"Nothing goes without payment” — Teddi Mellencamp feels she got cancer as a retribution for her alleged affair with Simon Schroeder

Teddi Mellencamp, the star of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, recently opened up about her secret affair with her horse trainer, Simon Schröder, on The Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast in the second half of the podcast, which was released on 5 August 2025. The actress is now facing stage 4 cancer after her melanoma spread. On the podcast, she said:

“Nothing goes without payment.”

The actress is now facing her toughest battle with cancer. After her second marriage failed, a secret affair, and her diagnosis of stage 4 cancer, she believes it's a cosmic punishment for her mistakes.

Teddi Mellencamp stated:

"I've never talked about it at all, just because of the kids, and I've never wanted anybody to have a guarantee whether it happened or didn't happen, but what I can say is, did I do things that hurt other people? Yes."

She continued:

"To this day, does it still hurt my heart and I wonder if that's why it got cancer? Yes, like it was my payback."

As she sobbed, Teddi Mellencamp said:

"Nothing goes without payment."

She went on to add that it was a difficult time:

"However long it was ... it was all over the press, it was everywhere. You're trying to minimize everybody's pain. You end up maximizing it. Because now not only do you have yourself, you have your significant other, your kids, the other person's significant other, their kids."

In sickness, if not in marriage: Edwin Arroyave supports Teddi Mellencamp during her treatment

After finding out about the affair, the couple decided to split up. They were married for 13 years and share three kids in the marriage of 11 years: Slate, 12; Cruz, 10; and Dove, 4. She is also stepmother to Arroyave's daughter from his previous marriage, Isabella, who is 15, as Teddi Mellencamp cited it was due to irreconcilable differences.

However, when Teddi Mellencamp disclosed her diagnosis with melanoma this year in February, the divorce proceedings were halted. In the months that followed, Arroyave and Mellencamp were on good terms, and he stayed by her side, and now even more so as her cancer treatment continues. Speaking about this, she said:

"I always knew he'd do the right thing by me. If he wanted to, he could still be filing and finishing this divorce off right now. But, my dad [musician John Mellencamp] and family just said like, 'I don't think this is the right thing for her to be able to try to navigate right now or figure out.' It was like, 'Yeah, of course. No, we'll wait. We'll wait until she's better, and then we’ll figure it out.'"

Teddi Mellencamp added that she and Edwin stay in the same house, and they do pretty well:

"To this day, I don't hate Edwin and we don't argue."

She then went on to add:

"I just want him to be happy, and I want our kids to be happy, and I want us to be able to have a good friendship and relationship, and I don't want to do anything to hurt him. I kind of know how our marriage works."

Mellencamp reflects on the emotional spiral right before her diagnosis

Teddi Mellencamp opened up about the emotional spiral right before her diagnosis. She said:

"But I can say this from knowing - the wreckage doesn't happen on its own. It never had happened to me."

She went on to add:

"I think I was so broken as a human being during that part of my life that I did things out of my better judgment."

Teddi Mellencamp said that she was "so sick." Referring to the headache that she had mentioned during her brain tumor announcement, she said:

"Remember how I told you there was like months of headaches and stuff like that? I was looking for comfort anywhere I can get it. I felt so much pain. I felt so sick. I didn't go to the doctors. I just felt some certain kind of way. And the pain was so much that I had gotten to the point of like, almost hating waking up in the morning, which I had never been that kind of person."

Teddie Mellencamp said that she was to blame for all of it, not her illness:

"But I do think a bunch of things happened in my life all around the same time, and I had zero control of any of them. Like I just was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

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Teddi Mellencamp's diagnosis of cancer came as a shock, but she has been a fighter since the beginning, since her first diagnosis of Melanoma in the year 2022.

Stay tuned to Soap Central for more information.

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