The professional dancer divorced Kevin in 2018 after three years
Strictly Come Dancing star Karen Hauer has opened up about her previous marriage to co-star Kevin Clifton as she admits "we belonged together".
Professional dancer Karen joined the BBC ballroom in 2012 where she was first partnered with Westlife singer Nicky Byrnes. They were eliminated in week 10, but her most successful years were 2014 and 2020 where she reached the final with Mark Wright and Jamie Laing respectively.
Outside of Strictly, the dancer had a high-profile relationship with other professional dancer Kevin Clifton. They married in 2015 and remained so until 2018.
Karen sat down on this week’s episode of We Need To Talk, the podcast from Paul C Brunson from Married at First Sight and Celebs Go Dating.
Paul asked about the breakdown of her marriage with Kevin, as Karen shared: "This one hurt because we belonged together. Do you know what I mean? It was like you wouldn't say each other's names without following the other person's name.
"It was one of these that we're like, 'What? What?' We built stuff together. I felt that he distanced himself from me, but I was probably doing the same because I felt if he didn't want me then, okay, I'll retreat. I'll give you your space. It was one of those that we're both not talking about it. So, I'm like, do you want a divorce? Do you want to split up? I don't know what I want to do.
What do you want to do? Do you know what you want? I don't know what I want. Okay. So, do we are broken up or? So, it took a while actually. It took about a year behind the scenes, in front of the scenes, everything was normal."
She added: "We fell apart and I obviously didn't know what was happening in his mind whether he wanted to be with me or not. I knew that I would have worked on it. I would have stayed but at the same time I couldn't be with someone who wasn't sure of whether they wanted to be with me or not. I couldn't just wait.
"I waited for a while and I was giving him his space to think and then funny(sic) enough I met someone and you know we weren't together but we were together in the public eye."
The dancer then continued to describe how she was labelled a "cheater" as the public weren't aware her and Kevin had split. She revealed: "It wasn't someone that I dated or something, it just happened to be someone that I just saw a couple of times and I got snapped up.
"And then all of a sudden I was just walking with this person and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm portrayed as someone that has cheated on him and then obviously he saw the pictures and was like what? So there was a big misunderstanding in all of that because I wasn't, actually I was literally waiting to be loved."
Karen added: "He had to do the right thing for himself" when discussing their divorce.
After their split, the pair still continued to work together on Strictly. Karen shared: "We respected one another, you know. We never said a bad word about one another, you know. I think that's because we hold each other to such a high regard, you know. There will always be love there.
So, we still danced together on the show and we were still working around each other. We would still applaud each other, support each other. We never lost that and that was what was really sad, that we could and transfer that onto our relationship."
When Paul asked Karen how she felt about her second divorce, the dancer replied: "I felt shame. I felt embarrassed. that I couldn't keep anyone around me. And I had said to myself, 'No, I'm not. No, I'm not going to get into a relationship.' Uh-uh. No. Spend some time on your own. But I don't know how to be on my own. And that's so dangerous."
