Back in 2021, fans were shocked to find out that Shailene Woodley and NFL star Aaron Rodgers were engaged when their relationship had been made public just days earlier. But more than a year (and one temporary breakup) later, their whirlwind romance was officially over for good. The former couple hasn't said much about what went wrong behind closed doors, but in a new interview, Shailene appears to be hinting at one key issue that might have prevented things from working between them: "unavailability."
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Shailene has changed the way she approaches relationships.
While talking to Bustle to promote her upcoming Starz series Three Women, Shailene said that in recent years, she's grown tired of people putting on a show instead of being who they truly are.
"I’m very uninterested in the performance of people at this moment in life," she said. "I’m uninterested in the external value that we put on everything. I find the performance of being something else in order to receive love or acceptance or work from others to be the ultimate form of soul death."
Her relationship with Aaron ended around the time she was filming 'Three Women.'
The couple ended things for good in April 2022, and judging by what she's said in this interview, it sounds like she's changed quite a bit since then.
"I give all of myself. I used to be a person who, if you crossed me and disrespected that, would continue to give and give," she said. "And now you cross me, I respectfully go, ‘Thank you so much for that information. Have a beautiful life. I wish you well.’ Not interested."
She said that a 'broken heart' made her stop caring about people's 'performances.'
"Just a broken heart. A broken heart that healed and broke again," she said later in the interview. "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."
This could certainly apply to her relationship with Aaron, though Shailene didn't mention him by name, because they broke up once before reportedly getting back together and, months later, ending things permanently.
She also hinted at a situation not ending up the way she'd hoped.
"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," she continued. "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."
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More than two years have passed since Shailene and Aaron's split.
In that time, of course, they've both moved on — and it sounds like Shailene now knows exactly what she wants from the future, even if it happens on its own timeline.
"I want to be a mom. My God, I want to cook someone dinner every night and travel the world with them and have pillow talk and celebrate their joys and their purpose and their destinies and have mine also be celebrated," she said. "But I don’t have a 'that should have happened by now' kind of thing."
