Valerie Bertinelli has broken her silence on the end of her 10-month relationship with former boyfriend Mike Goodnough.
“I am irreversibly changed by him for the better,” Bertinelli said of her ex in a post shared via Instagram on Monday, March 3. “I know I am becoming a much stronger and more benevolent human for having met him and spent time with him.”
It was first reported that the pair split back in November 2024. This is the first time Bertinelli has publicly acknowledged the breakup.
“Before I had the pleasure of meeting Mike, I was initially and immediately attracted to his writing. It’s heartfelt, authentic, smart, funny, sensitive, caring, and from the soul. And the way he puts words together is just sooo ridiculously beautiful. 
I’m a big fan, can you tell?” she continued.
Valerie Bertinelli And Boyfriend Mike Goodnough Are Instagram Official
“And as luck would have it, the human being in person is exactly as heartfelt, authentic, sensitive and caring as his writing,” Bertinelli added. “And wickedly witty.”
The actress wrote that she feels “so lucky to have gotten to know him” and to “soak up his insights.”
Bertinelli first shared she was dating someone new in March 2024 and went Instagram official with Goodnough the following month. She used lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song “So High School” in the caption for the post, which included a photo of the pair wearing black-rimmed glasses.
Their relationship followed her 2022 divorce from Tom Vitale and the death of her first husband, Eddie Van Halen, who died in 2020 after a battle with throat cancer. The pair share a son Wolfgang, 33.
Bertinelli admitted to People in April 2024 that she’s “in love,” joking that she was “supposed to die with my six cats and my dog and very happily live the rest of my years alone — I’m good alone.”
“
I’ll drink what you think and I’m high from smokin’ your jokes all damn night 
@therealhoarse,” Bertinelli wrote alongside the cute snap.
Valerie Bertinelli and Mike Goodnough’s Relationship Timeline
On Monday, Bertinelli said that despite the split she will “value all of our long conversations” that have “lead me to interesting and fascinating places I rarely thought to go.”
“I look at life with a different perspective and caring because of my experiences and conversations with him,” she continued of her ex. “And he’s been a big part of helping me heal from some old childhood wounds I never knew what to do with or even where to start.”
Bertinelli also encouraged her followers to subscribe to Goodnough’s Substack.
