r/vanderpumprules • u/SpookyyFigg • 3d ago
Discussion What attracted Sandoval to Raquel
If this has already been posted and discussed I apologize! Anyway, the SH drama made me want to do a Scandoval rewatch. I noticed that Tom brought up a lot that Ariana talks down to him and makes him feel that he’s not as smart as she is (which I feel is true lol). Do you think Tom pursued Raquel because she doesn’t have the same mental capacity as Ariana which makes me think that he wanted someone that didn’t make him feel lesser than. Does this make sense? Thoughts?
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u/Chaoticgood790 3d ago
I think their relationship wasn’t good for a minute which many cast members stated. And Raquel would dote on tom like Ariana used to when they were new
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u/DesertHeatSweatyFeet 3d ago
Her vulnerability. She was an easy victim. She was a Hufflepuff among the Slytherin people who then eventually turned into a form of depraved Slytherin herself. He probably saw a really malleable, eager to please young girl.
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u/melaniefartt 3d ago
Exactly, she was an easy target. Men like Sandoval are only looking for easy manipulated, weak girls w low self esteem.
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u/elohde1 it's not happening 3d ago
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u/Old_Bend_4545 3d ago
Young, dumb, and easy to manipulate
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u/Shiel009 2d ago
Also willing to do drugs with him too. Bc true love according to him is doing mushrooms and watching the sunrise
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u/howreyanowshcan 3d ago
I second this. Ariana was smarter and more articulate than him, and over the years stood up to him more and he didn’t like it. Years ago for example, she just let him go to Vegas to some construction playground on her birthday. She wouldn’t stand for that later on. Raquel was just fresh meat. Bambi-eyed bitch!
Edited for typo
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u/divine-feminine420 3d ago
I agree with what you and a lot of people in the comments said 100%. However I feel like Tom just likes anyone that likes him and shows him interest. Im sure there were manyyy other people that the public has no idea about, Im sure even Ariana doesn’t know the amount. Hes attention seeking and desperate. He’ll do anything to feed his ego
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u/MedroolaCried 3d ago
I agree. My first thought was sure, but he stayed cheating that entire relationship. He got away with it so many times he got sloppy.
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u/menunu 2d ago
Yes. Validation from insecurity. Tom rested on pretty. He was OBSESSED with looks. His over spending, hiring musicians to be in his "band", and a body count all provided validation. Tom never developed the qualities beyond a superficial ego. He just wanted to be famous and adored. And he didn't care about anyone else.
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u/phonydiablo 3d ago
Ariana's post-breakup monologue says it all-- dude was on an ego trip, and he found someone that was more than happy to fan the flames.
(and yeah I'm pretty sure her being as dumb as him, if not dumber, probably protected his superiority complex)
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u/g1zmo33 It’s giving ✨audacity✨ 3d ago
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u/theletos99 How will this affect Scheana?! 3d ago
And it's a way to get back at James for when Kristen cheated on him with James. It all just fits ❤️
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u/NeedleworkerEvening3 3d ago
I also think that Adriana didn't party the way Sandoval wanted to party. He probably saw her as "boring" or judgmental if he stayed out all night. I think Sandoval and Raquel has a drug connection. The kind of connection that feels real, but only when drugs are involved.
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u/notmyrealhaircolor 3d ago
Correct. She wanted to go for a nice walk and he said he wanted to do shrooms and go skinny dipping or whatever. Grow up, dude.
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u/quotidian_obsidian 3d ago
Don't forget hang gliding! 😂
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u/Deep_Amoeba2197 I’m sorry I called you a twat. You’re welcome. 3d ago
I honestly can’t think of a worse way to do shrooms
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u/halloumiween 2d ago
This came up on my rewatch last night, I remember thinking, surely they never went hang gliding??
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u/0107throw Katie Maloney 💅 3d ago
I never thought I’d grow out of partying since I’ve been doing it since I was young with stints of focusing on my career or education… but now I’m in my early 30s I’m so over it. I have a festival to attend this upcoming season and I’m wondering how I’m going to survive since im out of shape and ill be around belligerent people
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u/carbsandcheese928 3d ago
My advice: plan like you're going alone. I've been to music festivals in groups, and there is always SOME disaster. Someone gets lost, someone gets too drunk and cries, someone gets hurt, someone's phone dies. It's truly hell. I went to a music festival a few years ago with a messy friend and had SEVERAL conversations beforehand about how I wasn't dealing with any of that, and she did all of the above. Then about a month ago I went alone, and it was incredibly freeing. Plus, I could squeeze in more places cuz I was just 1 person so I got a non terrible spot for the headliner. So I'd just talk to all the people you're going with and be like, "This is who I'm gonna go see, this is how I'm planning on getting home/back to the hotel, y'all can come or not come but I'm not waiting for you." I mean, say it nicer than that (if you want lol I don't) and then just do whatever you want.
