Valerie Bertinelli’s ex-boyfriend, Mike Goodnough, accused the former Food Network star of taking “backhanded swipes” at him in her Instagram posts when he spoke out about speculation the two were engaged in a subtle feud on social media.
The 54-year-old writer and Bertinelli, 64, called it quits in November after 10 months of dating. On Monday, Goodnough responded to the many “messages and replies” he said he had received, which implied the duo “appear to be communicating with each other via our Instagram posts and stories.”
“That is not the case,” he wrote in a lengthy Instagram post. “I have never at any time posted something on social media for the purposes of communicating with someone indirectly when I know them personally and have ample ways to reach them directly.
“I have never at any time posted something for the purpose of getting a message to someone or getting reaction out of someone,” Goodnough added. “I’ve never posted something in an effort to impact someone’s feelings about me privately or to influence others’ opinions of them publicly.
VALERIE BERTINELLI ENCOURAGES FOLLOWERS TO ‘BEGIN AGAIN’ IN THE NEW YEAR
“I am an adult,” he added. “I am very capable of communicating openly and directly with people I know and care about.”
Goodnough asserted that he still cared for Bertinelli despite their split, writing, “I have love for her and I always will.
“I want her to be happy,” he wrote. “It will bring me nothing but joy to see that she is.”
Goodnough recalled that he was by Bertinelli’s side a year ago for the launch of her cookbook “Indulge,” describing the time as “one of the most joyful weeks of my life.”
“Taking true deep joy from Valerie’s happiness and success was the easiest thing in the world,” he wrote. “It is no harder now.
“Our relationship as partners ended,” Goodnough added. “My caring about her did not.”
While Goodnough claimed that none of his posts were directed at Bertinelli, he slammed the “One Day at a Time” actress for allegedly taking shots at him on social media after their breakup.
“Unfortunately, over the past two months, Valerie has been prone to lapsing into a place where she has been playing a one-woman tennis match thinking there is someone on the other side of the net,” Goodnough wrote.
“When in that place, she reads all of my posts, centers herself in them, takes offense over wholly imagined slights, and then lashes out angrily with a ‘response’ to things that were neither to her or about her.”
Goodnough claimed Bertinelli’s posts had given their mutual followers the impression the two were engaged in a “back-and-forth,” which he denied. However, he did not specify which of Bertinelli’s posts he was referring to in his remarks.
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“I am not communicating with Valerie via my posts,” he wrote. “I am not engaging with the things she posts.
“While I am disappointed in the array of hostile, dishonest, and uncalled for backhanded swipes she continues to take at me, there is no war between us.
“She just won’t stop shooting. Valerie is in a war with her ghosts. I’m just the guy who catches the bullets. And that isn’t new.”
A representative for Bertinelli did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
In a February Instagram post, Bertinelli reflected on what makes relationships work, writing that she had “fumbled the last true good man I met.”
Bertinelli heaped praise on Goodnough in a since-deleted post that she shared last month. According to People magazine, the Delaware native wrote that she felt “so lucky to have gotten to know him,” and she was “irreversibly changed by him for the better.”
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She also encouraged her fans to subscribe to his newsletter, Hoarse Whisperings, so they could “get the beautiful gift of what it’s like to be in his orbit.”
The “Hot In Cleveland” actress first revealed she was in a new relationship in March 2024. Bertinelli and Goodnough went public with their relationship on social media one month later, with the celebrity chef posting a photo of them together, with the caption, “I’ll drink what you think and I’m high from smokin’ your jokes all damn night.”
Bertinelli was previously married to Tom Vitale from 2011 to 2022, and the actress described their divorce as “wicked.”
Prior to her marriage to Vitale, Bertinelli was married to musician Eddie Van Halen from 1981 to 2007.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Dugan Ramirez contributed to this report.
