Thomas Has A New Girlfriend On 'Southern Charm' & Here's What You Need To Know

Kathryn and Thomas have had a contentious relationship over the years on Southern Charm. Now, though, it seems that one of the parties has moved on from this on-again, off-again cycle. Who is Thomas Ravenel’s girlfriend Ashley on Southern Charm? Ashley Jacobs is here to stay in Charleston, and suffice it to say that Kathryn (and maybe the rest of the cast, too) isn’t quite sure how she feels about it.

Ashley, viewers learn, is from California. She is 32 years old and a nurse, according to Page Six, and she and Thomas basically picked each other on Cinco De Mayo in Santa Barbara and never looked back. Or at least that’s how they tell it on the show. “We’ve been together ever since,” says Thomas, after Ashley saw him and did that finger wave that means “come here, you.” Cute, I guess. Looking at Ashley’s Instagram, she seems to enjoy everything else any other 32-year-old would love — her man, her friends, Disney World, a good movie premiere. She also tweets a lot of stuff about haters and how they’ll get theirs and how she’s praying for them. I’m sure there’s plenty more to know about Ashley, but that will come on the show.

Southern Charm is clearly positioning Ashley and Kathryn to have a showdown of epic proportions, but let’s back up a little bit here. Ashley has moved to Charleston to be with Thomas (a nurse can get a job anywhere, so that’s not really a big deal), and she and Thomas are seemingly happy. Kathryn has moved out, and she has her own job now and her own life. She is most proud, she says, of having her own place and a special room “at mommy’s house” for her children, and it’s really good to see Kathryn looking so well after all of her past struggles. Thomas and Kathryn’s custody agreement still seems contemptuous, as she claims he can still call her and ask she take a drug test within 24 hours. And, she had their old nanny, Deirdre, fired, because Kathryn didn’t like her.

Speaking of children, Kathryn claims she only found out that Thomas had a new love interest when her daughter — who is three — allegedly told her. “He hasn’t mentioned her to me, and I don’t like how my three-year-old is the one who told me, ‘Ashley sleeps in a room with Daddy.’ That’s how I found out,” Kathryn claimed to her friend Danni. “Thomas is lucky is new girlfriend is a hospice nurse. That’s gonna come in handy.”

If that side of the story is true, and if Ashley is going to be spending time around Thomas and Kathryn’s children, Thomas probably should have made it a point to tell Kathryn that he had found someone. It’s not because he has to let Kathryn down gently — it’s because as co-parents, both parents deserve to know who's hanging with their kids. But Thomas lets the chips fall as they may, and he, whether intentionally or not, pits the two women against each other. Before Shep's birthday party, he even says that he can't wait to see Kathryn's reaction to Ashley's outfit. Really?

There’s no reason for Kathryn and Ashley to hate each other. As long as they are both cool, things should be cool. But Thomas is making the relationship between these two women contentious. He loves to play both sides against the middle — remember all that stuff between Landon and Kathryn? It’s the same thing here — the onus is on Thomas to communicate between the mother of his children and his current girlfriend, and, instead, he keeps comparing them.

Kathryn and Ashley seem to have it out all season on Southern Charm (we’ll see what happens, though), when really, they should look at the cause of this fighting — Thomas. Both women have to get along for the sake of the children, so the sooner they see that the person responsible for the drama is the man standing between them, the better everything else will be.