MILF Manor season 2 stars Barby Garcia and Lannette West are getting real about their experience dating younger men … and their dads.
After the season’s shocking familial twist was revealed during the Sunday, May 5, episode of the TLC reality series, Barby, 46, joked to cameras that “the dads are giving me coochie tingles.”
Lannette, 50, exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, May 7, that she felt “overwhelmed with relief” when the group of older guys arrived.
“I immediately went, ‘There are age-appropriate men? Yay,’” she recalled. “Because I have a family, I have a career, I have people watching me, and there are certain things you don’t necessarily want to do or advertise in front of them. Which I have done some of, but that’s OK.”
Barby agreed that the dads “pulled me back to this logical 46-year-old woman” after she “reverted back to my 28-year-old self” when the only men around were decades younger.
“On an intellectual level, you have to admit that the conversations were obviously more stimulating with the dads,” she added.
While there were pros to dating the older men, Barby did share which of the sons was worthy of coochie tingles, to borrow her phrase.
“Chris was the first one that came off the boat and he’s just so handsome,” she shared. “Chris reminds me of the kind of guys that I was interested in when I was his age. … For some reason, the dynamic of the house … I actually just ended up going back to that 28-year-old girl who would’ve been very attracted to the tall model, dark, green-eyed guy who was Chris.”
When Lannette pointed out that Chris, 27, had “a lot of red flags,” Barby agreed.
“Exactly,” she said. “Which I wouldn’t do so much now outside of that environment.”
Not only does Barby avoid red flags in her normal dating life, she’d previously steered clear of younger men.
“It’s really interesting because I actually do not date that young of men because of boundaries I have with it being too close to my son’s age,” she said. “But I’ve had friends tell me, ‘Why? It’s not your son? Why do you worry about it?’ But I think for me, there’s this — I don’t know what it is about it — there’s this weird thing, that now I’ve had to kind of be more open minded about. Like, you can meet people and men that you connect with who are [of] a different age range.’”
Barby added that her son, who is 27, had reservations when she signed on to the show.
“He was a little bit like, ‘What are you getting yourself into?’ But he’s also very overprotective of me, and I don’t think he knew the full extent of the nature of the show,” she said.
Lanette, meanwhile, said her 26-year-old son was “pretty ambivalent” about the situation, whereas her 17-year-old daughter was fully supportive.
“He was like, ‘Whatever, mom. You’re crazy,’” she said. “And then my daughter was like, ‘You have to do it, mom.’” Because I was wavering a bit because it was a lot of time out from work and there are a lot of impacts to other people. And she pretty much talked me into it when I was getting cold feet.”
MILF Manor airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi