STRICTLY’S Karen Hauer has broken down in tears as she opened up for the first time about her “toxic” marriage to ex Jordan Wyn-Jones.
In a raw and emotional interview on Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast podcast Karen, 43, described a relationship filled with fear and control, saying she started losing her hair from stress.
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Dressed in a white suit and adidas trainers, the Strictly favourite had tears streaming down her face as she accused her ex of leaving her “emotionally battered”.
The dancer confessed to living a double life, lying to friends, family – and even to Jordan just to get through the day.
She said: “I was just in panic mode, panic mode, love should not be panic.
“It’s almost like he made up things to scare me so that I wouldn’t go anywhere.
“But it’s ok and I get on with it, I get on with it and smile because I don’t want to cause trouble, I don’t want to shake things up because that puts you in a bad mood which then makes my day really awful, and that’s the state I lived in …
“I was not only lying to my family and friends and they were seeing it, but I was lying to him as well, because that was the only way I could get through the day, that would keep the peace.”
In a heartbreaking moment, Karen says she suffered hair loss caused by autoimmune disease alopecia, and believes it was her nervous system responding to the stress she was under.
She also revealed on the day of her wedding her brother confronted her over the relationship, and begged her to leave Jordan.
Karen had been married twice before, previously to Matthew Hauer for nine years but they went their separate ways in 2009.
She was wed to former Strictly pro Kevin Clifton but they divorced in 2018.
Karen and Jordan said their vows at Chewton Glen in Hampshire in 2022 and sold their wedding snaps to glossy magazine Hello!, calling the big day a “fairytale” at the time.
But in her emotional interview with Celebs Go Dating star Paul, the dancer reevealed: “Everyone was trying to stop this from happening and I wish they would have just taken me, grabbed me and put me in a car and I would have kicked and screamed, but I wouldn’t have gone through more hell.”
She added of Jordan: “He didn’t hurt me physcally so you couldn’t see it. It was there, digging, digging, diggingg …
“Every dig every text, every call, why did I let someone do that to me?”
Karen revealed her friends staged an intervention to encourage her to be brave and end the relationship.
Asked her the most challenging moment throughout the ordeal, she said: “There was a weekend I had to work but Pink was in concert and my two best friends, we got tickets and I was able to get away as an excuse as well that I was working down in London so I came down.
“I cried for the first 35 minutes of the show. The freedom of being out there with my friends and them holding me up. And going, ‘you have to do this’.
“And then obviously the phone call from him (Jordan) ‘why did you take your luggage?’ It’s almost that he knew what was coming.
“I remember that moment, ‘I have to, I have to do it because if not something is going to happen to me’.”
She says things turned nasty after the split.
Karen added: “He started losing control of me and it was game on from him.
“He pulled every shot, every string, did everything he needed to do to try and get my attention and try to get me away from what I was doing to go and see him.”
Karen says she reached out to his family and they were supportive, and says they told her more about his issues.
She leaned on her mum for support, flying her over from New York, saying her mum was “a pitbull”.
She added Jordan begged for her back, saying he “would change”.
He eventually left her home, but Karen says he made the divorce “difficult”.
The star, who has appeared on Strictly for 14 years, is now in a new healthy relationship with rugby player Simon Davidson.
She told Paul: “I’m in a new relationship and it’s my first proper relationship at 43 years old. He has a job. Tick. He takes care of himself. Tick.
“We have conversations about what we want, our values. I’m still a little bit messy, and the thing with me, what I’m navigating right now is learning when to accept when someone’s telling me this is the way you should do it and now this is how you do it.
“So, making sure that I understand where you’re coming from without going, oh, why are you telling me what to do?
“Instead of oh, you’re trying to help me. That’s what I’m learning in this relationship.”
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