Vicki Gunvalson & Brooks Ayers Announce Breakup After 4 Years –– Time Has Come 'To Take Separate Paths'

Vicki Gunvalson and Brooks Ayers told RadarOnline.com they're splitting after four years "after much prayer, thought, counseling, and consideration."

"We both wish nothing but a great future for each other," the Real Housewives of Orange County mainstay and Ayers told RadarOnline.com. "We have come to realize that one can indeed love someone in their heart, but that the time may come for their lives to take separate paths."

The 53-year-old beauty and her former beau, who were talking marriage earlier this summer, noted that the rest of the show's tenth season, currently airing on Bravo, "will show us as a couple, as the filming took place in January 2015 through May 2015."

Gunvalson and Ayers pledged that "there will be no further statements or interviews regarding our relationship as we choose to move on with our lives."

They added that while they "choose to live our lives in the public eye," they were requesting "privacy during this difficult time."

The former couple had weathered many scandals prior to a 2013 split, though they got back together last year at the onset of his ongoing cancer battle.

Prior to that, much of their dysfunctional relationship had unfolded both on Bravo's cameras, and right here exclusively on RadarOnline.com.

Last year, RadarOnline.com exposed Brooks' on-camera admission, to a business associate, in which he confessed to cheating on Gunvalson with a prostitute, and other women.

"I've been known to cheat … bottom line, it hurt Vicki to know even if we weren't together that I f**ked somebody else," he said on the tape, exclusive to RadarOnline.com. "That hurt her ... I didn't mean to cross the line. I didn't know. I thought it was appropriate."

Ayers had also admitted to a bout of "violence" against Gunvalson -- "the only thing I have ever done with Vicki," he said -- which took place on Puerto Vallarta, after she didn't seem upset after a man groped her.

Watch the video on RadarOnline.com

"I was mad and I was wrong," he said. "When I just came out of this bathroom and we were in this place and I saw a guy grab her a**. And I came up and said, 'What the hell?' And she said, 'It's not big deal.' And I said, 'Yes it is a big deal.' And I was wrong, there is never a right, wrong, or excuse to ever to touch a woman, particularly in public or private, ever!

"So I'll own that. But it was never a hit or a slap."

Ayers had notoriously clashed with Vicki's daughter Briana Wolfsmith-Culberson though the Bravo series.

The Real Housewives of Orange County airs Mondays at 9/8c on Bravo.