Nikki Bella Reveals Biggest Regrets From John Cena Relationship, How ‘DWTS’ Helped Her and More in New Book

Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock; John Salangsang/Shutterstock

Nikki Bella Reveals Biggest Regrets From John Cena Relationship, How 'DWTS' Helped Her and More in New Book

Reliving the pain. In Incomparable, the new book she wrote with sister Brie Bella, Nikki Bella opens up about her relationship and split from fiancé John Cena. Us Weekly broke the news in April 2018 that the couple, who started dating in 2012 and got engaged on national TV in 2017, called off their engagement. However, the reality star, 36, didn't want to recall what happened in the book. "For the purpose of his privacy, I don’t want to retread old events here— particularly the ones that got plenty of screen time and rehashing in the media. There is not much more to milk from that well-documented chain of events," the former WWE superstar writes in the memoir. "But I do think there is value in explaining what I learned about myself during a time of extreme highs and lows, in the hopes that it helps some of you." [jwplayer lE4mlAEk] A large reason that the pair split was that they "struggled to align" on what they wanted, she explains in Incomparable. "Rather than turn and face that, I pushed it under the carpet and figured I could pretend like it wasn’t there. Because I was terrified of losing my love, I stuffed my desire for marriage and kids as deep as I could," she writes. "He had made it clear that they weren’t on the menu for him. That’s tough, though, because if you’re inclined that way, then the more you grow to love someone, the more you want it all. I stopped giving voice to those needs, though. I was worried my ex would call it off and let me go. And while I wanted those things very badly—I just wanted him more." The Total Divas star also details how Cena, 43, stood by her side through everything, even sleeping on the hospital couch when she got surgery on her neck. "He looked like the Incredible Hulk, curled up into the fetal position. He wouldn’t let anyone send him home. He helped me go to the bathroom, even though it made me want to die with embarrassment," Nikki writes. "I couldn’t stand to feel so needy, even though it seemed to make him so happy to take care of me. I wish I had seen that experience for what it was: an opportunity for me to identify, and then talk about, how undeserving and unworthy I felt, how terrified it made me feel to be dependent. How uncomfortable it makes me feel when I’m not working for affection but instead just basking in love." Months after their split, the Total Bellas star began dating pro dancer Artem Chigvintsev, whom she met during season 25 of Dancing With the Stars. In January 2020, the pair announced their engagement — and a few weeks later, revealed that the pair were pregnant with their first child. Scroll through the gallery below for more revelations. [podcast_block]

Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock; John Salangsang/Shutterstock

Nikki Bella Reveals Biggest Regrets From John Cena Relationship, How 'DWTS' Helped Her and More in New Book

Reliving the pain. In Incomparable, the new book she wrote with sister Brie Bella, Nikki Bella opens up about her relationship and split from fiancé John Cena. Us Weekly broke the news in April 2018 that the couple, who started dating in 2012 and got engaged on national TV in 2017, called off their engagement. However, the reality star, 36, didn't want to recall what happened in the book. "For the purpose of his privacy, I don’t want to retread old events here— particularly the ones that got plenty of screen time and rehashing in the media. There is not much more to milk from that well-documented chain of events," the former WWE superstar writes in the memoir. "But I do think there is value in explaining what I learned about myself during a time of extreme highs and lows, in the hopes that it helps some of you." [jwplayer lE4mlAEk] A large reason that the pair split was that they "struggled to align" on what they wanted, she explains in Incomparable. "Rather than turn and face that, I pushed it under the carpet and figured I could pretend like it wasn’t there. Because I was terrified of losing my love, I stuffed my desire for marriage and kids as deep as I could," she writes. "He had made it clear that they weren’t on the menu for him. That’s tough, though, because if you’re inclined that way, then the more you grow to love someone, the more you want it all. I stopped giving voice to those needs, though. I was worried my ex would call it off and let me go. And while I wanted those things very badly—I just wanted him more." The Total Divas star also details how Cena, 43, stood by her side through everything, even sleeping on the hospital couch when she got surgery on her neck. "He looked like the Incredible Hulk, curled up into the fetal position. He wouldn’t let anyone send him home. He helped me go to the bathroom, even though it made me want to die with embarrassment," Nikki writes. "I couldn’t stand to feel so needy, even though it seemed to make him so happy to take care of me. I wish I had seen that experience for what it was: an opportunity for me to identify, and then talk about, how undeserving and unworthy I felt, how terrified it made me feel to be dependent. How uncomfortable it makes me feel when I’m not working for affection but instead just basking in love." Months after their split, the Total Bellas star began dating pro dancer Artem Chigvintsev, whom she met during season 25 of Dancing With the Stars. In January 2020, the pair announced their engagement — and a few weeks later, revealed that the pair were pregnant with their first child. Scroll through the gallery below for more revelations. [podcast_block]