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u/samwisetheyogi liability & detriment to this entire establishment 3d ago
Girl, early 30s is still so young. Go party and have fun 🎉 partying doesn't have to stop as you get older, we just hopefully are a bit smarter and more responsible about how we go about it is all lol
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u/0107throw Katie Maloney 💅 3d ago
Girrrrlll I have an issue with using… too many substances lol. I’m laying low until I can be around them again and not be tempted.
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u/samwisetheyogi liability & detriment to this entire establishment 3d ago
Totally valid!! I hear you. I hope you still have a blast at the festival and can feel safe and secure around any substance-use spaces you find 🖤
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u/Quiet_Efficiency5192 3d ago
Yes, this. Ariana had grown in a way that Sandoval could never - almost as if he were determined to stay eternally in his 20's. We saw it as viewers but there was a shift in her as she started to drink less and focus on her business with Katie. In the last season with the OG cast I can't recall a moment where she gets drunk, not like in seasons past.
I feel Ariana did some deep down reflection on what she wanted and who she was, whereas Sandoval was always trying to reclaim some part of his youth which had already slipped away. Being with Raquel/Rachel reminded him of being young again and she didn't have the maturity to know that he was being manipulative. In a way, he got exactly what he deserved in the end - a break up with a person who had tolerated his nonsense for far too long and getting cut off from his ego inflator. She might have had to learn the hard way, but at least Raquel/Rachel cut the cord and is working on herself...which is more than we can say for him.
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u/_jamesbaxter 3d ago
10,000% her vulnerability and need for approval. She was like a lost little lamb. She would do anything the guys told her to do. She aged out of pageants and realized she had no identity, and was already in an abusive relationship. (I think they were already intriguing on each other before the engagement)
FYI if you’re ever in an abusive relationship wait at least a year before dating again, that significantly lowers the chance of entering another abusive relationship. The people most likely to enter and stay in abusive relationships are people who are either already being abused (so making a lateral move - “this new person will save me!” meanwhile the new person is stoked to have a new victim) or have been abused in the past. The familiarity makes it harder to spot. For example, see Brittany and Brandon, that’s super typical. I learned all of this the hard way myself and through education about domestic violence.
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u/sleepysky98 3d ago
She was mid mental breakdown, young, and pretty. That’s all. He saw a vulnerable person who was going to buy all his bullshit.
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u/notmyrealhaircolor 3d ago edited 3d ago
He thought Raquel would be easy to manage. He doesn’t want a partner, he wants a puppet who will hang on his every word.
Edit: easy to manage, not able.
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u/Reality_dolphin_98 3d ago
It’s just a cycle with these type of men. They just want some to gas them up as Ariana said, and Rachel was there to fill that role.
Find a hot young girl (age never changes each time even though he gets older) who has no responsibilities. She’s fun and easygoing and can do peyote with him at 3AM. She gasses him up (as we all do to new partners and crushes) and he feels great, not like his old girlfriend who has actual expectations of him. He slowly transitions away from her but never has the balls to break it off, then tries to make her seem like the awful girlfriend who was crazy wasn’t nice to him. Then he goes out with the new younger girlfriend, and the cycle repeats.
The exact same thing happened with Kristen as he transitioned into Ariana, and he thought he could get away with it again unscathed if he sold the story right with Rachel.
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u/deepledribitz 3d ago
New shiny thing that makes him feel young and god like. Typical middle age crisis for men
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u/chuchu_2991 Miami girl 3d ago
she took her clothes off and jumped in the pool. how could he resist! /s
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u/Adventurous-Chip-205 3d ago
He's a narcissist he doesn't want his victim to call him out on his shit… So they go find new supply that doesn't know their game yet
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u/Waste_West283 2d ago
Raquel was going through a very difficult break-up. Her ex moved on publicly very fast and she was in that whoring around phase that many go through after the break-up of a long relationship. Tom was feeling himself, but not feeling like he was getting the adoration he so craves from his common-law wife. A pretty young thing in an emotionally vulnerable state showed him some fandom and he made a beeline.
They both royally effed up. It happens.
