Aaron Rodgers Responds to Danica Patrick Saying Their Relationship Was ‘Emotionally Abusive’

The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback broke his silence on the pair's rocky romance, insisting the real story looks nothing like what's been reported.

Aaron Rodgers is telling his side of the story after his ex-girlfriend, former professional racer Danica Patrick, claimed he was emotionally abusive during their relationship.

In a new interview on the "Not Just Football" podcast, the NFL star admitted the romance was far from great.

"I dated Danica [Patrick]. She had just retired. 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," Rodgers recalled to host and teammate Cam Heyward in the September 10 episode.

"Then it was going a certain direction, obviously. There was no intimacy. There was nothing," he continued. "And I'm buying a house in Malibu and she goes, 'Would you want to buy it together?,' and I said no."

Rodgers said Patrick suggested couples counseling, which the two attended together. Even so, they eventually split in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, after dating for more than two years.

"She tells a story that, 'I was so blindsided by getting left by you, and he leaves a trail of blood around.' I'm like what are you talking about? That is not what happened by any means," Rodgers said.

The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback was referencing an interview Patrick gave on "The Sage Steele Show" in May 2025, in which she described him as "emotionally abusive," adding that the relationship "wore [her] down to nothing."

"Because it was sudden, it felt like. It was my life. So like when you live with somebody, it's your whole life," she said. "And because the nature of the relationship was emotionally abusive, so that wore me down to nothing."

"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," Patrick added. "Yeah, he leaves a trail of blood. I don't think I'm saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there's been enough out there."

Rodgers went on to share that in 2017, before he ever dated Patrick, he met his now-wife Brittani, who later moved to Europe.

He said he had since been haunted by regret over "not begging [Brittani] to stay or proposing," a decision that "sent [him] right there into a tailspin" during his relationship with Patrick.

"I was emotionally unavailable, I think, for those seven or eight years because I met the person that had changed my life," he explained. "And after that, I just poured everything I had into football, and I think I got a lot out of that for sure."

The quarterback also addressed the public speculation surrounding both Patrick and Shailene Woodley, whom he dated from early 2021 to 2022, arguing that the outside narrative never matched what was actually happening behind closed doors.

"There's Danica with her story, a trail of blood, blindsided by me leaving her and alright, there's zero intimacy, didn't want to buy a house there was really nothing there. Then I date Shailene…," he said.

"And again, I feel like this needs to be told because there's just narratives out there which, by the way, forever, what people hit me on all the time was he's such a [expletive] [expletive], even his family hates him," he continued. "Nobody knew anything that was going on with it."