Christina Haack is dealing with another major shakeup in her personal life in the series premiere of her new HGTV show. In The Flip Off, the designer and mom of three is competing against her ex-husband Tarek El Moussa and his new wife Heather Rae El Moussa to see who can get the biggest ROI on a flip. 

Originally, The Flip Off was supposed to be a couple-vs.-couple contest, with Christina and her husband Josh Hall facing off against Tarek and Heather. But that plan changed shortly after the contest began when Christina and Josh split. In The Flip Off’s first episode, Christina opens up about what led to the end of her third marriage. 

Christina tells Tarek about her troubled marriage in ‘The Flip Off’ 

When The Flip Off begins, Christina and Josh are still together. Together, they choose a house to flip – a decrepit, trash-strewn four-bedroom in Carson, Calif., that will need major work to make it livable. At first, Josh is all in on the competition, happily agreeing to do the cleanup himself to save money for renovations. But cracks soon emerge, with Josh getting testy over small issues. 

Not long after, Christina calls Tarek and asks him to come over for a personal chat. 

“Josh and I officially split up,” she tells her ex-husband. 

“We had a blow up over nothing. Truly nothing. In my face. Middle fingers in my face,” the Christina on the Coast star tearfully confesses. “Things with Josh have been bad for a long time. Not just kind of bad, like bad. And the kids literally asked me to leave. They told me he’s not nice to me.”

One thing that tended to set Josh off? His wife’s cordial relationship with Tarerk, with whom she shares two kids.  

“You make him very insecure,” Christina said to Tarek. “Every time we would barely joke at soccer, or if I laughed at you, he would not speak to me for two or three days. I would get silent treatment. He doesn’t like me. He called me cocky, thinks I’m arrogant, when we both know I’m not cocky or arrogant.”

Tarek says his ex-wife is ‘a great human’

Tarek and Christina went through their own nasty divorce after separating in 2016, with Tarek later admitting that he wasn’t the best husband or father when he was younger. But the one-time couple are on much better terms now. As Christina opens up about the end of her latest marriage, Tarek is nothing but supportive.  

“You’re not any of those things,” Tarek replies after Christina opens up about Josh’s insults. “He’s projecting. You’re a great mother, you’re a great daughter, you’re a great human.” 

“It’s like I’m in a tornado all the time and I just can’t get out of it,” Christina replies, before going on to say that she has a habit of “getting into things too fast that I know aren’t right.”

The mom of three reflected on her tendency to leap from relationship to relationship in an interview with producers. (She was also married to Ant Anstead from 2018 to 2020.) In an interview segment, she explained that she never wanted to be a person who got divorced and said she felt it was “safer” to be in a relationship. 

“Ultimately, that was not safe either,” she says.  

Christina feels better about competing on ‘The Flip Off’ without Josh 

Christina and Josh filed for divorce in July 2024. Their split still isn’t resolved, and Christina recently said she expected they’d have to go to trial because her ex, a former Santa Monica police officer, was refusing mediation. 

While she’s still dealing with the fallout from her latest marriage, Christina says she feels not having Josh on her team could actually help her beat Tarek and Heather. 

“It’s a huge weight lifted off of my not to have to do it with Josh,” she says. “That was more of a stressor to me to have to feel like I was going to have to battle Josh throughout and like, emasculate him and all the words that come out when a woman knows what she’s doing.”

The Flip Off airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV. 

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