Anna Kendrick opens up about abusive relationship on Armchair Expert
Incredible episode with @AnnaKendrick47 ❤️ Anna shares her very vulnerable story with us-we are beyond grateful for the trust and intimacy. Listen to @AnnaKendrick47 now on @spotifypodcasts 🍒🍒🍒 pic.twitter.com/04q9Kv8uCK
- Armchair Expert Podcast (@ArmchairExpPod) January 9, 2023
• Anna Kendrick was on Armchair Expert this week and opens up to Dax Shepard about the emotional abuse she experienced in a long term relationship.
Anna Kendrick Reveals She Created Embryos with Her Toxic Ex Before Relationship Shifted https://t.co/KHI9fYacPV
- People (@people) January 9, 2023
• Kendrick says that she had been in a relationship with her partner for six years when she started noticing a shift in his behavior. She remembers talking to her brother during this time and telling him, "'I'm living with a stranger. Like, I don't know what's happening.'"
• She says the shift in behavior was so stark that she convinced herself that something else was causing the problem. "'Maybe he has a brain tumor, or maybe I have a brain tumor.' Then we can do something about it."
• She also says it was hard for her to recognize that her relationship had become abusive because it didn't follow a trajectory that she was familiar with. "This is unusual that this is six years of very happy, loving relationship and then an overnight shift."
• She recalls her boyfriend, "visiting her on the set one day, and she noticed he was acting "very strange" and "distant." She quizzed him about what was going on, and eventually he mentioned another woman but refused to discuss it further, even when she met that revelation with an open mind and heart."
• She says, "the next year of my life became, 'No, I didn’t;' 'It was nothing;' 'I shouldn’t have said anything,'" and that her boyfriend became increasingly hostile towards her.
• Any conversation she began about his behavior would devolve into him yelling at her and she says that whenever it happened she thought: "I can’t bring up the fact that I’m scared of you, because when I do, you get really scary."
• Kendrick says that she kept trying to work on the relationship by going to couple's therapy because she, "believed that it we broke up or, you know, if he left basically, it was a confirmation that it's because i'm impossible, I'm lucky that he's even tolerating my bullshit." She later says that, "There was an inherent thing of me being so rejectable that this person who loved me very deeply for six years, it suddenly occurred to him, how awful I was or something. That shame, that lingers much longer."
• She says she "dismantled" her life to fix herself because she thought she was crazy and doing something wrong. She started going to Al-Anon, she spoke with her agency and decided to take time off, started seeing two therapists a week and learned to meditate. "All of these things ended up being very wonderful things for me in the long run, but initially [I] went into them thinking, 'Tell me how to stop being crazy. Tell me how to stop feeling anything.'"
• Kendrick says that after she ended the relationship that she was filled with shame for not leaving earlier, and that she decided to publicly reveal her experiences because she could not, "swallow the shame anymore."
• Armchair Expert host Dax Shepard tells her that she's doing a brave and helpful thing by opening up.
• Kendrick says that she appreciates it when fans tells her how she helped them, but that she wants them to believe that they had more to do with it. "Many times, I've seen online people saying, 'you saved my life,' but I always want to say to them, 'I didn't save your life.' Just for one moment or two, something filled up your cup enough that day for you to do the unbelievably backbreaking work of saving your own life."
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