Strictly's Karen Hauer breaks down in tears as she speaks about her toxic third marriage to Jordan Wyn-Jones for the first time

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

Strictly Come Dancing star Karen Hauer broke down in tears as she spoke about the breakdown of her toxic third marriage to Jordan Wyn-Jones for the first time.
The dancer, 43, married Jordan in 2022 after they met online, but they divorced just 16 months later.
Speaking in a moving interview on Paul C. Brunson's We Need To Talk podcast, Karen broke down in tears as she accused her ex of leaving her 'emotionally battered', and admitted she was lying to loved ones about her struggles.
She said: 'I was just in panic mode, panic mode, love should not be panic. It's almost like he made up things to scare me so that I wouldn't go anywhere.
'But it's OK and I get on with it, I get on with it and smile because I don't want to cause trouble, I don't want to shake things up because that puts you in a bad mood which then makes my day really awful, and that's the state I lived in...
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'I was not only lying to my family and friends and they were seeing it, but I was lying to him as well, because that was the only way I could get through the day, that would keep the peace.'
Breaking down in tears, Karen added that she begun to suffer hair loss caused by autoimmune disease alopecia, which she believes was her nervous system responding to the stress she was under.
She went onto reveal that on the day she was due to marry Jordan, her brother confronted her and said she needed to leave the relationship.
When Karen and Jordan tied the knot in Hampshire, they sold their wedding snaps to magazine Hello!, and at the time she described her big day as a 'fairytale.'
But in her hard-hitting interview with Paul, Karen painted a very different story, revealing: 'Everyone was trying to stop this from happening and I wish they would have just taken me, grabbed me and put me in a car, and I would have kicked and screamed, but I wouldn't have gone through more hell.'
Speaking of Jordan, she said: 'He didn't hurt me physcally so you couldn't see it. It was there, digging, digging, digging ...
'Every dig every text, every call, why did I let someone do that to me?'
Karen added that her friends eventually tried to stage an intervention to try and convince her to end the relationship.
Sharing her most challenging moment in the ordealKaren said: 'There was a weekend I had to work but Pink was in concert and my two best friends, we got tickets and I was able to get away as an excuse as well that I was working down in London so I came down.
'I cried for the first 35 minutes of the show. The freedom of being out there with my friends and them holding me up. And going, 'You have to do this'.
'And then obviously the phone call from him (Jordan), 'Why did you take your luggage?' It's almost that he knew what was coming.
'I remember that moment, ''I have to, I have to do it because if not something is going to happen to me.''
Karen said things turned nasty between herself and Jordan following their split, adding: 'He started losing control of me and it was game-on from him.
'He pulled every shot, every string, did everything he needed to do to try and get my attention and try to get me away from what I was doing to go and see him.'
The star admitted that Jordan begged her to take him back insisting he 'would change,' but he still made their divorce 'difficult.'
Originally from Brighton, Wyn-Jones was living in Sydney when he began following Hauer on Instagram.
She followed him back and they began to exchange messages before regularly speaking on FaceTime.
The businessman eventually relocated to the UK, with the couple marrying in 2022, but the marriage soon crumbled and the couple announced their separation just 16-months later.
She said: 'I got myself into a relationship that I shouldn't have. I felt embarrassed that I couldn't keep anyone around me and I said to myself, 'No, I'm not going to get into a relationship... spend some time on your own.'
'But I don't know how to be on my own.'
Looking back on their relationship, Hauer says her former husband rarely contributed financially after moving into the home she owned before they met.
'He was saying to me I'm going to get a job soon, I'm going to help out when I can. But I work hard for my money and I was bankrolling everything,' she claimed.
'I wasn't home alone, but there was nothing that fulfilled me. He wasn't providing anything, there was no enhancement in my emotional being, my physical being.
'I was working, doing my thing, coming in and out of the house and letting him settle down.'
Karen also admitted her family saw the red flags long before the relationship turned toxic and she found herself in 'a situation she couldn't control.'
She recalled: 'They weren't excited by him at all because to other people it was like a big no. Like no, she'll get rid of him quick. And I didn't because it just got worse.
''I don't have what you have.' Well, yeah, but I need to go to work every day. 'Yeah, but I never see you.'