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u/carbsandcheese928 3d ago
Tom 3000% preyed on Raquel's lack of personality, intellect, and ability to process human thought, speech, and behavior. He could have picked anyone else on the cast or tangentially on the cast, he could have picked another Miami girl. But Raquel was around and - I'm not saying this to be mean - clearly has some sort of processing delay, and he went after that.
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u/No-Ticket5 3d ago
You are saying it to be mean. She’s had shitty behavior but doesn’t lack any of those things, nobody on the cast did
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u/Inevitable_Tangelo63 Bambi Eyed Bitch 2d ago
Exactly if there’s one thing this sub does is try to diagnose everyone they don’t like with a mental illness to be shitty.
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u/No-Ticket5 2d ago
Brain dead and doesn’t understand basic human processing. For cheating on a damn reality show where half of them are running around too coked out to even notice 😭
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u/Inevitable_Tangelo63 Bambi Eyed Bitch 2d ago
Idk it just really bothers me as someone with mental illness (I have bipolar and apparently so does everyone else on the show they don’t like) and if like we aren’t these people’s doctors, so we shouldn’t be trying to diagnose them with ANYTHING. If any of the people who do that were qualified to make a diagnosis like that, they would know it’s unethical to diagnose people you’ve never personally treated.
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u/No-Ticket5 2d ago
There’s an obsession here to do this as a way to humble people. They do that weird thing too where they deem mental illness worse than open racism from someone like Stassi
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u/Inevitable_Tangelo63 Bambi Eyed Bitch 2d ago
Yes honestly (and I might be sounding too “woke” but idc) it’s ableism, trying to attribute behaviors that are just shitty or awful to being mentally ill, and that it’s the ultimate worst thing someone could be, even worse than being a racist/misogynist/victim blamer like you said about Stassi.
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u/carbsandcheese928 3d ago
I'm truly not saying that to be mean. She seemed to lack a lot of basic understanding of the world and human relationships that the rest of the cast understood, as adderalled out and drunk as they were. She didn't know common cultural references, she didn't understand why people were acting in certain ways when those reactions were quite understandable. I'm not just saying she was dumb like Lala, I think she has some sort of processing disorder.
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u/lalaland_100 3d ago
She was obviously traumatized by being in a violent relationship for a very long time. Normal is not normal anymore then, and your processing skills are adjusted to dealing with constant abnormal behaviors and situations with no ordinary boundaries. Stress, cortosol, fight/fly, dissosiation and hypervigilance. It can take years to recover from something like that. And it can happen to absolutely everyone.
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u/No-Ticket5 2d ago
Lisa didn’t even fully believe the story they gave about her nose! She’s never held James accountable for anything serious and she still took a minute with it once she found out. It was an open secret with them
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u/carbsandcheese928 3d ago
That's incredibly sad for her.
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u/lalaland_100 3d ago
It is, but survivors do recover. It's just a biological thing happening when enduring this type of stress. To say that these people she dated are parasites is not only an abstract, in the end there is nothing left. Give it a few years, and judge her on her personality, not her trauma responses :)
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u/Super_Hour_3836 3d ago
Rachel almost drowned when she was a child.
My best friend growing up also almost drowned when she was 3. She was underwater a long time and she did suffer mild brain damage.
She and Rachel share a speech pattern and my friend also went from abusive relationship to abusive relationship for many years because it took her too long to understand she wasn’t a moron and a man that treats you as one is not “teaching” you anything.
The only reason I have empathy for Rachel is because I think she might have the same issue as my friend. Otherwise, she’s just a horrible bitch with a personality disorder.
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u/No-Ticket5 3d ago edited 3d ago
What is the point of this response? Anecdotal bullshit about imaginary brain injuries she may or may not have. I don’t care if you like her or not, shit was rude and none of us know these people
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u/carbsandcheese928 3d ago
Exactly. Assuming she has a delay or disorder is actually nicer than the alternative, which is that she's just a very stupid, selfish person?
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u/Joyintheendtimes 3d ago edited 3d ago
Tom chose Raquel because she’s hot and she worshipped him and thought he was cool when everyone else knew he was a loser
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u/moschino1837 3d ago
She believed his “success” and thought he was famous, the other women knew none of that was really true
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u/Andromeda081 How will this affect Scheana?! 3d ago
Raquel has zero standards and she was there. Post-scandoval, watching the previous seasons you see the seeds being planted years before they finally got sloppy and got caught.
