'Secrets and Wives' stars Cori Goldfarb, Susan Doneson talk finale

Ask Cori Goldfarb what it's like to watch herself on a reality TV show, and she'll be straight with you: It's weird.

"It's so bizarre," Goldfarb, one of six Long Island women starring in Bravo's "Secrets and Wives," which airs its season one finale Tuesday night. "I had such anxiety, both while shooting and now, when the episodes air every week."

The series' eight episodes see her and longtime friends Amy Miller, Andi Black, Susan Doneson, Gail Greenberg and Liza Sandler vacationing on Fire Island and Montauk (at Gurney's, of course), dealing with the fallout of divorce (Andi, Liza), trying to get grown children to grow up (Amy) and working through the ups and downs of their relationships. The show's title is a nod to all the open secrets between this group of wealthy North Shore women: Everyone has "secrets"... but everybody knows them.

For Goldfarb -- a mother of four who lives in Old Westbury and runs Truth + Beauty, a spa and skin care clinic in Roslyn Heights, with her husband, Sandy -- filming her life last summer was, in part, a business decision.

"Watching the show, I learned I'll do almost anything to make my business grow," she said Monday while hosting a party at the spa to celebrate the show's first-season wrap.

Viewers of the show know that the women's private lives were on display, too, for better or for worse. A recent episode followed the Goldfarbs to marriage counseling after Cori discovered a suggestive text from another woman on Sandy's phone. And what about that hard-to-watch scene at their blowout 20th anniversary party, during which he refused to join her in a speech she gave in front of 200 of their friends and family members.

"You know, Sandy was put on the spot, he'd had a few drinks," she says. "But I'm not making excuses for him, because it was sad."

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As for that text, "I still don't know what that was about, but I did do my own investigation." (Not through a private investigator, she says, but on her own through looking at phone records.)

Tuesday's finale sees each of the women with "some sense of closure, while also leaving things open-ended so you're wondering what happens," Goldfarb says.

For cast member Susan Doneson -- whose husband, Jonathan, is the source of some of the show's most cringe-worthy (yet entertaining) moments -- the biggest surprise might be that there were really none at all.

"Nothing Jonathan does shocks me anymore," Susan Doneson says.