Brittany Cartwright ‘Is Ready to Date’ a Year After Jax Taylor Split: ‘Make Me the Bachelorette!’ (Exclusive)

Brittany Cartwright is ready for a different kind of reality TV stint.

A year after separating from her husband Jax Taylor in February 2024, The Valley star, 36, says she’s looking for new love — and she isn’t opposed to finding it on TV.

“Mama is ready to date!” Cartwright tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I am not holding back anymore. Bravo, give me a dating show, I’m here for it. I am down. Make me the Bachelorette!”

While Cartwright says she’s been on a “couple dates here and there” since her split from Taylor, 45, she hasn’t found “anything serious” yet.

“I deserve to have butterflies again,” she says. “I just want somebody to be nice to me, and that’s sad. I just really want somebody to take me on dates. It doesn’t even have to be anything fancy. Something sweet, something small, will make my day.”

“I’m not bougie,” she continues. “I can be, in some ways, but I’m just a girl from Kentucky, and we could watch a movie on the back of a truck, or we could have a picnic. It doesn’t matter. I just want to do fun things and feel that excitement of liking somebody again.”

Now when she dates, Cartwright says she’s looking “for all the red flags” she didn’t notice when she first started dating Taylor a decade ago. She officially filed for divorce in August.

For more of Brittany Cartwright’s exclusive interview, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.

“I’m also just wanting to have some fun, until I do find that right person again,” she says. “I got to make sure that it’s somebody that loves kids. That’s something that’s very important to me.”

Cartwright says she doesn’t plan to let anybody she’s dating “around” her and Taylor’s son Cruz, who turns 4 on April 12, “until I know it’s serious.”

“I don’t want Jax to do that either,” she says. “I got to watch out for Cruz, first and foremost.”

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While navigating her split from Taylor, Cartwright also received their son’s autism diagnosis in the fall. On the upcoming season 2 of The Valley she says “it’s obvious” that Cruz is “nonverbal,” so she wanted to reveal his diagnosis publicly ahead of the premiere on April 15 to “talk about this on my own terms instead of people on social media trying to diagnose him.”

“My son is autistic, and he’s incredible,” she says. “I’m his voice now. I’m his warrior now.”

Since Cartwright has primary physical custody of Cruz, she wants to make sure her son is in “good hands” when he’s with his father, who says he’s now sober after struggling with cocaine addiction over the past 20 years.

“I’m going to put my foot down, and I’m going to make sure he’s doing what he needs to do: drug testing, everything,” she says. “As much as me and Jax are not getting along, I want Cruz to grow up with his dad in his life. So if he can stay consistent, I think that’s very important in co-parenting.”