Cheryl Burke felt “disgusted” when she had “nice” dance partners because of the trauma she suffered after being abused as a child.
Cheryl Burke felt “disgusted” when she had “nice” dance partners after being abused as a child.
The former ‘Dancing with the Stars’ professional – who testified against her abuser when she was nine years old – admitted she found comfort in being treated badly in her personal life, and those feelings also spread to her professional life because she “hated” herself and didn’t think she deserved to have people be kind to her.
Speaking to Randy Spelling, Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess on their ‘Oldish’ podcast, Cheryl said: “Sharna, you were saying, ‘People must think that you have this life, this perfect life, and it’s so beautiful how you went from all this child abuse, you know, me getting sexually molested when I was a little girl.’ In my brain, this is home, unfortunately.
“[It] was not having a father figure and turning to men who weren’t, I guess, healthy, but also I was attracting physical and mental abuse because this is all I knew, so it felt like home.
“I remember feeling so disgusted when I would have a nice dance partner, let’s say, who would treat me with respect.
“Now that’s how much I hated myself, to the point where I was disgusted by people who were nice to me because, obviously, which I didn’t know back then, but I didn’t think I deserved that type of treatment. It was so foreign to me, it was like it gave me the ick.”
The 40-year-old dancer has spoken in the past about being celibate in the wake of her 2022 split from Matthew Lawrence and she admitted her feelings of trauma is the reason why she hasn’t felt ready to date again.
She said: “This is why I’ve been single, and I choose to be single until I can — well there’s no magic switch — but I know I’m not ready to date yet.”
As well as being abused, Cheryl also attributes the fact her earliest memory is witnessing her father getting intimate with another woman when she was just a toddler as another reason why she sought unsuitable relationships.
She said: “My first memory as a kid was seeing my father with another woman, like literally as if it was yesterday.
“It’s so funny because I always ask my guests this, like, ‘What’s your first memory as a kid?’ For the most part, it’s all like, ‘My grandma picked me out of the crib.’ But I’m like, ‘Great, I saw my father literally be intimate with another Filipino woman,’ which was his secretary. And [her parents] were already separated, mind you, but still I was like freaking two years old.
“So right then and there is like an imprint in my brain, I would say, on what my life unfolded to be as far as the choices and the men and not stable men I had in my life until my stepfather came into my life, who I call dad to this day.”
Cheryl Burke felt ‘disgusted’ by ‘nice’ partners
