‘RHONJ’ Star Melissa Gorga Fears She ‘Can’t Come Back’ From Another Teresa Feud

“In the beginning [of the show] it was super hard because it was basically Melissa against Teresa and it was very hard,” Melissa, 39, told People. “We were at each other’s throats and the whole experience was very, very negative. It was a divided show. It was a horrible, horrible time in our lives.”

When Melissa joined RHONJ, her husband Joe Gorga was constantly butting heads with his sister Teresa and her spouse Joe Giudice. The two husbands even got physical, getting into a heated brawl.

The two couples agreed to kiss and makeup after Teresa was returned home from her 11-month prison sentence. Her brother and sister-in-law have been supportive as she and her four daughters endure Joe’s prison sentence and possible deportation.

Melissa said she and Teresa are “in a good place” now, but they do still fight. “We get into arguments on and off camera, and it’s all real stuff. It’s legit what’s going on and we don’t sugar-coat things. I discuss how I feel about it and she discusses how she feels about it.”

And while Teresa isn’t worried that their relationship will deteriorate again, Melissa is. “I’m the one who is always ahead, I’m a heavy thinker. So I’m the one who’s like, ‘Oh my God, we’re not going back to the dark place, are we?’ I get that way. I get very nervous when we start to argue. And I think I even discuss that during the season,” she explained.

“If she starts to go to that dark place, my body starts to shake,” Melissa said. “Because we can’t go there again. If we go there again, it’s over. There’s no way — we can’t come back from that.”

“We’re a real family,” the RHONJ star confided. “There’s so much that’s gone on that we’ve had to go through together, I think it’s actually made us so much stronger than we were before. We’re able to have an argument and then have dinner on Sunday, and we couldn’t do that before.”