Sofía Vergara resurfaced cryptic posts about narcissistic men on Oct. 9, putting Joe Manganiello back at the center of a story that has been quiet since their 2023 split. The timing matters because his memoir, Bloodlines, is due out in just days.
Vergara reposted a chart her son, Manolo Vergara, had shared on Instagram Stories. It contrasted a “good man” with a “narcissistic man,” saying that when dealing with a narcissist it does not matter how much you do, because the person will resent it, never think it is enough and still try to paint you as the bad guy. The chart also described narcissistic men as people who gaslight, blame-shift, lie and play the victim. She added another repost the same day: a quote originally shared by Tom Brady saying that the ability to laugh at oneself is the highest form of intelligence, while the inability to do so is a sign someone is dealing with an idiot.
That flurry of reposts landed just after an advance excerpt from Bloodlines, published by People, described the toll of Manganiello’s seven-year battle with a mysterious autoimmune disease. In the excerpt, the 54-year-old said his marriage had become “devoid of any emotionality whatsoever” and claimed Vergara would not even hug him if he asked. He also wrote that the two struggled to start a family, went through failed IVF attempts and at one point considered an egg donor. Manganiello said in an Oct. 7 interview with People that his 5-lb chihuahua, Bubbles, helped him through bouts of suicidal ideation after he adopted the sickly puppy in 2019.
The contrast is hard to miss. Vergara’s reposts framed the split in broad, pointed terms, while Manganiello said there were things said and printed about him that were false. He wrote that he was trying to tell his own version of the breakup and the illness that shadowed it. He also said he did not want to die and leave Vergara, with whom he split in 2023, with a child “who wasn’t biologically hers.”
Bloodlines is now the next public marker in a breakup that has already spilled into social media and memoir. What remains unresolved is the same one thing Manganiello still has not named: the specific autoimmune disease that shaped seven years of his life and, by his account, helped break a marriage that once looked untouchable.
