Nikki Bella and Brie Bella Recount Physical Fight With Father, Cheating Exes and More: 11 Revelations From New Book

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Nikki Bella and Brie Bella Recount Physical Fight With Father, Cheating Exes and More: 11 Revelations From New Book

Opening up about everything. Nikki and Brie Bella do not hold back in their new memoir, Incomparable, on stands now. The sisters, 36, open up about life in the WWE, deciding to leave, their personal relationships and much more. They also reveal their very broken relationship with their father, who left their mother when they were in high school and was "borderline" abusive to the family. Although they ended their relationship with him years ago, Brie reveals that she recently reunited with him. "When Birdie was about one, my dad reached out. He drove to San Diego to meet her, and we had an incredibly moving conversation. My dad is 52 now and has other kids — a daughter who is older than Nicole and me, and also two young ones — a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. When I saw my dad again, it was clear that he has changed profoundly. His new kids are having a far different childhood than we did," Brie writes. "When we sat down to talk, my dad was beyond the denial phase — he owned everything. He acknowledged how ill-equipped he had been. He had been doing the best he could with what little he had, and he admitted that he had offloaded his pain on us in a way that was unfair and unforgivable." [jwplayer CZ2cIlvr] Brie says that she was able to "release all the anger and hate" she had been carrying and was able to forgive him. "My dad and I are in a process of deep recovery. We’re letting all the negativity go and finding a path to having a real relationship," she notes. "Now that I’m a mom, I understand the concept of unconditional love — how deep and basic and profound it is. I know my dad loves me, and I know he always loved me." The book also touches on Nikki and Brie's relationships with other men as younger women. Nikki talks being harassed in high school and being raped twice by the time she turned 16. "The #MeToo movement both enthralls me with its potential and reminds me why rape and sexual assault are a double slap for women. There is the horrible offense in the moment, and then the shame and blame that follow and feel almost worse than the original pain," Nikki writes. "When something like this happens to you, you understand the blame-the-victim mentality, how easy it is to feel shame rather than anger, how easy it is to feel like you could have stopped it yourself. The “if onlys,” the “why didn’t I’s." Scroll through the gallery below for more revelations from the book. [podcast_block]

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Freddie Prinze Jr.

When Brie began working with WWE, she was shocked to meet her writer. "Randomly, Freddie Prinze Jr. was the writer who was working with me at WWE and he was a fount of positivity — he was so encouraging and just kept telling me, 'You got this,' on repeat, until I could say it back to him," the Total Bellas star writes. "In his non-acting life, Freddie is a crazy wrestling fan — working with him on our debut just made the whole thing even more surreal."

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An Abusive Past

The twins reveal that their childhood was very difficult and "a lot of what happened to us was borderline acceptable hotly debated but not officially labeled as abuse."

Nikki writes, "It was certainly not nearly as stigmatized as it is now. As we grew older and started going to friends’ houses for playdates and sleepovers, the difference between our own home and how our friends were raised became starker. ... We never knew what would cause our dad to fly off the handle — it wouldn’t take much, some- times just a day that was too hot — but he would get worked up and angry to the point of blacking out."

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A Major Fight

When they were in high school, the twins' dad left on Christmas Day to be with another woman. However, he came back sometimes and would "pretend like everything was normal," Brie reveals.

"Nicole and I were furious and would have nothing to do with him, much less continue with the charade that we were a normal family. Our refusal to talk to him only enraged him more because he felt like we were disrespecting his authority. Right before Spring Break we got into a massive fight," Brie recalls, noting that Nicole showed off her tattoo she had gotten out of rebellion. "The fight quickly escalated and both of my parents followed Nicole into her room. From what I recall, my mom got in Nicole’s face and Nicole pushed her back; my dad hit Nicole in the face and she fell into the curtains, while I jumped on his back to stop him. He picked us both up and threw us out of the house. Both of my parents were responsible for that. I was in pajamas. I don’t think either of us was wearing shoes. We went to our friend Tammy’s house and crashed with her for a few days, until her parents got suspicious and called my mom."

