Stacey Solomon was in abusive relationship

13 March 2017

Stacey Solomon will always be a "weird version" of herself after a previous relationship turned abusive.

Stacey Solomon

The 'Loose Women' panellist may now be happily loved up with Joe Swash, whom she's been dating for over a year now, but she has admitted she was once in a relationship with someone who shattered her confidence and made her feel so worthless that she doesn't think she'll ever be the same again.

Speaking on the lunchtime show on Monday (13.03.17), she explained: "I was in an abusive relationship and it makes you forget who you are... I'll always be a weird version of myself...I used to be less worried about everything. Less worried about what people thought about me... I was OK, quite confident.

"You do begrudge that person for taking that away from you. These people manipulate you... When people are happy to wish you dead or tell you your career is nothing or you are nothing... It might be lots of small things. you don't even realise it's happening to your self until you realise."

Stacey - who has sons, eight-year-old Zachary and Leighton, four, from two previous relationships - managed to break free of her abusive ex, whose identity is not known, and is now happy with actor Joe.

However, she hasn't had much luck in the love department over the years as she caught the Human papillomavirus infection (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, from a mystery partner "a period of time ago" but, although there's no treatment for it, her body should naturally clear the virus over time.

She said previously: "I just think the whole issue of finding out about your partner before you start engaging in sex is really important anyway because there's so many things that you don't know.

"For example, a period of time ago I was with somebody who I really liked, we ended up obviously doing the deed, I'm very prude [...] and I was actually really upset to find out that after that [sex] had happened that person told me they had HPV and it was a serious strain of HPV, which causes cervical cancer.

"So I then went and had a smear test [a method of detecting abnormal cells on the cervix] and found out that I contracted it [...] And I always practiced safe sex so I used condoms and I did all the things that I thought were the right things [...] So I have the infection and hopefully my body will get rid of it eventually but I have to go six-monthly for smears."

Although the blonde beauty felt "violated" at the time, she believes finding out she has the virus, of which there are over 100 strains, has made her even more vigilant.