Danica Patrick Alleges Aaron Rogers Romance Was "Emotionally Abusive"
Danica Patrick says she is moving on after a difficult period of her life.
The retired NASCAR driver has alleged that her past relationship with Aaron Rodgers was "emotionally abusive" and added that their 2020 breakup led to the most pain she'd ever experienced.
"Because it was sudden, it felt like," Patrick explained on the May 21 episode of the Sage Steele Show. "When you live with somebody, it’s your whole life."
“And because the nature of the relationship was emotionally abusive, so that wore me down to nothing," she continued, "People could never imagine that I would lack any confidence or belief in the simple things about who I am. Everything was torn to bits. He leaves a trail of blood."
E! News has reached out to Rodgers' rep for comment on Patrick's remarks and has not heard back
The racing champion—who dated the NFL star for two years while he was the Green Bay Packers' starting quarterback—shared what she's learned from the split.
“It gave me the greatest gift of how much I needed to show up for myself," the 43-year-old said. " and take care of myself."
"[In] hindsight, I ignored it," the racing champion continued. "I would say all the time, ‘I'm built for hard things. I can handle hard things.' So I just saw it as a hard thing."
Despite dealing with the pain of the breakup, Patrick feels no shame or regret about it.
"It's all part of learning the lessons and becoming who you," she said. "It's not that you're not going to go through hard times. You learn how to get through them quicker, learn how to get through them more peacefully. Learn how to also get into the f--king mud and get into the pain. You can't ignore it.”
Rodgers has spoken fondly of his past romance with Patrick. "That relationship was great for me because she is on her own journey and spirituality is important to her," he said on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast in 2022. "We both were finding our way, learning about different things [and] practicing meditation techniques."
Meanwhile, Rodgers is no free agent with it comes to love—he's been with his current girlfriend for the past few months.
"I'm in a different phase of my life," he said on the April 17 episode of The Pat McAfee Show. "I'm 41 years old, I'm in a serious relationship."
Rodgers even sparked marriage rumors in early May when he sported a dark-colored ring on his ring finger at the 2025 Barnstable Brown Gala ahead of the Kentucky Derby. E! News reached out to his reps for comment at the time and did not hear back.
The four-time NFL MVP winner has been engaged in the past, most recently to Shailene Woodley in 2021, one year before they pair broke up. The Big Little Liars star gets emotional thinking about their time together.
"I haven't shared much about my relationship with Aaron, because it always makes me cry," she told Outside magazine in an interview published last December. "It was not right. But it was beautiful."
And years before he met Patrick, the football star was engaged to Destiny Newton, according to sport biographer Ian O'Connor's 2024 book Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers. Read on for more info on his past relationships...
Even before Aaron Rodgers was a four-time MVP, Micala Drews thought he was a catch.
According to Ian O’Connor’s book Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers released Aug. 20, Aaron and Micala dated while enrolled at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, Calif. They were both athletic—the book noting she played volleyball and did conditioning and weightlifting sessions with the football player—and Micala described him as “a funny slightly awkward kid.”
“However, he was a natural-born leader,” Micala told Ian, “but not so much in words as he led by action and humble confidence.”Those actions included staying focused, working hard and putting in extra hours of practice, with Micala noting Aaron’s dad Ed Rodgers—who also shares sons Jordan Rodgers and Luke Rodgers with wife Darla Rodgers—supported him in his desire to play professionally.
"Aaron and his dad had such a close relationship,” she added, “and Aaron had that with his brothers and mom as well. But Ed took so much time, and on any Friday night Ed would be in the stands taking copious stats for Aaron.” And afterwards, Micala continued, Aaron ended his Fridays not by going out with pals but by reviewing game footage with his dad. So perhaps she isn’t surprised by his success. After all, Micala recalled in the book how Aaron—who she called Air—told her about his dreams of playing in the NFL."Someday," she replied, per the book, "people will refer to your home stadium as 'Mister Rodgers’ Neighborhood.'"
While many know Aaron was previously engaged to Shailene Woodley, not everyone is aware he'd popped the question once before to a woman named Destiny Newton.
According to the book, the two “got serious” in 2011, with her being “an attractive Chico woman whom he had known—and had a crush on—for years.” However, Aaron and Destiny’s relationship didn’t last, with the publication noting the Super Bowl champ and his fiancée broke up in 2013.
