Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has made a startling claim about what really ended his engagement to actress Shailene Woodley, offering a version of events that departs sharply from how their split was previously understood by the public.

Speaking on his teammate Cam Heyward’s podcast, Rodgers said he proposed to Woodley in December 2020 and that she accepted, only for the relationship to unravel just days later.

According to Rodgers, only a couple of days after accepting his proposal, Woodley told him she needed to sleep with another man before they got married. He said he believes she may have felt pressured into accepting the proposal in the first place, but insisted she could have simply turned him down instead. Rodgers added that Woodley removed her engagement ring by March 2021 and that subsequent attempts by the pair to reconcile that year ultimately went nowhere, leading him to argue there was effectively no relationship left to break off by the time their split became public in 2022.

The quarterback used the appearance to push back on the narrative that he was responsible for ending things or for the emotional toll Woodley has previously described experiencing after their breakup, which she once called a deeply painful period in her life. Rodgers maintained that it was Woodley who told him directly that she no longer wanted to be with him, contradicting accounts that framed him as the one who walked away.

The couple’s relationship began quietly in 2020, and their engagement only became public in February 2021, when Woodley confirmed the news and appeared with her ring during a television interview. Their split was confirmed publicly the following year. As of the time of Rodgers’s latest comments, Woodley had not issued any public response to his account of what happened between them.