Therapist told me to stay in toxic relationship filled with ‘unhappiness and fear’
Olivia Munn claims a former therapist encouraged her to stay in a past toxic relationship that filled her with “unhappiness and fear.”
The actress detailed the “bad, bad period” of her life on Tuesday’s episode of Monica Lewinsky’s “Reclaiming” podcast — without naming any names.
“In that particular situation, I had a therapist who I really loved and I know that she cared about me — or at least I thought she did,” Munn explained. “I would constantly, from the very beginning, say, ‘I don’t know about this, I don’t think this is the right [relationship,] I want to get out,’ and then it got worse and worse and I’d be calling her crying like, ‘I gotta get out.’”
Munn, 44, said the mental health professional “encouraged [her] to stay.”
“She thought that my ‘picker’ was off, and she would look at it as like, ‘This person on paper looked great,’ and when there was couples therapy, they knew how to present the right way. Then the stories I would tell seemed unbelievable,” she said.
The “Magic Mike” star said she has since learned to rely on her own instincts.
“From that experience, learning that I gotta go with my gut and I gotta be decisive with some things if it’s coming from a place where I want to survive,” she continued, “and I realize that I’m not happy and that days and weeks and months go by of unhappiness and fear.”
Munn told Lewinsky that the “catalyst” for her journey to healing was removing herself from the relationship that had “drained” her.
“I don’t know if there’s a word to describe what that relationship was like. It was without a doubt the hardest period of my life, being in that,” Munn said.
The “New Girl” alum said she felt “really trapped” in a “tumultuous family dynamic” but decided to fight back.
“It taught me how to stand up and fight for myself, so that was great,” she said. “I truly had no idea that I could be manipulated and hurt that way, that I wouldn’t just get out of something that was dangerous to my psyche.”
Upon reflecting on the lessons she has learned, Munn wants to make sure her son Malcolm, 3, and daughter Méi, 5 months — whom she shares with husband John Mulaney — won’t find themselves in a similar toxic situation in the future.
“When they say like, ‘Oh, just go on the date! You never know. You might like him, you might at least learn what you don’t like,’ I think some people who are subconsciously vulnerable — which is what I think I was, because I had no idea I was this vulnerable to anything that had happened to me post that first date — is that if you feel in your gut something’s not right, then don’t do that first date or get out right away, because one date could take years off your life,” she said.
She added, “[It’s] not just the period that you’re with that person but, if you’re lucky to get out, the years [of] healing yourself afterwards.”
Munn said that aside from this one horrible relationship, the previous people she dated were healthy partners — which is why she couldn’t believe how long she allowed herself to stay in such a bad situation for so long.
The “Newsroom” actress and Mulaney tied the knot with an intimate home wedding service last July.
She previously dated several celebrities including Bryan Greenberg, Chris Pine, Matthew Morrison and Joel Kinnaman.
One of her longest and most high-profile relationships was with Aaron Rodgers, whom she dated from 2014 to 2017. Prior to their breakup, reports surfaced that Munn had caused the NFL player to rift with his family members.
Mulaney, for his part, was married to Anna Marie Tendler for six years before ending their marriage in 2021.
