Speaking on the new episode of We Need To Talk, the Flight Story Studio-produced podcast from Celebs Go Dating star Paul C Brunson, Geordie Little Mix star Perrie Edwards looked back on her doomed relationship with One Direction’s Bradford-born star Zayn Malik and the lessons she has learned from her “first love.”
“We were engaged to be married, but when I look back now, it was a little bit toxic,” she admitted to Brunson.
“It was really hard to have relationships because we were never home. And I remember it came out in the press that I was seeing Alex [footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, her current partner). And my dad, he was just fuming.
“My brother was fuming. ‘You’ve just dated a boy band member who’s completely shattered your soul. And now you’re going for a footballer.’ And I was like, I think I love him. Alex and I have been through a lot.”
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Returning to her break up with Malik, Edwards admitted that is was “Probably not good. It wasn’t ideal. I think it definitely at the time, I thought everything we experienced in our relationship was normal.”
She added: “Because it was my first relationship, first love. I was like, oh, this is how it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to feel a little bit toxic in some ways. This is probably normal. And then when I became single, I was almost thinking like I never, ever want to go through that again. I didn’t even want to meet anybody. I was like, that’s me done. I don’t think I could bear that pain. Like the pain of heartbreak is so grim that I remember thinking I’m done with men forever. That’s me done.
“And then when I met Alex, I had so many issues in our relationship at the beginning that I probably didn’t notice at the time. But now reflecting back, I’m thinking, oh, that probably wasn’t, it wasn’t good. And I’ve noticed it a lot.”
The singer has been with former Liverpool and Arsenal midfielder Oxlade-Chamberlain since 2017, welcoming their first child Axl in 2021, before getting engaged in 2022, while Malik currently resides in America where he shares parenting duties for his four year old daughter Khai with his supermodel ex Gigi Hadid.
Elsewhere on the emotional podcast, Edwards opened up on her battle with childhood illnesses and how it affected her love of singing, the pain of her twin miscarriages, and of course her time with Little Mix, with whom she shot to fame when the girl band won the X Factor in 2011.
