Former Bachelorette star DeAnna Pappas admits she was stuck in a “toxic cycle” with ex-husband Stephen Stagliano.
“I continue to talk about my marriage because it’s the freshest on my mind, and it was my longest relationship that I’ve ever been in,” Pappas, 43, shared during the Sunday, November 2, episode of “Famously Available” podcast. “Toward the end, we just couldn’t get off. We just could not hop off the cycle.”
Bachelor Nation met Pappas when she appeared as a contestant on Brad Womack’s season of The Bachelor in 2007. The following year, she became The Bachelorette lead for season 4.
After she didn’t find love on the show, Pappas moved on with Stagliano. They split in January 2023 after 11 years of marriage. The exes share two kids.
During Sunday’s podcast episode, Pappas explained that if her ex “needed time to process” or “cool down,” that became a “boiling point” for her.
“I would sit in a moment of just overthinking and explosive. There was no soft left [in] me,” she added. “My go-to place to react is to be hard, is to be strong, because vulnerability is very scary for me.”
Pappas explained, “In a lot of places, my vulnerability has been used against me and by people that I have loved very deeply. So vulnerability is not very easy for me.”
The former reality star did say that she treats her kids with “the utmost care and rational thinking,” but this changes with a significant other.
“I have a real struggle with doing that for a grown man,” she admitted, noting that she has spent time “trying to heal” since splitting from Stagliano.
“I knew that I wasn’t whole. Therefore, I could not possibly take on anyone else,” she said. “I like to give my full self to any relationship — and I don’t just mean with the opposite sex — I mean in friendships or with my family or anybody else. I knew that there was a lot of work to be done.”
Now, she’s “moving into that space of wanting to find someone.”
Pappas recently spoke with Us Weekly exclusively about dating after divorce and what she’s looking for in a romantic partner.
“I’ve had my fair share of heartache — some of which played out on national television when I was just a freaking kid — and a lot of that was in my marriage and in divorce,” she shared in August. “I won’t allow any of that to break who I am. I just won’t, because I believe in partnership and I believe in companionship, and at the end of the day, to be honest, I believe there is someone out there for me.”
Pappas truly believes there’s someone out there who will “love me” and “accept me” for who she really is.
“I know it must be hard to hear, but there are a couple of things about me that I could probably work on and refine,” she added, noting that she’s a “very different” person than who she was when she was part of Bachelor Nation.
“I view dating and companionship very differently now than I did when I was 25 years old. I’m not in it for marriage and kids,” Pappas told Us. “I’ve done all of that, and there’s also some freedom in that.”
