His divorce: something Rico rarely talks about and doesn’t like to talk about. In 2020, he and the mother of his three children separated and that affected him a lot.
His greatest fear is to fail as a father and that is partly due to his own youth. Rico himself grew up in a broken family. His mother was an alcoholic and drug addict and could not care for him, so he grew up with his father. “To me it really felt like something I had experienced myself and something I wanted to spare my children.”
The relationship between Rico and his ex-wife Jacky was no longer going well and so it was the best decision for the family to divorce. “If things don’t work out anymore, you both have to make the right choice.” It was important to also take the children into account. “That is also better for the children in the end.”
Even though Rico wanted to spare his children a broken family, he was unable to do so and that was a dark period for him. “It just feels like a loss,” he describes. According to Rico, his children felt like they had to choose between their father or mother, but that was absolutely not the case. “They suddenly have to find a new dynamic on how to balance that.” He finds the impact on the children ‘the most annoying of all’.
Rico is very proud of his children for how they dealt with this ‘difficult’ situation. “Luckily they found a way for themselves to deal with it and I’m very proud of how they did it.” After the divorce, Rico met his new girlfriend Naomi. The two have now been happily together for three years and they even have tentative wedding plans. “Getting married would definitely be nice.”
Rooijakkers Over De Vloer see you every Sunday at 9 p.m. on RTL 4.
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