Shailene Woodley Reflects on 'Toxic' Aaron Rodgers Relationship: 'It Was Not Right'
Shailene Woodley is opening up about why her relationship with Aaron Rodgers ended.
In an interview with Outside, published on Dec. 3, the Three Women star provided some rare insight into her breakup with the NFL star. The actress shared that she had "a really awful, traumatic thing" happen in early 2022, which coincides with her calling off her engagement to the football player.
"I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy," she said, looking back at her experience. "I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment." Woodley then shared that she chose to stay in a "toxic situation" because she was empathetic toward "someone else."
"Empathy kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone," she explained.
Woodley said that she hasn't "shared much about [her] relationship" with Rodgers, 41, because it "always makes me cry."
"It was not right," she added, "but it was beautiful."
The 33-year-old credits her best friend Kris Zero for helping her out of that post-breakup funk. She recalled that Zero would wake her up every morning, blasting music to get her out of bed.
"Sometimes I was so angry at her," Woodley admitted. "But then we'd go surf, and for ten minutes that day, I thought life could be OK again." Zero would take her on nature-focused activities such as volunteering at a horse ranch or cleaning up trash during hikes. After six months, Woodley began feeling like herself again.
This isn't the first time this year that Woodley has hinted at how she felt following her breakup with Rodgers. Back in February, she told Bustle that she had a "broken heart that healed and broke again."
"I fell in love over and over with unavailability," she admitted to the outlet. "I'm very open as a human. I love easy and I care easy, but I do not love lightly, and I do not care lightly."
"It's really taken me a lot of time to understand that it's not on me to fix or heal or do anything about [a relationship] other than protect the deep care and love that I have for the world and for my people," Woodley added. "Ultimately, that has helped me walk away without the need to understand why certain things didn't play out the way that I may have desired them to."
Woodley and the New York Jets quarterback were first linked in Feb. 2021, with the former couple announcing their engagement shortly afterwards that same month. However, they called off their engagement in April of the following year. Rodgers has since moved on with Mallory Edens, the daughter of Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Wes Edens.
