Chrishell Stause Asserts 'I Can Do It on My Own' When It Comes to Starting a Family

“Selling Sunset” star Chrishell Stause says she is keeping her “options open” when it comes to having children.

Letting go of the idealized version of your life is a tough one. The neatly painted picture of the nuclear family with a heterosexual partner, a picket fence and a 401k is honestly getting blurrier and blurrier. Frankly? We couldn’t be more thrilled. After all, isn’t life better when we get to do things on our own terms? Chrishell Stause certainly thinks so.

The Netflix star, real estate mogul, and author told PEOPLE that she broke things off with boyfriend Jason Oppenhiem in December 2021 over her desires to start a family (and his staunch objections to do so).

“It’s bittersweet,” Stause tells PEOPLE. “You can’t talk out this problem. It’s just something that, it is what it is.”

After divorcing This Is Us star Justin Hartley in 2019 (with whom she didn’t have any children with), Stause says that when it comes to starting the family she wants, she isn’t going to let a partner determine that for her.

“I would love for that to happen, but if it doesn’t, I feel like I can do it on my own,” she says. “That’s something that seems scary, but it also seems a little freeing, knowing that I’m not tied down to this idea that I only have this finite amount of time to figure it out.”

Of course that doesn’t Stause is walling herself off from love… it’s just not going to dictate her personal or professional life.

“My whole life, I had this idea of Cinderella — a guy sweeps you off your feet, you live happily ever after. But it’s a new world out there and I’ve just decided we were all messed up a little bit by Cinderella. Sometimes you have to be your own fairy godmother.”

On February 8th, Stause is debuting her new memoir “Under Construction” in honor of her journey of “failures.”

“Having connected with so many people through the failures that I have had, it really does feel so much more obtainable when you have people that you feel like you’re going through it with them,” Stause says.

I’m tryin’ to get like you, my girl.