Nearly five years after she and Aaron Rodgers called it quits, Danica Patrick opens up about the “emotionally abusive” relationship she had with the longtime NFL player.
Videos by Suggest
While appearing on The Sage Steele Show, Patrick was asked what the “most amount of pain” she ever experienced in her life was.
“The breakup with Aaron in 2020,” she revealed. “Because it was sudden, it felt like. It was my life. So, like when you live with somebody, it’s your whole life. And because the nature of the relationship was emotionally abusive, so that wore me down to nothing.”
Continuing to speak out about the relationship, Patrick said, “People could never imagine that I would lack… any confidence or belief in the simple things about who I am. Everything was torn to bits.”
Patrick then declared that Rodgers “leaves a trail of blood.”
“I don’t think I’m saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there’s been enough out there,” she pointed out.
Danica Patrick Didn’t Realize Her Relationship With Aaron Rodgers Was “Emotionally Abusive” Until After It Ended
When Steele asked Patrcik if she had known “at the time” that the relationship was “emotionally abusive” or if she realized it “in hindsight” after she “recovered and [had] gotten to know”herself again.
“Hindsight,” the former race car driver answered. “I ignored it, but in real life, it was just like I just feel like – I would say all the time, ‘I’m built for hard things. I can handle hard things.’ And so I just saw it as a hard thing.”
Patrick further pointed out that her “nature” is to “try harder and do more.”
“And I was like, ‘What if I don’t do it for the right person?'” Patrick continued. “Like what if I just get a strict up my a– about this and get too proud and go like ‘You know what, I’m just done.'”Instead of going, ‘Man just try a little harder because what if you look back and wish you would have tried?’ Like, I would never want that in my life.”
Despite the relationship’s outcome, Patrick said she has no regrets about how it went and ended. She said she understands that “everything leads to the next thing.”
“But it gave me the greatest gift,” she said about the relationship. “The greatest gift, which is myself.”
“It gave me the greatest gift of how much I needed to show up for myself,” Patrick added. “And take care of myself.”
Patrick and Rodgers first met at the 2012 ESPYs and kept in touch by email over the years. They eventually confirmed their romance in January 2018.
The exes officially ended things in July 2020.