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Turning Him In

Nikki later ran away and when her parents called the cops, she told them about her dad's behavior.

"I told them my story and asked them to call the school, to have them vouch for my dad’s history of getting physical with us. And I had taken a photo of my face after he had hit me. Teachers and security guards at the school had seen things over the years — once, my dad and I got into it when he was dropping me off, and he threw a box of Kleenex at my head," Nikki writes. "A security guard came up to the truck and got in my dad’s face about it. I told the cops I would rather go to juvi than go home to live with my dad again, and they believed me. My mom realized it was over. She needed to kick my dad out of the house so I could come home, though she was still upset that I had made the decision for her. I came home and immediately started throwing all of my dad’s s--t into the driveway."

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Being Bullied

While in high school, Nikki was bullied and mortified after classmates took a photo up her skirt and passed it around. "It was horrible — the whole idea was invasive and mortifying on its own, but the photo was also distorted, and I had an ingrown hair on the bottom of my butt cheek which looked massive and red because of the angle. I felt so violated, so humiliated," she recalls. A few weeks later, she was also sexually harassed by a neighbor.

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Nikki Recalls Being Raped Twice

When she was 15, Nikki was raped at a hotel party on the Fourth of July. "My virginity was stolen from me, without my consent. I was raped, by a guy I thought was a friend, while I was passed out at a party," she writes. "I’d had too many beers, and maybe some shots of hard alcohol, and I only woke up because my stomach hurt — I came to, and this guy was both on top of me and inside of me. I pushed him off and ran out of the room — he followed me down the hall and asked me if this meant we were now boyfriend/ girlfriend. ... I had never even seen a penis, yet I was no longer a virgin."

A few months later, she and a friend were invited back to a guys' hotel room while at a modeling competition. After a ton of asking, she finally agreed to a drink.

"I thought that if I gave in on this, maybe they’d leave me alone. I hadn’t drunk very much before I felt really dizzy and stood up to go to the bathroom, thinking I might vomit. One of the guys followed me in and bashed my head against the bathroom sink — I came to when he accidentally switched on the blow-dryer with his elbow," the former WWE Superstar shares. "I had clearly been roofied — I was groggy, and I couldn’t see straight, but I could see four condom wrappers littered across the bathroom floor and realized that I had been raped. I hit him in the face and ran from the bathroom — my friend was gone and the door was open. I took off into the night, sprinting across empty fields until I made it back to the hotel where we were staying with her mom."

Nikki also adds that she didn't tell her sister for years and that her mom is "learning about this for the first time in this book."

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Nikki's Vegas Wedding

When she was 20, Nikki and her first love decided to tie the knot in Las Vegas after "someone planted it in our heads that if we were married he wouldn’t be sent abroad to serve." However, she knew it wasn't right.

"I was in a sweatshirt, Uggs, my hair up in a messy bun — it was very Britney Spears," she recalls. "As I walked down the aisle, I thought, 'What the hell am I doing and how do I get out of this?' ... He ended up being shipped off to war despite our marriage certificate. That happened when we weren’t actually together as a couple anymore and were dating other people, which I think I used as justification for asking him for a divorce when he was away. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have waited until he came home to ask him to let me go. I definitely owed him that, even though I ultimately knew that our attachment wasn’t healthy and our relationship wasn’t good for either of us anymore."

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Unspoken WWE Rules

During their time in WWE, the twins were surprised to learn about the "unspoken rules" behind the scenes. However, the culture has evolved a ton over the years, especially since the #MeToo movement. 

"Light is being thrown on how screwed up office culture is for so many women, regardless of industry. But as you can imagine, Brie and I were ... upset. It was really scary to show up to work, as you felt like you could unknowingly mess up at every turn. We often felt like we were walking on eggshells," Nikki writes. "There were nonsensical rules and rituals that you could never fully know until someone was kind enough to initiate you. Let’s just say that there was no formal onboarding process, and since we all work as independent contractors for WWE, there is no HR."

