Julianne Hough ‘Overcompensated’ in Ryan Seacrest Relationship: I ‘Started Playing Smaller’

Julianne Hough opened up about why her relationship with Ryan Seacrest didn’t work out — and hinted that the difference in their levels of fame contributed to the end of their romance.

Hough, now 36, detailed her time with Seacrest, now 49, during the Monday, August 12, episode of Dax Shepard ’s “Armchair Expert” podcast. Shepard, also 49, asked about what it was like to date Seacrest from 2010 to 2013.

“I would imagine it would be so exciting and so privileged and so romantic and then also I would feel like I was losing myself to all of that,” Shepard said.

Hough agreed, saying, “That was exactly the dynamic. 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.”

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At the time, Hough was already a star in her own right, but she didn’t want observers to think that she was using Seacrest for his proximity to even bigger celebrities.

“I had this insecurity that I was like, ‘I don't ever want anybody to think that I'm with him for this reason,’” she explained. “And so I then started playing smaller. I know that that was his experience in past situations and stuff, and so I again overcompensated, [I] was malleable to fit into exactly what somebody needed me to be for them to be happy.”

Hough went on to say that she’s repeated similar patterns in other relationships because she likes feeling loved by others.

“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,” she explained. “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 everyone I've ever dated, but have I? I don't want to overanalyze it, because every person I've also dated has been a very good person.”

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While the Dancing With the Stars cohost has no hard feelings toward Seacrest — whom she called a “lovely person” — she said that she now feels like she was “so oblivious” and “dissociative” during their relationship when it came to the disparity between their careers.

“I had no idea that was, like, a repeated pattern,” Hough recalled. “Eventually, 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.’ I was like, ‘I need to create this. Competitively, it's not mine. I need to feel the pride of doing it.’”

Hough and Seacrest ultimately called it quits in 2013 . "Honestly, their schedules were too hectic," a source told Us Weekly at the time. "It just got to be too much. I think they both just sort of knew they couldn't do it anymore. The travel and lifestyle got to be too much."

Hough moved on with Brooks Laich , whom she married in 2017 after four years of dating. The duo separated in 2020 and finalized their divorce two years later.