'Then 'Oh, but are you cheating on me?' No, no, I'm not, I'm not cheating on you. 'So, are you cheating?' No. No, I'm not cheating on you. I just like that person's Instagram post.
''Are you sure you're not sleeping with that person?' No, no, no. 'Can you send me a picture of where you are and who you're with?'
'l had to check in everywhere I went.'
She added: 'Whatever he had going on, whatever was happening, I didn't want to be a part of it. So, I'd just leave. I'd just go away and then I'd come back. 'When can I come back home? Five days later. Okay. Are the dogs okay? Yeah, they're fine. You can come back now.'
'But the grip that he had on me, it paralysed me. It's really hard to explain. When he proposed to me, I didn't tell anybody.
'Why was I so attached to this feeling of insecurity, of gaslighting to the max. In my previous relationships, there was no such thing as that. There were probably hints of it, but this was at a different level.
'Finding myself in a situation where I couldn't control because I was afraid.'
During the interview, Karen also reflected on her protracted and painful divorce from Kevin Clifton, saying they maintained a professional facade on Strictly while behind-the-scenes their three year marriage fell apart.
The Venezuelan-American ballroom specialist, 43, married Clifton, her second husband, in 2015 - three years after joining Strictly's team of professionals.
They would announce their divorce in 2018, and Hauer admits the separation played out behind the scenes for months before she finally confirmed they were no longer together.
Karen insisted it was she who instigated the separation when it became clear that he had 'distanced himself' from the marriage.
She said: 'This one hurt, because we belonged together. You wouldn't say each other's names without following the other person's name.
'I felt that he distanced himself from me, but I was probably doing the same. Because I felt that if you don't want me then OK, I'll retreat, I'll give you your space. It was one of those, where we're both not talking about it.
'I was like, 'Do you want a divorce? Do you want to split up? I don't know what I want to do. What do you want to do? Do you know what you want? I don't know what I want. Are we broken up?''
'So it took a while actually, it took about a year... behind the scenes. In front of the scenes everything was normal.
'We fell apart, and me not knowing... obviously, I didn't know what was happening in his mind and whether he wanted to be with me or not.'
Despite calling time on the marriage after just three years, Hauer claimed she would have worked at salvaging their relationship had he wanted to be with her.
She said: 'I knew that I would've worked on it - I would've stayed. But at the same time, I couldn't be with someone who wasn't sure of whether they wanted to be with me or not. I couldn't wait.
'I waited for a while, and I was giving him his space to think, and then funnily enough I met someone. I was literally waiting to be loved.
'He just wanted a divorce, and I didn't fight it. Something had to happen in order for him to make a decision, because I wasn't going to make the decision.
'I wasn't going to pull the plug. So then I tripped and then the grenade went off. You know, I pulled the pin.'
She added: 'It was tough for him, tough for me. It was tough for both of us at that moment.
'I could see he didn't want to let go. But that didn't give him any choice. He had to do the right thing for himself.'
Despite their separation, Hauer insisted she and Clifton maintained a mutual admiration for one another as trained professionals on Strictly Come Dancing.
She said: 'The respect we had for each other in the workplace. We respected one another, you know.
'We never said a bad word about one another. I think that's because we hold each other to such a high regard, you know.
'There will always be love there. So, we still danced together on the show and we were still working around each other. We would still applaud each other, support each other.
'We never lost that and that was what was really sad, that we could and transfer that onto our relationship.'
Clifton subsequently embarked on a new relationship with documentarian Stacey Dooley after meeting her on the set of Strictly Come Dancing.
The couple welcomed a daughter together in 2023.
Meanwhile, Hauer will return to Strictly Come Dancing this year following recent claims that she had been axed.
It was rumoured that the programme's longest-serving dancer had been dropped by bosses, sparking an 'ageism' row among the cast.
But Hauer will be back as normal when the series returns in September.
The dancer, who joined the lineup in 2012, is yet to win the glitter ball trophy but has reached several finals including with celebrity partners Made In Chelsea's Jamie Laing and former TOWIE star Mark Wright.
Last year, she was partnered with former footballer Paul Merson, 57, but the pair were eliminated in week five and the previous season the dancer performed with DJ Eddie Kadi.
A TV source told MailOnline: 'Karen is a well loved and respected member of the Strictly cast and there's no way she would be axed, especially not because of her age.