot more about what each other wants. We knew a lot about each other before, obviously,” she shared. “But you kind of learn how to work around each other and how to snap back when you are upset or whatever it is, and get over things and get past things and move forward. We did a lot of that.”
Summer House airs on Bravo Mondays at 10 p.m. EST.
