“I need to be careful how I say this, but there was, let’s just say there was a bit of a, I’m just going to say it. So there was a bit of an overlap,” Edwards revealed. Reflecting on the asymmetry of the breakup, she explained the devastating impact of being left behind. “I think when you’re moving on with somebody else, you always get on better. When you’re the one left behind, that’s when it’s hard. Because it’s like, oh shit, they’ve left me for someone more beautiful than me, someone better than me. Whatever it is, that’s how it felt at the time.”
The heartbreak compounded rapidly as the public fallout escalated. “Then you have a song that they’ve written about you. But then someone else is in the video. It was one thing after the other, after the other,” Edwards recalled. She described the exact moment the situation reached a breaking point at her home in Surrey, where she had moved to seek distance. “I just remember finding out about that and it was like the nail in the coffin and I thought this is all getting a bit much and then I started crying my eyes out and then my dad started crying… I’m like you can’t nobody can this is hellish like, what is going on.”
Ultimately, the grueling experience shifted her entire understanding of romance, helping her distinguish past instability from the security she has now found with her partner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. “It made me realize that that was very unhealthy,” Edwards reflected. “I think now that I’ve experienced what healthy love is. With Alex. Yeah. It’s so nice it doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach all the time it doesn’t make you feel icky it doesn’t make you feel like you’re not worthy or you’re not good enough… It doesn’t feel competitive it doesn’t feel Toxic.”
