Julianne Hough is opening up about her three-year relationship with Ryan Seacrest—or more specifically, how it ended.
The Dancing With the Stars co-host, who dated Seacrest from 2010 to 2013, discussed why she ultimately chose to part ways with the American Idol host on Monday’s episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard.
The 36-year-old explained that, at the time, her career was just beginning to take off, whereas Seacrest, 49, was already well-established in the television and radio industry. So, in an effort to carve out a career for herself independent of the relationship, she decided to call it quits.
“I remember when I decided to break things off,” she told Shepard. “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 were like, ‘Your life is completely set up.’”
But Hough realized that the life she was living and the trajectory it was on were not something she had built herself; rather, she felt she was merely riding the wave of her then-partner’s fame.
“The rug was swept up from underneath me, and I was just flying, experiencing things that I didn’t even know existed,” Hough said. “But I had this insecurity—I didn’t want anyone to think I was with him for the wrong reasons.”
“Of course, I thought, ‘I need to create this myself,’” she continued. “Competitively, it wasn’t mine. I needed to feel the pride of doing it on my own.”