Although, it looks like some may have wished they'd stayed together. In the book, Ian wrote that Aaron’s parents had “privately hoped that their son would marry” Destiny.“We all loved her,” an unnamed Rodgers friend told the author. “We knew Destiny. We trusted her. She would have kept the crew tighter.”
In 2014, Aaron began dating Olivia Munn. And soon, they had to tackle rumors on where they stood with his dad Ed, mom Darla and brothers Luke and Jordan.
Ed once confirmed to The New York Times that Aaron stopped speaking to his family at the end of 2014.
In Out of the Darkness, Ian wrote the parents visited the Packers alum in Green Bay, Wis. before a game that December. During their stay, the author added, the parents “enjoyed a pleasant conversation” with Olivia and “left town believing there were no problems among them.”
However, things allegedly changed after Aaron had a poor game in Buffalo, New York later that month. Ian, citing unnamed sources, wrote Olivia called Ed and Darla that night and allegedly told them not to attend or meet them at Aaron’s upcoming game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Florida as previously planned.Olivia declined Ian’s request for comment for the book. As for Aaron's parents, they told the author they hadn’t made any disparaging comments to Olivia prior to the alleged call.“The only thing I said was, ‘You haven’t been on the scene very long,’” Ed added. “'You’re just his girlfriend. We’re his parents.'"The book details other alleged moments of tension. For instance, "someone close to the family," who was not named, alleged Darla was upset by comments Olivia had made publicly about sex, including in an interview before the Buffalo game.
E! News has reached out to Olivia's rep for comment on the book.
After three years together, Aaron and Olivia broke up in 2017. And in an Andy Cohen Live interview the following year, the X-Men: Apocalypse star addressed rumors about her ex's family.
Olivia said she was "friendly" with Aaron's brother Jordan—who appeared on now-wife JoJo Fletcher's season of The Bachelorette and spoke about the siblings' estrangement—and that she'd met their mom and dad "only a couple of times." She did not reveal whether she met Aaron's brother Luke.
However, Olivia suggested the family drama started before her romance with Aaron—saying "he hadn't spoken to the parents and one brother for, like, eight months before we started dating." (She didn't name which brother, but the book claims it was Luke, who declined Ian's interview request).
In fact, she said she encouraged Aaron to have an "honest" talk with his parents and try to mend the relationship."They had a really nice conversation," Olivia said on the SiriusXM series, "and then they started coming out my first year when I was in Green Bay in 2014."But without going into detail, she indicated things changed.In the book, Ed said "it's a lie" that Aaron had already stopped talking to his parents and brother prior to dating Olivia."She just made stuff up to make herself look good....She said the family was dysfunctional before she met Aaron, which is bull," he told Ian. "We were going to all of his games; we were staying at his house. We had a great relationship. Nothing bad was going on."
During her interview with Andy, Olivia expressed how “family and fame and success can be really complicated if their dreams are connected to your success"—noting both Aaron and his family members have careers in athletics."They're all in sports, and Aaron is one of the best if not the best quarterback to ever play the game," she explained. "Their work has a direct connection to what he does. At the end of the day, there's a lot of complications. I don't think either side of the road is clean, but I do think it's not OK when you try to stand on someone's shoulders and then throw dirt in their face, which is what I think they did with him."However, Aaron's mom Darla denied this was the case.
“I can think about showbiz families that, like the Kardashians, climb all over each other for fame and stuff like that," she said in the book. "But that’s not our family. Nobody did that.”
For Aaron's part, he said in the book that Olivia—who shares 2-year-old son Malcolm with husband John Mulaney—was not to blame for the family drama and that she "has nothing to do with all the years before."
The 40-year-old—who spoke highly of his relationship with the Lifeline actress during their time together—also wondered why his parents and siblings have spoken publicly about the divide.
"I have questions about why they feel the need to talk about it, because it's like a game of poker," Aaron told Ian. "When you are holding all the cards, you don't have to bluff. There's nothing they can say other than make up stories, but look at facts."The book does provide other examples of alleged family friction, including Aaron not attending a friend's wedding in 2015 after learning his family was also invited (with him telling Ian there's a lack of understanding of "the complexity of the whole situation").And after Jordan appeared on The Bachelorette, Aaron told WISN 12 Sports he “always found that it’s a little inappropriate to talk publicly about some family matters” so he wasn’t going to expand on the topic but wishes “him well in the competition.”
Jordan did not respond to Ian's interview requests. E! News has also reached out to him for comment on the book but has yet to hear back.
