A week after actress Shailene Woodley won her first Emmy for her guest appearance in Paradise, her ex-fiancé, NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, spilled a shocking secret about their relationship.
The former couple quietly started dating in 2020, got engaged by February 2021, and called it off a year later.
Rodgers, 42, recently opened up about why their engagement ended abruptly and claimed that it was Woodley who took the ring off because she wanted to sleep with someone else.
Highlights
- NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers recently opened up about his engagement to actress Shailene Woodley, which ended in early 2022.
- The Pittsburgh Steelers star claimed that Woodley was interested in sleeping with someone else and took off her ring within a month.
- Rodgers also addressed allegations Woodley and her other ex-girlfriend, Danica Patrick, made about him.
However, the confession did not earn him the support he might have expected.
“How convenient he drops this days after Shailene won an Emmy,” one netizen said.
Aaron Rodgers claimed Shailene Woodley took off the ring within a month of engagement
On September 10, Aaron Rodgers appeared on his Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Cam Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast and talked about his engagement with The Fault in Our Stars actress at length.
“I date Shailene, I propose, and she says yes,” Rodgers said. “She may have felt like she was forced to make a decision. She could have said no.”
“But not a couple of days after that, she tells me before we get married, like, ‘I got to go f**k this guy.’”
“Her story is, I ruined her life and gave her crazy depression because I left her,” he continued. “But in actuality, she told me that and took off the ring by March, and we had a couple of times when we tried to get reunited, and nothing ever happened.”
“There wasn’t even a relationship in ’22 to break off. She literally told me, ‘I don’t want to be with you.’”
Rodgers got dragged on social media after the revelation, with some making fun of him and others berating him for airing “dirty laundry” in public.
“Real men don't talk stink about their relationships, no matter how truthful you are,” one said. Another wrote, “Why is he talking about this when he married someone else?”
Rodgers married a woman named Brittani in June 2025, but the couple has decided to keep their relationship and further details about her identity completely private.
Sources previously said that Rodgers proposing to Woodley within months was unusual
Aaron Rodgers first mentioned his fiancée during his acceptance speech for the NFL MVP award in 2021. Weeks later, he said he was “looking forward” to starting a family.
Woodley also confirmed the engagement during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The two were spotted going on dates together, and they also posted about each other on social media.
Sources were surprised by how quickly their romance progressed, especially since Rodgers split from NASCAR driver Danica Patrick and Woodley broke up with rugby player Ben Volavola just in 2020.
“There was no way this could be so serious,” an insider told People magazine. “Everyone thought it was a casual thing because that's what he was telling everyone, even when it was clearly not a casual thing.”
“He didn't seem to be the type to get so serious after just a few months of dating,” the source added, but clarified that Rodgers was “happy” and “content” in the relationship.
However, things started looking rocky by January 2022.
An insider told People magazine at this time that the couple “disagreed on a lot of things,” including political views.
A month later, another source told the outlet that they had called it quits: “It was an amicable split. It just wasn't working. They're very different people with busy careers, and there were obstacles that they couldn't surmount.”
They got back together for a few weeks, but eventually broke up for good in April 2022.
“Shailene felt everything was on Aaron's terms, and it wasn't making her happy,” a source told People magazine about their split.
Aaron Rodgers addressed being seen as a “monster of a partner” to exes
In December 2024, Woodley told Outside magazine that her relationship with Rodgers was complicated.
“I haven't shared much about my relationship with Aaron, because it always makes me cry,” she said. “It was not right. But it was beautiful.”
She also said that “a really awful, traumatic thing” happened to her in early 2022 as she decided to remain in a “toxic situation,” although she didn’t specify if it was because of Rodgers.
“I felt like I lost my soul, myself, my happiness, my joy,” she explained. “I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment.”
Rodgers’ former partner, Danica Patrick, said on a 2025 episode of The Sage Steele Show that her relationship with him was “emotionally ab**ive,” and that “he leaves a trail of blood.”
Rodgers addressed both allegations head-on on Not Just Football, saying, “I dated two women who nobody gives a f–k about unless they drop my name”
“They like to tell their version of the history of what actually happened. I’m just like, this monster of a partner, and it’s just f**king horse s**t.”
“She had just retired,” Rodgers said about Patrick. “She was depressed and not fun to be around, but I didn’t leave her because I was trying to be there and be a good partner.”
“Then it was going a certain direction, obviously. There was no intimacy. There was nothing.”
Rodgers added that he and Patrick tried couples counseling for a while before eventually going separate ways during the pandemic after dating for two years.
"The resilience is so impressive," one user said
