Julianne Hough isn’t idealizing her past relationships. The Dancing With the Stars host recently reflected on her relationship with Ryan Seacrest, which lasted from 2010 to 2013, and shared that part of the reason for their breakup was her desire to establish a career independent of the relationship.
“I remember when I decided to break things off,” she said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast on August 12, “I had a lot of these Brentwood moms and producers in that world who were like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ They’re like, ‘Your life is completely set up.'”
However, as the 36-year-old explained, she didn’t feel that the life she had was truly her own. “Of course, I was like, ‘I need to create this,'” she continued. “Competitively, it’s not mine. I need to feel the pride of doing it.”
Julianne also feared that people might assume she was using the American Idol host to advance her own career.
“I had this insecurity,” she admitted, “where I thought, ‘I don’t ever want anybody to think that I’m with him for this reason.’ And so I started to play smaller.”
According to the dancer, Ryan had encountered similar dynamics in his previous relationships, so Julianne felt the need to “overcompensate,” acknowledging that she was “malleable to fit into exactly what somebody needed me to be for them to be happy.”
Reflecting on her relationships, including her marriage to hockey player Brooks Laich from 2017 to 2020, Julianne questions whether she has “ever truly been in love with someone.”
“I have loved the feeling of being loved,” she explained. “And so, let me be what that needs to be so that I can be loved. And then, because I’m so filled with love from someone, of course I love you. I love everyone.”
“I’ve been in love with everybody I’ve ever dated, but have I?” she continued. “I don’t want to overanalyze it, because every person I’ve also dated has been a very good person.”
The *Burlesque* actress has also previously discussed how her life changed after she and Ryan split, noting the significant shift in her lifestyle.
“It was 2013, and I had just gotten out of a relationship that was very high profile,” she said during a 2020 Instagram Live with Valeria Lipovetsky. “I was on private planes and yachts, living in a very, very well-off house, and my life was pretty different from where I grew up.”
After their breakup, Julianne admits that she may have gone too far in trying to explore new experiences.
“During that year, it was kind of my wild year of abandon and freedom, and I realized that the pendulum swing went from one side to the extreme,” she confessed. “I was like, ‘OK, there’s got to be something in the middle where I can find fulfillment without having to be so dynamic and extreme.'”
As for Ryan—who recently ended his three-year relationship with Aubrey Paige—the 49-year-old has previously expressed how glad he is that he and Julianne remained friends after their split.
During a 2022 interview with her on On-Air With Ryan Seacrest, Ryan explained that many people “don’t understand the concept that one can remain friends after a breakup.”
“[Julianne] feels the same way I do,” he added. “There is nothing uncomfortable about it because we remained friends for years and still are.”
