Who likes talking about their ex all the time? Certainly not Nikki Bella. She called off her wedding to John Cena, 41, just weeks before it was supposed to take place in May. The former couple of six years no longer want to be defined by their failed romance. “We’re both at the point that we just don’t want to be talked about at all together anymore,” Nikki, 34, tells Cosmopolitan in a new interview. “We don’t want our breakup to define us or interfere with our work. And that was happening for a while.”
Nikki even claims that she “can’t say his name, legally, anymore,” and can only refer to the WWE superstar as “my ex.” It’s unclear if she was kidding or not as when she said it during the interview she looked over at twin sister Brie and smiled. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. Viewers saw on the sisters’ E! reality show Total Bellas that Nicki explained how in 2013 that John made her sign a 75 page legal document before he let her move into his home and it referred to her as his “guest.” Brutal!
Don’t expect Nikki to get into another high-profile public romance like she had with John. “Going through all that, I don’t ever want to do it again,” she says of how their relationship played out on TV and before WWE fans. The wrestler turned actor even proposed to her in the ring at Wrestlemania 33 in 2017. “It scares me to ever have another public relationship,” Nikki reveals.
Nikki ended things over John’s unwillingness to have children, and even when he gave in she realized that she had lost herself and her own identity through their six years together. “I don’t want my relationship to define who I am, as a woman,” she explains. “And to take away all the hard work that I’ve ever done in my career. I think for a man, it’s different. I feel like, if anything, the woman gets blamed for what happens, for taking away from what they do. But I get all my work taken away because of that. I don’t know, I feel like sometimes there’s a double standard and I really have felt that. And it’s been really, really hard.”