Anthony Bourdain on His Split From MMA Fighter Ottavia Busia: 'There's No Injured Party Here'

"My wife and I live, have lived, very separate lives for years," Anthony Bourdain tells PEOPLE of his separation from wife Ottavia Busia.

Photo: Michael N. Todaro/WireImage

Anthony Bourdain recently separated from his wife, mixed martial artist Ottavia Busia, after nine years together but the celebrity chef says there are no hard feelings.

“My wife and I live, have lived, very separate lives for years,” Bourdain told PEOPLE while discussing his upcoming cookbook, Appetites. “There’s no drama here. We get along really, really well and it’s not a big lifestyle change happening here.”

Bourdain, 60—who shares a nine-year-old daughter, Ariane, with Busia, 38—admits that it can be “really tough” having to travel and be away from his family “about 250 days a year” for his work on projects like CNN’s Parts Unknown. But “it’s what my daughter is used to,” he says.

“You know, this is a girl who knows her parents are weird. We have somehow managed to raise a very healthy, very happy, self-assured little girl who knows she’s loved, who finds her parents entertaining.”

Now their focus is continuing to raise their daughter together: “As a family, I think we’ve done a really good job and we’re doing a really good job and would like to keep it that way,” he added. “As a marriage, clearly it’s not ideal but there’s no injured party here, nobody’s angry, nobody feels like the injured party, nobody feels like a victim. So we’ll proceed like that.”

When news broke of their separation on Monday, Busia also released a statement to Page Six saying, “Because of professional decisions we both have made, my husband and I have been for years in an unconventional relationship. Nothing has changed. We love each other. We respect the decisions the other has made. And we’ll always consider ourselves a family.”

As for whether he’ll start dating anytime soon, Bourdain tells PEOPLE, “I’m in no rush to even think about that honestly.”