One month after launching her latest cookbook and sharing that she had a new boyfriend, Valerie Bertinelli says she is taking a "mental health break" from social media.
The actor, cook and author posted on her Instagram Friday, May 17, saying that while she's grateful for all the support her fans have shown her over the last six weeks, "this here introvert in extrovert's clothing is in need of a mental health break."
"Taking a little social media cleanse/detox and a mental health break is a good thing and I’m grateful I’m at a place in my life where I’m aware enough to know when I’m overwhelmed and mentally/emotionally exhausted," she wrote.
Bertinelli, 64, released her latest cookbook, "Indulge: Delicious and Decadent Dishes to Enjoy and Share" on April 2, 2024. She has been on a book tour since its release, which ended with a visit to Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 17, shortly before she shared that she would be taking her social media break.
Bertinelli also shared in early April that she had fallen in love with a man whose identity she chose to withhold at the time.
“It’s a seesaw of emotions because I was adamant I was never falling in love again,” she said in an interview with People magazine. Bertinelli divorced her ex-husband Tom Vitale in 2022 after 11 years of marriage. She was also previously married to the late Eddie Van Halen, with whom she shared a son, Wolfgang Van Halen. The two divorced in 2007, and he died in 2020.
“I was supposed to die with my six cats and my dog, and very happily live the rest of my years alone — I’m good alone,” she told People about her boyfriend. “My belly is flip-flopping. This was not supposed to happen.”
Her current boyfriend's identity was revealed, however, soon after her People interview, as writer Mike Goodenough.
“It feels incredibly right,” she said about this relationship. “I found joy first, and then a man entered my life.”
Goodenough confirmed the relationship himself in his Substack called "Hoarse Whisperings."
“I am Valerie Bertinelli’s boyfriend … and that may well be among the most surreal sentences I’ve ever pecked out,” he wrote. “But it’s true… and nothing about our actual relationship seems surreal. It just seems … good … lucky … a gift.”
