Aurora Starchild
Emily Ratajkowski’s dating life has been such a public point of interest that it’s easy to forget she used to be married. The model, author, and entrepreneur shares a two-year-old son, Sylvester Apollo (Sly), with her ex-husband Sebastian Bear-McClard. They only divorced last September and EmRata hasn’t said much about what happened. Now she’s opening up to podcaster Eileen Kelly about what happened. “I didn’t have the courage to leave,” Ratajkowski admitted about her divorce.
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Emily Ratajkowski Divorced Husband of 4 Years Bear-McClard Last September
While speaking with Kelly on her podcast Going Mental, Emily Ratajkowski touched on her life journey and navigating her way through self-possession and happiness. She’d jumped into a relationship with Bear-McClard around Valentine’s Day of 2018, although they’d known each other for two years by then. They tied the knot in secret 9 days later. Just one month before, she’d ended a 4-year relationship with music producer Jeff Magid.
All seemed well for EmRata and her film producer husband at first. They adopted a puppy (Colombo) in May of 2019 and by October 2020, they were expecting a child of their own. Little Sylvester was born on March 8, 2021. But by July of 2022, they split up. A source told People that it was Ratajkowski who initiated the separation and that she planned on filing for divorce.
Since EmRata officially became a single woman, everyone has wanted to know who she’s with. From Brad Pitt to Pete Davidson and most recently, Eric André, the superstar clearly has no problem attracting men. But for her, the struggle has been entirely different. She’s admitted that she’d “never been single before” this past year, primarily due to an association between attached men and safety from an abundance of predators in the modeling industry. She told Harper’s BAZAAR that she was a “pick-me” girl, preferring to let men wear the pants, so to speak, so that she didn’t have to feel vulnerable.
Ratajkowski Is Finding Her Independence and Breaking Free from Social Conditioning After Her Divorce
But all of that is changing. Between her memoir My Body, her podcast, and her reputation as a social media phenom, Ratajkowski has found a way to tell her story— her strangely relatable and refreshingly human story. She knows she’s banked on the hypersexualization of her image, but she also doesn’t condone misogyny. These two things may seem contradictory but alas, aren’t we all? And sometimes, in finding your voice and telling your story, you realize your strength— and you see when it was eluding you.
For Ratajkowski, the thought of leaving her husband and the father of her child (whom she adores) was daunting. To start, it probably gave her a sense of failure, because that’s what society tells us.
“Every piece of media we consume from he second we are born is basically this idea of finding a partner that completes you and validates you,” she told Eileen Kelly. “I do think that was part of it, plus I had just had a child, so I really wanted to have that family, so it was especially hard for me to totally walk away.”
EmRata Hasn’t Confirmed or Denied the Widespread Rumor That Her Ex-Husband Cheated On Her
While Ratajkowski hasn’t specifically come out and said that Bear-McClard was unfaithful, numerous sources have claimed that he cheated. That was, allegedly, at least a factor in why his baby momma left him. And one person who is allegedly close to EmRata came right out and said this to Page Six.
“Yeah, he cheated,” said the source. “He’s a serial cheater. It’s gross. He’s a dog.”
However, when Kelly pressed her on the issue, Ratajkowski only had this to say: “Duh, men are trash, ladies. It doesn’t matter who you are or how perfect you are.”
Whatever was going on, Emily Ratajkowski was anything but happy in her marriage.
“I didn’t have the courage to leave for a long time. I was really, really unhappy,” Ratajkowski told Kelly. “I was, like, 100 pounds and I had just had a baby. I got really skinny ’cause I was not OK. I tried everything else. I tried to take antidepressants. I was sure that something was wrong with me. I think so much of what I learned coming out of that relationship is to trust your instincts. Gaslighting is a real thing.”
Ratajkowski Wants Other Women Who Are Unhappy to Have the Courage to Walk Away
She added that other women who are feeling trapped in an unhappy relationship should consider that they’re not seeing the whole picture. “I didn’t understand that it was actually going to be so nice to come back to myself,” she said. “[To] return back to how I see the world, how I understand things, my instincts. You’ll be shocked how much easier life is.”
Ratajkowski also said that now that she’s settling into her new life after her divorce (which still comes with some anxiety), she’s taking better care of herself. When she was stressed out, she’d lost so much weight that “it didn’t feel like [her] body.”
“I think I’m starting to just get back to myself… And it’s a new body, for sure. There’s just things about it that are different post-baby,” Ratajkowski said. “And I’m accepting those things and also just embracing that this is the body I’m in… I think gaining weight for me in the past six months was just really huge. Like I said, I was down to 100 pounds in the midst of my breakup. Now I’m 15 pounds up, which is a lot on my frame. And it feels so nice to have an ass and have a good relationship to food again.”
