Justin Baldoni struggled for years after being sexually traumatized by an ex-girlfriend.
On a wide-ranging episode of Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast that debuted Dec. 4, the It Ends With Us director-actor, 40, spoke publicly for the first time about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult this year, among other topics.
At one point, Baldoni opened up about feeling conflicted after a toxic relationship he had in college.
He said he met a "beautiful young woman" at an Abercrombie & Fitch while attending Long Beach State and fell "right into this relationship because I was trying to fill a hole and a void where I just didn't feel like I was enough."
"It was a very bad relationship, and I kind of contorted myself and my personality to be what she wanted," said the Jane the Virgin star. "I had strong values and opinions and beliefs going in, and those were very easily manipulated and reshaped to the point where a few months in I completely lost any sense of self that I had left. And it got very emotionally abusive."
Baldoni said after he "experienced sexual trauma in that relationship" he then "wrestled with that trauma for the rest of my life, because in my head a man can't experience sexual trauma at the hands of a woman. It's also the way that society has kind of made me feel that, you know, it's only the other way around, when in reality it can happen."
The star, who has previously been open about his Bahá'í faith, said he "was hoping to save myself for marriage, and that's as detailed as I'll get into the story."
"There are lines that can be crossed and take advantage of somebody and to be manipulated. But I told myself for 15 years after that that wasn't actually what happened and that I did want it and all of the things that women have been feeling and experiencing for a long time," said Baldoni.
Baldoni said "acknowledging that a woman could take advantage of me" became "too much to hold for many, many years."
"One day my therapist asked me a very simple question. She said, ‘Justin, you do a lot of work in this space: If a woman told you that story, what would you call it?’ And that’s when I broke," he said, adding that his "healing" began at that point.
"That relationship ended with cheating and infidelity. It was a terrible, terrible relationship," said Baldoni. "I left college, I moved to L.A., and it was actually thanks to that relationship ending that I ended up becoming an actor."
