is still very emotional about her engagement to coming to an end.
“I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because it always makes me cry,” Woodley, 33, told Outside magazine in an interview published Tuesday, December 3. “It was not right. But it was beautiful.”
Later in the interview, Woodley recalled going through a “really awful, traumatic thing” in 2022.
“I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” she said about the six-month depression, which seemingly overlapped with the end of the relationship. “I really understood depression and anxiety and complete soul detachment.”
The actress stayed in a “toxic situation” at the time because “empathy kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone.” Woodley credited her best friend for helping her through that “lowest low” of her life.
In recent months, Woodley has been more outspoken about going through heartbreak in the public eye, telling Bustle in September, “I fell in love over and over with unavailability. 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.”
She added: “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. 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 Rodgers sparked dating rumors in July 2020 and Us Weekly subsequently confirmed their romance days before the football player announced that he was engaged in February 2021.
“I got engaged and played some of the best football of my career,” Rodgers shared while accepting an award at the time. That same month, Woodley opened up about how their relationship blossomed at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
“It’s kind of funny. Everybody right now is freaking out over [our engagement] and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been engaged for a while,’” she said during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in February 2021. “He’s, first off, just a wonderful, incredible human being. But I never thought I’d be engaged with somebody who threw balls for a living.”
Us confirmed in February 2022 that Rodgers and Woodley called it quits. Rodgers later praised Woodley while addressing their split in a social media post.
“Thanks for letting me chase after you the first couple months after we met, and finally letting me catch up to you and be a part of your life,” he wrote via Instagram at the time. “Thanks for always having my back, for the incredible kindness you show me and everyone you meet, and for showing me what unconditional love looks like, I love you and am grateful for you.”
A source told Us in May 2022 that Woodley was “more upset” over the breakup while Rodgers seemed “to be moving on” just fine. “Ultimately, Shailene was not happy in the relationship,” the insider noted.
