Justin Baldoni recounted experiencing “sexual trauma” at the hands of an ex-girlfriend in college, and how the “terrible, terrible relationship” led to him becoming an actor.
The director and actor, lately known for It Ends With Us, opened up on the Dec. 4 episode of Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast, discussing a range of topics, including his recent ADHD diagnosis and his experience with a toxic relationship in college.
Baldoni, 40, shared that he entered the relationship while attending Long Beach State, meeting a “beautiful young woman” at Abercrombie & Fitch.
However, the relationship quickly turned harmful.
“I kind of contorted myself and my personality to be what she wanted,” Baldoni explained.
“I had strong values and opinions and beliefs going in, and those were very easily manipulated and reshaped… I completely lost any sense of self that I had left. And it got very emotionally abusive.”
The star revealed he experienced sexual trauma during the relationship, something he struggled to process for years due to societal expectations.
“In my head, a man can’t experience sexual trauma at the hands of a woman. It’s also the way that society has kind of made me feel,” Baldoni said, adding, “But I told myself for 15 years after that wasn’t actually what happened… all of the things that women have been feeling and experiencing for a long time.”
A breakthrough came during therapy when his therapist posed an eye-opening question: “Justin, you do a lot of work in this space: If a woman told you that story, what would you call it?” Baldoni said, “That’s when I broke,” marking the start of his healing.
Reflecting on the relationship’s end, which involved infidelity, Baldoni said, “It was a terrible, terrible relationship. I left college, I moved to L.A., and it was actually thanks to that relationship ending that I ended up becoming an actor.”
Now married to wife Emily since 2013, the couple share two children, Maiya, 9, and Maxwell, 7.
