Valerie Bertinelli says Eddie Van Halen was 'not a soulmate'

Having watched her son Wolfgang Van Halen's new episode of "Behind the Music," the actress is reassessing her marriage.

Revisiting the history of your own life can be difficult. Valerie Bertinelli had such an intense experience watching her son Wolfgang Van Halen's episode of Behind the Music, in which he discussed the life and career of his late father Eddie Van Halen as well as his own, that she felt compelled to share her thoughts on social media.

“It was not easy. I’d stopped it many times because it was just too brutal to watch for many reasons,” Bertinelli said in a video posted to her Instagram account. She goes on to enumerate the reasons she found the new Behind the Music episode hard to watch.

“One, seeing Wolfie’s pain. Two, seeing what a better job I could have done as a parent. Even though he turned out magnificently, I made a lot of mistakes,” she said. “And three, seeing that I had turned Ed’s and my relationship into some sort of fantasy, soulmate recreation of history.”

As Bertinelli recounts, she first met Van Halen when she was 20 years old. He was then the acclaimed lead guitarist of the popular rock band that shared his name, and she was several years into her breakout TV role as Barbara Cooper Royer on One Day at a Time. They stayed married for 20 years before getting divorced in 2007. Van Halen died of cancer in 2020 at age 65.

Wolfgang played in his namesake band until his father's death caused the group to disband. Since then, Wolfgang has focused on his solo project Mammoth WVH, where he plays all instruments and vocals.

Looking back at the ups and downs of their relationship, Bertinelli doesn't see much worth romanticizing — other than their son.

"After Ed died, I was more than willing to put myself in the 'grieving widow' category for a man that I hadn’t lived with for 20 years,” Bertinelli said. “What we had together was this beautiful son that we both unconditionally loved. That’s what I got out of that marriage: Wolfie, the best thing that ever happened to me. Not a soulmate.”

Watch the full video below.

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