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Biggest Regrets

"I have many regrets about that relationship. The primary one is that I wish I’d known myself better before I got into it. I wish I’d understood how the patterns in my life, and my relationship with my own father, informed how I react to love, boundaries, and feelings of abandonment," Nikki writes in the book. "I think I could have averted some of what happened. Because my dad left when I was 15, I learned how to fill in the holes. I expect to be left behind and to find a way to not confront or acknowledge those feelings of loneliness and abandonment."

She also notes that although she and Cena tried "not to go too long without seeing each other," they didn't do enough.

"Working all of our various side hustle jobs left me feeling almost pathologically lonely," she pens. "I just didn’t know how to identify the emotion. And I certainly didn’t know how to ask for what I needed. I was intent on fitting into the contours of my ex’s very busy and big life. That was paramount to me, pleasing and keeping him content, not voicing my own needs. He had no idea I wasn’t getting what I needed because I never said anything."

Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Feeling Bad About Herself

Nikki explains that she has a "pleasing bug," in which she tries to make everyone happy, but not herself. "I am attached to a very disturbing core belief that I am only lovable when I put other people first. That I only deserve their affection because I am useful and handy," she writes. "I learned from my ex that this is a profound fallacy. He could see the real me and love me just the same. It felt too good to be true; I felt undeserving."

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Losing Herself

The superstar explains that she was so focused on holding on to Cena, she tried to be perfect and create a perfect life for him.

"By continually putting him first, and choking my own voice back, I didn’t give him the respect of actually hearing about how I was doing," she writes. "I didn’t give him, or our relationship, the benefit of the doubt that maybe it could handle more. Because I assumed he wasn’t willing to make sacrifices, I did not persistently ask. Because I was so fixated on what I believed he wanted, I made many decisions on his behalf, even though I was losing myself in the process."

Credit: Craig Sjodin/ABC

'Dancing With the Stars' Changed Her Outlook

"It was until I did Dancing with the Stars that I really woke up," she writes, explaining that ABC put her in an apartment and she lived alone. "I liked how it felt to be that independent girl. I had been sitting in a jail cell without realizing that the door wasn’t locked and that I had built it myself. After Dancing with the Stars, I felt like I’d found myself. I didn’t want to lose her again. ... Dancing with the Stars also unlocked for me was the idea that I can stand on my own. I think it’s partly growing up as a twin, and then becoming a star based on that twindom, but being involved with a mega-star also undermined some of my faith in myself."

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Addressing the Speculation

In the book, Nikki explains that the rumors that the split was planned to help with ratings were extremely hard to see.

"I had to walk away. I had to let it all go. The fallout was terrible, particularly the speculation within the news media and on social media that it was all for ratings," she writes. "The thing about reality TV is that you don’t get to pick and choose what you show — and the pressure from filming inherently creates drama. It brings things to a head by applying a heavy load to the sensitive parts of your life. Having our relationship fall apart on national TV was excruciating. I had to relive it all again, while also having my heart broken from missing my ex."

Ultimately, she wishes him well. "I hope our story together will have a happy ending—and in retrospect, I probably wouldn’t change anything about it, because I believe I’ll end up exactly where I’m supposed to be," she writes. "But I know the path to get there would have been far less tortured if I hadn’t needed to learn a lot of important lessons about tapping into what I want and need and learning how to communicate that to the man I loved most in the world. I don’t know what I was scared of, I don’t know why I held back. But I can probably attribute some of it to my upbringing, and this disease of pleasing, of not knowing how to just hold love without rushing to give it back. I have also learned how to sit with pain, without covering it up or forcing it to be okay."

Incomparable is on stands now.