Julianne Hough Opens Up About 'Insecurity' During Her Past Relationship With Ryan Seacrest On Dax Shepard's Podcast

With her debut book being released, co-hosting Dancing with the Stars , owning her Kinrgy dance studio in Beverly Hills, and so much more, Julianne Hough has a pretty enviable career right now. But the 36-year-old multi-hyphenate’s career wasn’t always thriving, especially when she started dating Ryan Seacrest in 2010…

According to reports, the Everything We Never Knew author had huge “insecurity” during her three-year-relationship with the American Idol host, as she feared that people would think she was using him to get ahead in her career.

Julianne Hough Opens Up About Her Three-Year Relationship With Ryan Seacrest

The Footloose actress opened up about that time in her life on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, and recalled: "The rug was swept up from underneath me, and I was just flying, and I was experiencing things that I didn't even know existed."

"But then I had this insecurity that I was like, 'I don't ever want anybody to think that I'm with him for this reason.' And so I then started playing smaller," she continued, after which Shepard confirmed: "You didn't want to seem like you were out there to try to get your own attention, or using him."

The Grease Live! star then went on to tell Shepard that her then boyfriend had dealt with that "in past situations," which is why she herself was conscious of how their relationship would look from the outside.

"I, again, overcompensated. I was malleable to fit into exactly what somebody needed me to be for them to be happy," she continued, adding: "And what I've realized over the years is I don't know if I've ever truly been in love with someone, but I have loved the feeling of being loved. And so let me be what that needs to be so that I can be loved."

"And then because I'm so filled with love from someone, of course I love you. I love everyone. I've been in love with everybody I've ever dated, but have I?" She added: “I don't wanna overanalyze it because every person I've also dated has been a very good person."

Julianne Hough Said Many People Didn't Understand Her Reasons For Breaking Up With Ryan Seacrest

Although Hough and Seacrest seemed like a great couple at the time, the Safe Haven star confessed that one of the reasons she broke up with him was due to her wanting to make a name for herself without him. And that was something many people in Los Angeles didn't understand, according to what she said in the podcast.

Hough recalled: "I remember when I decided to break things off, I had a lot of these Brentwood moms and producers in that world that were like, 'What are you doing?' And I was like, 'What do you mean?' They're like, 'Your life is completely set up.' And I was, like, 'But I didn't build it.'"

She concluded: I didn't think about what people thought. I was just wrestling on the inside… I definitely was in full self-preservation mode, so I was only concerned about me."