Aaron Rodgers Says Shailene Woodley Asked to Sleep With Another Man Days After His Proposal
Aaron Rodgers has offered a starkly different account of his broken engagement to actress Shailene Woodley, alleging that she asked to be with another man only days after accepting his marriage proposal.
The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback made the claim on Thursday, September 10, during an appearance on teammate Cameron Heyward’s podcast, Not Just Football, in what amounted to his first detailed public remarks on the relationship since it ended more than four years ago.
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Rodgers told Heyward that he proposed to Woodley in December 2020 and that she said yes, though he speculated she may have felt cornered into the decision rather than genuinely ready for marriage.
According to Rodgers, that hesitation surfaced almost immediately. He recounted that within a couple of days of the proposal, Woodley told him she needed to be intimate with someone else before the wedding could happen, a claim he delivered on air in blunt terms, saying she told him, “before we get married I gotta go fck this guy.”*
The 42-year-old quarterback used the podcast appearance to push back on the narrative that has circulated publicly for years, in which he was widely cast as the one responsible for the split.
Rodgers said Woodley later claimed publicly that his departure caused her significant emotional distress, but he disputed that timeline entirely. He maintained that she removed her engagement ring by March 2021, just months after accepting it, undercutting any suggestion that he alone precipitated the breakup.
Rodgers said the two attempted to reconcile on more than one occasion in the months that followed, but nothing came of those efforts. By his account, there was no active relationship left by 2022, the year the split was finally confirmed publicly, because it had effectively ended more than a year earlier.
He said Woodley eventually told him directly that she no longer wanted to be with him, a statement he described as coming after their reconciliation attempts had already stalled.
Woodley, 34, an Emmy winner as of this month for her work in television, has not issued a public response to Rodgers’ claims. She has previously discussed the relationship only in broad terms, telling an interviewer in 2024 that the time she spent with Rodgers was “not right” for her but that she still considered it “beautiful,” adding that revisiting the subject could bring her to tears.
The relationship between Rodgers and Woodley first became public in 2021, though the two had reportedly been together since mid-2020 following his split from former NASCAR driver Danica Patrick.
Rodgers confirmed the engagement that February during an NFL event, and Woodley addressed the speculation herself soon after on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, telling host Jimmy Fallon that the couple had quietly been engaged for some time before the news broke.
The relationship ended for good in 2022, though the exact timeline had never been laid out publicly by either party until Rodgers’ podcast appearance this week.
Rodgers, who spent his early career with the Green Bay Packers before later playing for the New York Jets and now the Pittsburgh Steelers, has previously been linked to Patrick and actress Olivia Munn.
Woodley has been linked in the past to rugby player Ben Volavola. Neither Woodley nor representatives for either party have commented publicly since Rodgers’ remarks began circulating.
