Christine McGuinness has opened up about her sexuality as she explained that she feels safer dating women.
The 37-year-old model was married to Paddy McGuinness, 51, from 2011 until they split in 2022, reportedly settling their divorce in October.
The pair have remained friends and live together to co-parent their children, Leo and Penelope, 10, and Felicity, seven
In a new interview on the podcast How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, Christine opened up about her romantic life post-divorce and her sexuality.
Elizabeth asked the model if she felt safer with women, to which Christine revealed she did.
‘Yes, I do. Definitely. When I was younger, the experiences with women were so lovely and so good, but after the two-year relationship with a woman, it ended in heartbreak, and now I can look back and smile and just be like, it was so almost silly because I was so young.
‘If you think back to those relationships when you’re a teenager, your first proper one, that heartbreak is horrible and you think it’s the end of the world and that you’re never going to be happy ever again, and that’s where I was with her.’
She added that she left the relationship on good terms: ‘We actually left it very, very mutual. It was just that she was from Czechoslovakia so we obviously she just couldn’t move over here and I couldn’t just get her to move over there so we left and it was really sad.
Christine revealed that the next person she dated was her ex-husband, and since their split has struggled to date men again.
‘It took me a while from when I had that relationship with a woman. It took me a while to feel comfortable to then go with a man, but the next person was of course, my ex-husband and I felt safe with him. We laughed loads. It was a slow burner, so it wasn’t intense. There was no pressure and I think that’s probably why it worked.
‘But then after him, so for the last three years where I’ve had the opportunity to just be single and experienced who or whatever, and I couldn’t do it. I can’t bring myself to feel comfortable with another man in that kind of way.’
Speaking about her sexuality in the interview, she explained how she felt about her identity.
‘A lot of people always ask me, “Are you a lesbian? Are you bisexual? Are you what? Is this a phase?” I’ve always been quite a free spirit. I think that’s the only word I would put on it. When I was a teenager, I’d dated boys and girls. 14/15 was probably when I had my first kisses with, with both, and I never felt it was anything different or a big deal.’
She added that having her relationship status being part of a national conversation was difficult, and something she still isn’t sure how to navigate.
‘I never ever expected my love life to be such a big talking point in the media, and yet it’s made me go quiet and go, God, am I doing something wrong? Why is this such a big deal to now? To now just going, it doesn’t feel like it’s a big deal to me, it feels absolutely fine, so I need to not worry about what other people are thinking.’
In April, Christine revealed that she was still struggling to pay off her £300,000 divorce bill.
Speaking on The Shizzio Show podcast, Christine explained: ‘I think both of us now, if we could sit down and do it again, yeah, we’d do it completely differently, because we both spent a hell of a lot of money on divorce lawyers.
‘Me personally, £300,000 out of my own money that I didn’t even have,’ adding, ‘I’m still paying for it.’
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