'Vanderpump Rules' ' Katie Maloney Tells Tom Schwartz His Bar 'Broke' Their Marriage: 'You Never Chose Me'

There was a third party responsible for the end of Katie Maloney and Tom Schwartz's marriage — and it was the latter's newest bar.

On Wednesday's episode of Vanderpump Rules, Schwartz, 40, and his business partner Tom Sandoval finally opened the doors to their new bar, Schwartz & Sandy's, and hosted a party for The Daily Mail.

However, Katie, 36, was crying tears of sadness rather than joy at the soft opening, as she told her ex-husband why she felt Schwartz & Sandy's ultimately led to their March 2022 split.

"I'm trying to be excited for Tom, but this bar has a very complicated history," Katie said in a confessional. "It put a massive strain on our relationship. It just was a lot more of a presence in my life than I thought it would be, without me having say over it."

"All of the marital issues and arguments and everything we were having has now just been personified. This bar was the other woman in our marriage, and I'm standing inside of her now," she continued.

While sitting down with Katie inside his new bar, Schwartz admitted, "In the divorce, I let myself get sucked in," referring to how he focused all of his attention into opening Schwartz & Sandy's and not on his ex-wife.

"It nearly broke you, and it nearly broke me," Katie tearfully noted. "It broke us kinda, so was it worth it?"

"Don't say that," he told her. "Jesus, I don't know how to answer that. I just don't want you to ever think that I chose this place over you because I didn't."

But that wasn't the way Katie saw things. "Well, I feel like you chose a lot over me. You never chose me in any side, in any argument, even when it was me having your back in things. It just made me feel like you don't like me," she said.

"I think a lot of things I was choosing to ignore and choosing to live with and think that it was okay, and it wasn't okay," Katie added.

The Tom Tom co-owner then apologized to Katie, saying, "I'm trying to move forward and not beat myself up too much, but I'm self-aware."

In his confessional, Schwartz tearfully told the cameras: "Maybe I wish I had really fought for her, but I think I would've been prolonging the pain and making her suffer and detracting from her happiness."

Schwartz also confessed to Katie that maybe she was right after all.

"I'm so madly in love with this whole bar, this lounge, the concept, but sometimes I ask myself, 'Was it worth it?' and I don't know," he said.

Earlier in the episode, while preparing to host the Daily Mail party, the restaurateur talked to Sandoval, 39, about the toll that opening their bar together took on his and Katie's marriage.

"I don't need to go to therapy to know that I can't blame this place for the demise of our f---ing marriage," Schwartz told Sandoval, who responded, "I would say it was a good portion."

Schwartz and Sandoval then recounted the time their business partner Craig sat them down and told them that the process of opening their bar could result in the bar owners losing their house and marriage.

"You did lose your house and your marriage," Sandoval told Schwartz.

Schwartz then added: "And all my money."

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Vanderpump Rules airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.