Shailene Woodley is opening up about her split from ex-fiancé Aaron Rodgers, calling their relationship ‘beautiful’ but a ‘toxic situation’.
“I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because it always makes me cry,” the actress told Outside magazine. ‘It wasn’t right. But it was beautiful.’
The New York Jets quarterback, 41, and Woodley, 33, started dating in secret during the pandemic. Yahoo Entertainment confirmed in February 2022 that the couple had ended their engagement. They were spotted together occasionally in the weeks that followed and eventually ended things for good.
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“I experienced something terrible and traumatic in early 2022,” Woodley recalled. She said she experienced “depression,” “anxiety,” and “complete detachment from the soul.”
“I felt like I was losing my soul, my self, my happiness and my joy,” she said, explaining that she remained in a “toxic situation” because she empathized with “someone else.”
Woodley, who said she was empathetic “to a degree,” said her empathy kept her “in this loop of feeling everything for everyone.” The actress “knew” she was “depressed when I looked at a tree and felt nothing.”
“That was the lowest low of my life,” she said.
The Murderous heat The star was depressed for about six months and credits her best friend and stylist, Kris Zero, with helping her out of that dark period.
“We went surfing, and for 10 minutes that day I thought life was going to be okay again. Then the depression came back and she said, ‘We’re volunteering at the horse ranch!'” Woodley said.
The environmental activist previously called her and Rodgers’ divorce the “darkest, most difficult time of my life.” Neither star has said specifically why they broke up; However, the public’s interest in their relationship surprised Woodley.
“I honestly never really noticed that millions of people around the world were watching these things and paying attention to them. Then I dated someone in America who was very, very famous,” she told Porter Magazine last year. “It was the first time I had a quote-unquote ‘famous’ relationship, and I watched [the] scrutiny, opinions, the desire for people to know my life, his life, our lives – it just felt like an intrusion in a way it was fun before.