Inside Whitney and Bobby's split

After 14 years of a turbulent marriage, the duo dealt with trips to rehab, rumors of infidelity and run-ins with the law. Now a relative of Brown's spills the beans about why the duo split. According to Browns relative the problems started last fall. "The relationship just spiraled out of control," the relative tells People. "They fought like cats and dogs. They would fight about what to eat for dinner, about who wasn't cleaning out the dishwasher. Stupid things. But they were always yelling."

Then things took a more serious turn in March when Brown's sister Tina told The National Enquirer that Houston was a drug addict. Another source says the "final straws" involved recent tabloid reports that Brown, the target of persistent cheating rumors, has been carrying on a longtime affair with Karrine Steffans, who claimed Brown as one of her conquests in her 2005 kiss-and-tell book Confessions of a Video Vixen.

"I am not going to pretend that Bobby was a perfect husband – he's not," says the Brown relative. "But it's not like he just ran around with anyone. The marriage was broken."



But Victor "GV" Dugue, who is working on Brown's upcoming album, says that given the exes' equally outsized, "crazy" personalities, the relationship has always been volatile and that the current split may prove to be just another bump in the long and winding road. "Both of them are very emotional," he says. "They're arguing one second; the next minute, they're laughing again."

As Brown himself told PEOPLE in January, "They say opposites attract, but we're not opposites. We're one person." Adds the Brown relative: "Right now they're both angry, but there's a thin line between love and hate. They're going to always have a place in each other's lives."