Danica Patrick is done staying quiet about the relationship with Aaron Rodgers that allegedly once left her broken. While she spent years staying fearless at 200 miles per hour, off the track, she says one relationship nearly took everything she had.

The former IndyCar driver opened up on The Sage Steele Show about her two-year romance with Aaron Rodgers, and this time she didn’t hold anything back. Patrick called the relationship emotionally abusive, and she described exactly what it cost her.

Steele asked Danica Patrick to name the most painful moment of her life. There was no hesitation in her answer. It was the sudden end of her relationship with the four-time NFL MVP in July 2020.

“Because it was sudden, it felt like. It was my life. So like when you live with somebody, it’s your whole life,” Patrick said. “And because the nature of the relationship was emotionally abusive, so that wore me down to nothing.”

Patrick and Aaron Rodgers first met at the 2012 ESPYs. The connection reportedly built over years before the two went public in early 2018. They bought a home together in Malibu, lived there as a couple, then quietly split in the summer of 2020.

Danica Patrick Reveals How Aaron Rodgers Left Her Emotionally Drained

Patrick built a career on nerves. She raced against men at speeds that would break most people, and she won. So when she says this relationship broke something in her, it lands differently.

“People could never imagine that I would lack any confidence or belief in the simple things about who I am. Everything was torn to bits,” Patrick said. “Yeah, he leaves a trail of blood. I don’t think I’m saying too much earth shattering stuff after we, there’s been enough out there.”

That last line matters. Patrick’s confirming something that’s already been floating around for years, just in her own words this time.

She retired from full-time racing in 2018 as the only woman to ever win an IndyCar Series race. That achievement stands on its own. Yet by her own account, putting herself back together after this relationship took far more out of her than anything on a track ever did.

Rodgers hasn’t said a word about Patrick’s comments. That silence stands out because his name has been everywhere lately for the opposite reason.

The quarterback spent 18 seasons in Green Bay, won Super Bowl XLV, then signed with the New York Jets in 2023. That debut lasted four snaps before a torn Achilles ended his season before it began.

Away from the field, Rodgers has spent the last year quietly closing a different gap. He and his parents, Ed and Darla Rodgers, had been estranged for nearly nine years, a rift that followed him through most of his Packers career.

Journalist Ian O’Connor reported that the reconciliation had been building for over a year. Rodgers invited his parents to his Pleasant Valley High School Hall of Fame induction in April, thanked them in front of the crowd, and the two sides had already shared a warm moment at the 2023 Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament.

So one long-standing rift in Rodgers’ life appears to be closing just as another reopens in public view. Patrick clearly isn’t finished processing what happened between them. Rodgers hasn’t said a word yet, and until he does, this story isn’t going anywhere.