Last night Shannon Tweed returned to the house she shares with KISS star Gene Simmons after storming out last week in the dramatic season opener of the couple's reality TV show Gene Simmons Family Jewels.
The couple have been together for 28 years and have two children together, but Simmons has nonetheless always cultivated a public image as a carefree rock star, repeatedly claiming to have bedded more than 4600 women in his touring career with KISS. After yet another round of online pictures showing Simmons exiting a restaurant with young female companions, a tearful Tweed told Simmons, "I'm sick of hearing it, I'm sick of seeing it and I'm sick of living with it." After a tense confrontation at their therapist's office she stormed out, went home and had packed and departed before Simmons returned.
"I guess I f**ked up," Simmons told Dr. Ann Wexler last night. Alone at home while his children visited Tweed at her hotel, the rocker told Wexler that he hadn't fully realized how his selfish behavior could impact those around him, especially Tweed. "We take things for granted," he said. "I do. I'm starting to realize what I don't have when she's not here."
The series often uses Tweed's home movie footage of the couple's two children, which she shot while Simmons was constantly on tour with KISS so he could stay in contact with his family. The rock star admitted that Tweed put in most of the effort when it came to raising the kids and running the household, while he focused mainly on providing for the family financially through constant hard work. "I do nothing," he said. "I paid to have [the house] built, but I didn't make it into a home."
Tweed, meanwhile, was talking to her sister Tracy and daughter Sophie, trying to decide whether she wanted to try to work things out, or leave for good. "I need to think about what I want to do, what I really want," she told Tracy. With both children out of the house and getting on with their own lives, and Simmons continuing to work as hard as always and seemingly expecting to do exactly as he pleased, she tearfully said, "Everybody got what they wanted but me."
But it appears that love has won out, for the moment at least. The couple came together for the first time since Tweed's abrupt departure at a singing performance by their son Nick, and ended up reconciling. "There's no question that I'm an idiot," Simmons said. "Without you I'm pretty much nothing." Last night's episodes ended with Tweed deciding to return home.
Tweed explained her decision to Dr. Wexler by asking, "What's the point of anything if you throw away everything you've built together?"
That doesn't mean that there's not still serious work ahead of the couple, who have only recently argued on live television while making the talk show rounds to promote the new season of the show. "In the end, I belong with my family," Tweed tweeted last night. "It is a work in progress but we are trying."