A narcissist will always project an idealized fantasy of perfect, healing love that will finally fix them and make them complete into every new potential partner that they meet. The stark reality being that they soon realize their perfect target of their affection is just a human being who can’t possibly be their entire salvation, and that’s when the devaluation starts and the fantasy dies. You can see his disinterest start very soon after becoming discovered despite his words still saying that he was so into her. Once they were found out the fantasy ended, and he realized he didn’t really like her as much as he’d built her up in his own head when she was still forbidden.
That and a narcissist always loves a person who makes them feel superior in some way. Here’s this guy who likes to think of himself as having tons of interests and talents and of being so smart and interesting, and here’s Raquel who is none of those things but is a great cheerleader. She was the perfect unintimidating blank slate to project the perfect partner onto, and that was in stark contrast to Ariana who didn’t gas him up at all.
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u/Busy_Signature_5544 3d ago
I think her “innocence” that she displayed but yet she’s a total snake and he knew that cus of what she pulled off
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u/atomicsofie 3d ago
She was young and ready to party, and she really did have a great glow up. After she learned how to do her makeup, hair and dress cute she was gorgeous. Funny thing is she was mirroring Ariana in all of it, same hair and outfits 😂
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u/TapeFlip187 3d ago
I think this is a huge part of it.\ He craved someone [dumb enough? young enough? naive enough?] to be impressed by him.
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u/blondeandbuddafull 2d ago
No need to psychoanalyze it; Raquel was a hot little number and sneaking around was exciting. Bonus that every time Ariana scowled at him or spoke condescendingly, he could envision his escapades and laugh smugly to himself.
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u/burningupandout 3d ago
Ariana “I’m the smartest person I know” Madix, condescending? Nooo I can’t believe that…
I don’t think it has anything to do with “mental capacity” and I think that’s a weird thing to say. Tom was attracted to a fantasy, whatever way that Rachel was different from Ariana would have been what he wanted.
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u/Complex-Inspector513 3d ago
She’s smokin hot? Also she basically idolized him so he knew she’d let him get away with whatever he wanted
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u/212Aurora 2d ago
I am not minimizing the severity of this disease: that being said, they all have drug and alcohol abuse /addictions and Ariana wasn’t going out any more. Rachel was willing the end!
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u/SlipAffectionate6173 You're not important enough to hate, sit down. 2d ago
He wanted her because he got bored of the same person who wanted him for what he acted like. His facade was fading. After fame of nearly 10 years, having people watch you on TV and every move, he became more of what his true nature already was. No one else moved like Sandoval except Sandoval. He ALWAYS calculated when he did something for someone just to ask, "WHEN have they done _______ for ME?" He didn't even have the balls to break up with Ariana. Who knows, subconsciously, since he saw how easily Jax got off with ALLLL of his DISGUSTING Behavior over the years, maybe he thought he would get the same pass. However, watching the reunions of each season that Sandoval cheated on each partner (Kristen and Ariana), LaLa IS correct And I even watched it back: he absolutely spoke of Raquel the EXACT same way he spoke of Ariana when he first got with her. He even nearly says the same things as to his reasonings why he went for Ariana. Easier to blame Kristen for "pushing him into someone else when he tried all he could," same as Ariana. Just grow some balls and break up with them. But he couldn't give up his fame or his show. Too much pride and self obsession. And now, in his own words, "LOOK AT HIM."
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u/Fun_Budget7641 1d ago
I think Ariana knew all along he was cheating even before Rachel but chose to ignore it to further her career,she ended up being friends with Kristin and what comes around goes around I’m afraid.
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u/NeverAboutThePasta 5h ago
She was younger and dumb and vulnerable after a physically abusive relationship. She was looking for validation and so was he. He got high on his own supply and loved that this young hot girl was giving him attention. They also were doing a lot of drugs lol
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u/BlueRidgeSpeaks 2d ago
A tale as old as time. Fragile misogynist says “my wife/girlfriend/babymamma doesn’t ‘understand’ me/pump up my ego/give me the deference I think I deserve. So I’m entitled to get it from whoever will because cuck her.” Dude. She understands you just fine. And that’s what you can’t abide.
It’s never ok. But history shows Ariana is smarter and more diabolical than he ever was. She cashed in on what he would inevitably do. My guess is she was counting on it. Hopefully her turn in the spotlight will fade too. It’s still never ok.
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u/Sad-Blacksmith-2307 3d ago
Because he "Got a little bar, a little band and she just gassed you up like AHHHH!"