This 'Real World' Romance Is Shaky

The short answer? No. Johnny broke up with Averey this past December — December 2, to be precise. That's when Averey tweeted, "I need a beer. #singlegirlproblems" effectively announcing the split to the world. The Real World: Portland's Johnny and Averey, who met during Season 29, parted shortly (or possibly immediately) after he and the rest of the cast of The Challenge: Free Agents , returned home at the end of last year. According to their respective Twitter feeds, Averey seems to have dealt with the breakup beer and fielding solicitous messages from fans, while Johnny opted to go get some wings.

As you may remember, approximately 10 minutes into the season premiere of The Real World: Portland, Johnny and Averey entered a mostly pleasant, occasionally tumultuous relationship that lasted all the way through the end of the season, at which point Averey moved to Boston to be with her man and work at a wicked cool bar.

So what could have happened? Literally anything, but I have a few ideas. Maybe they simply grew apart while Johnny was shooting The Challenge. Maybe he’s a serial reality TV dater and cheated on Averey with one of his new Challenge costars (which will surely be super fun for her to watch as the season unfolds starting April 10). Or maybe, just maybe, it suddenly dawned on him that he was in a relationship that started on an MTV reality show, realized that telling people that would have been akin to revealing he and Averey met on the internet back in the early 2000s, and decided it was time to peace out.

Joining Johnny on this season of The Challenge are his former The Real World: Portland co-stars Jordan, Jessica, and Nia. Johnny mostly got along with Jordan, was generally annoyed by Jessica, and almost got into a flat-out brawl with Nia, so I’m interested to see if any of the Portland-ers decided to band together to try to crawl their way to the top.

Still, because we're hopeless reality romantics, we have to ask: could there be any hope for Johnny and Averey? Maybe seeing Johnny back on reality TV will remind Averey why she fell in love with him in the first place. As far as the viewers are concerned the couple’s biggest problem was Johnny’s trust issues, until their biggest problem was Nia trying to beat them with a hairdryer. All bets are off as to what she’ll try to beat her costars with on The Challenge: Free Agents, which premieres on MTV Thursday at 10 PM ET.

Image: MTV