Tarek El Moussa is opening up about his highly-publicized split from ex-wife Christina Hall for the first time.

Back in 2016, it was revealed Tarek, 46, and Christina, 42, were ending their marriage after seven years. When their split became public, it was also revealed that they had been secretly separated for months following an altercation in which Tarek fled into a nature area with a pistol after what he called a “blowup” fight with Christina.

Christina called 911 and police headed to the park and found Tarek.

In his new book Flip Your Life, Tarek is sharing his side of the gun incident for the very first time.

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In an excerpt published by People, Tarek said that after a heated argument, he “went out to our backyard in Yorba Linda and hopped over the fence.” He also said that he wasn’t fleeing, but was craving exercise and wanted to check out the trails near the house.

The neighboring Chino Hills State Park is a habitat for wildlife including mountain lions and bob cats, so he brought along a .38-caliber pistol for what he calls an “insurance police.” Tarek also noted that he received his California concealed-carry license a few weeks prior.

While he was out, a helicopter appeared overhead, and at first he thought there was an emergency or possible wildfire, but quickly realized it was looking for him.

“A police officer leaning out of the helicopter pointed a rifle at me. Dust swirled around me from the spin of the blades, and a loudspeaker crackled, ‘Get your hands in the air!’” Tarek recalled as more police in off-road vehicles swarmed around him.

“I heard an officer shout, ‘Tarek?’ I screamed back, ‘Yes! I’m the guy from TV! What are you guys doing?’” Tarek writes as law enforcement lowered their weapons and tension eased.

However, that was just the beginning of the downward spiral for Tarek.

“For the next several hours, I sat on a cooler on my driveway, handcuffed,” Tarek writes of the aftermath. “That was the very last time we were together as a family: with Christina walking down the driveway, crying, and me sitting there in handcuffs, asking myself, What in the world is going on?”

Tarek describes the weeks immediately after his split from Christina as “physical and emotional hell,” and writes that he was hiding out on his boat, drinking himself unconscious and going through extreme withdrawal from the testosterone he’d been taking until friends stepped in and got him into rehab.

Following the incident and his split from Christina, Tarek said, “Everybody gave up on me: the magazines, the outlets, the network, nobody believed in me.”

He then receded from the spotlight for months and lived in what he describes as “a halfway house” where he found the will to fight for what he thought at the time would bring his family back together again.

Tarek realized that getting back together with Christina wasn’t in the cards “when I found out that she had moved on.” Christina started dating second husband Ant Anstead in the fall of 2017.

“I would say devastating would be an understatement,” Tarek recalled of how the realization hit him.

Now seven years later, Tarek says that he and Christina have both healed a lot.

“I hold nothing against Christina. I understand why she did what she did. We had a lot of hard years through my sicknesses and my mental health struggles from the testosterone.” Tarek shared. “I’ve never said any of this, ever.”

After their split, Tarek and Christina continued filming Flip or Flop for several years together, which he admitted was hard for him to move on, but now says their relationship is “better than it’s been ever since the separation. We all communicate well, even [Tarek’s wife] Heather [El Moussa] and Christina. We really focus on the kids.”

Tarek and Christina share daughter Taylor, 13, and son Brayden, 8, while he also shares 1-year-old son Tristan with Heather.

Tarek also recently opened up about struggling alcoholism when he was just 19.

Tarek will be releasing his book Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress — in Real Estate, Business and Life on Feb. 6.