After Aaron's relationship with Olivia came to an end, he dated Danica Patrick. While the racecar driver confirmed their relationship in 2018, they'd actually met years before striking up a romance.
"We met at the ESPYS back in 2012," Danica—who grew up a fan of the Packers' rivals, the Chicago Bears—shared on The Jenny McCarthy Show in 2018. "We both remember....It was quick. I got his email address. And I remember thinking to myself back then, 'Oh, not a phone number, just an email address.'"
During their relationship, the couple had red-carpet date nights, traveled to Peru and gave peeks inside their romance on social media. And while there were reports in 2019 that Aaron and Danica were living together in a $28 million Malibu mansion, he said in Out of the Darkness, "I didn't buy it with anybody."
The couple broke up in 2020. However, Aaron has spoken highly of their romance.
"That relationship was great for me because she is on her own journey," he said on a 2022 episode of Aubrey Marcus' podcast. "Spirituality is important to her. We both were finding our way, learning about different things, practicing different meditation techniques."
In February 2021, E! News exclusively revealed that Aaron and Shailene were in a long-distance relationship. Just days later, the quarterback announced at the NFL Honors that he was engaged, and the actress confirmed on The Tonight Show later that month that the proposal actually happened "a while ago."
Shailene isn't mentioned much in Out of the Darkness. However, Ian writes that The Fault in Our Stars alum supported Aaron when he skipped the Packers' offseason in 2021 amid disagreements with the team, with the author pointing to a video Shailene reportedly retweeted that showed ESPN host Stephen A. Smith criticizing the Packers' treatment of Aaron.
In February 2022, reports spread that Shailene and Aaron—who professed his love for her on Instagram—split. And the Big Little Lies star later opened up about what it had been like to have such a public relationship.
“I dated somebody in America who was very, very famous,” she told PORTER in January 2023. “It was the first time that I’d had a quote-unquote ‘famous’ relationship, and I watched [the] scrutiny, opinions, the desire for people to know my life and his life and our life—it just felt violating in a way that, before, it was fun. I’m a very private person, and so I found that any time I posted anything, I instantly felt like I was sharing too much of who I am with people I didn’t necessarily trust.”
While Aaron generally prefers to pass on talking about his personal life, he addressed rumors about his sexuality in 2013.
“I’m not gay,” he said on an episode of his radio show Tuesdays With Aaron. “I really, really like women. That’s all I can say about that.”
As for why the QB decided to speak out in the first place? He said the rumor was presented in a way that was “disrespectful” to his friends who are gay.
“I think I was upset at the framing [of the rumor] because it was meant to shame the idea of being gay, and I have so many friends that are gay in the community,” Aaron said in the book. “And right before that, [the radio show’s host Jason] Wilde and I actually have talked about this multiple times, and I said, ‘I want to go after them, the people saying this.’ Not in relation to me because I could give a s--t what they thought about me, but that they’re using this to shame, like it’s a bad thing to be gay."
While the future of Aaron’s relationship with his parents and brothers remains unclear, he’s expressed his hope to start his own family one day. As he put it in the book, his desire to be a dad is fueled by his want to “care for somebody who relies solely on you for so many things—food, protection, housing, life.”
As far as reconciliation, Aaron suggested he and his family haven’t reached the end zone yet. “It’s definitely possible,” he told Ian. “It’s just timing, just timing. Every time I think it’s getting closer, some weird things happen. But I would like a relationship with my dad for sure.”
The father-son duo had a run-in not too long ago. According to the book, Aaron spotted Ed at the 2023 American Century Championship—where the NFL star was playing golf and his dad had gotten a ticket—and went up to him.
“I just thought, ‘What’s best in this moment, and what kind of gift could I give him?’” Aaron added. “Because I do love him. I don’t have animosity toward him, even with all the stuff that’s been said and done.”
Per the book, the family members hugged and said “I love you,” with it being the first time they spoke in years. However, Ian noted there was no follow-up communication (though he wrote Ed and Darla attended Aaron’s first game with the Jets, where he tore his Achilles tendon in a season-ending injury).
Still, the parents expressed their hope for the future.“Yes, we’re all about forgiving and forgetting,” Darla told Ian. “We would be so happy to move on….Maybe we don’t see him all the time. We’re OK with however it’s framed. The new relationship needs to start and it just feels weird that we can’t communicate even big-life things with him.”
Added Ed, "We have unconditional love for him. No matter what happened, we would just like the relationship."
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