"There was also no office to report things to, and issues were settled in "locker room meetings," the sisters share. "These were unofficial. I don’t think the office even knew that this sort of thing happened, but a locker room meeting involved a number of female wrestlers marshaling against another wrestler. A year into our time on the main roster, there was a locker room meeting held against me, Brie, and Nattie," she adds, noting that Nattie was "annoying" to the others and Brie and Nikki were getting more TV time than the rest of them, something that was out of their control. "They also felt like we had formed too many friendships with the guys. We liked hanging with them, particularly because there was way less drama. So we didn’t feel like giving that up, either. We took it, and put our heads down, and kept going."

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John Cena Wasn't the First Wrestler Nikki Dated

Before John Cena, Nikki was involved with another wrestler, a man she refers to as Brad.

"We started sleeping together, though that did not deter him from openly and aggressively flirting with other girls. Our relationship was casual, and I certainly had no claims on him, but it drove me crazy anyway. It was the first time that I had been with a guy who wasn’t clamoring to lock me down. It drove me bats--t crazy. It made me obsessed with him," Nikki writes. "We had a really good year together where we settled into what felt like an adult relationship. We didn’t tell each other that we loved each other, we rarely held hands, but it felt like we were together — at least while we were on the road with WWE."

However, when he left his computer open to his MySpace one night, she found messages between him and another wrestler, who was one of her best friends. "I called him and asked him to come back over and then slapped him hard. Then I started to bawl because I would have never, ever done that to him," she shares. "There was a rule that was so sacred it didn’t even need to be spoken: We did not sleep with other wrestlers. Not only had he slept with another wrestler, but he had slept with a wrestler who happened to be one of my closest friends, who knew about my feelings for him. It was an undeniable betrayal. I used to go out to dinner with both of them, while this whole drama was unfolding behind my back. He claims it only happened once or twice — but even that was two times too many. She called me repeatedly and left voicemails, but we never spoke again."

Credit: Courtesy of Brie Bella/Instagram

Bryan Danielson Didn't Tell Brie He Loved Her for a Long Time

Although they've been married since 2014, Bryan Danielson took a long time to tell Brie how he really felt.

"It was really not my intent to date a wrestler, primarily because when you inevitably break up, you still have to see each other at work all week and then you’ll likely see them with the next wrestler they happen to get involved with," she reveals. "But a relationship of some sort with Bryan just seemed inevitable. As much as I didn’t intend for it to happen in the first place, there was no way to stop it once it started. Except, of course, by refusing to be his girlfriend."

She continuously said no when he asked to be an official couple, but finally agreed when he needed a commitment in order to continue. Then they took things slow.

"My now-husband didn’t tell me he loved me until the day he proposed. He had warned me in our early days of dating that he wouldn’t say it. He had only ever told two people he loved them: his mom, Betty, and his sister, Billie Sue," Brie writes. "I thought it was a funny thing to say at the time. It was so very Bryan, who loves making rules and then actually sticking to them. I didn’t think it was a big deal, because I honestly didn’t think we’d ever be serious enough to say it."

Credit: Courtesy of Brie Bella/Instagram

The Post-Partum No One Discusses

After their first baby, Birdie, was born in 2017, the couple really struggled to find a balance.

"I know I can’t take care of Birdie alone, and I certainly can’t take care of Birdie and myself alone. I need help and support, like all women everywhere," Brie writes. "I struggled, and Bryan struggled, too. In retrospect, I think he had postpartum depression. It is actually not uncommon among men — even though it is rarely discussed. I had been on a nine-month physical journey of connecting with Birdie: My body was transforming to accommodate her, in real time. He had nothing physical to attach to — he just had books, and he read a lot of them. But no book can prepare you for the real thing — for this tiny, needy creature who has wants and needs that you have to learn on the fly."

Incomparable is out now.