Perrie Edwards reveals the final gut punch that came six months after her ‘hellish’ Zayn split

Perrie Edwards has opened up about the final gut punch that left her devastated after her split from ex-fiancé Zayn Malik.

The Little Mix star admitted that she struggled to cope with the heartbreak and the intense public attention surrounding it. Perrie and Zayn were among pop’s biggest couples after meeting on The X Factor in 2011. They got engaged in 2013, but called it quits in August 2015 after nearly four years together.

And while Perrie has spoken about the split before, she has now revealed the moment she felt was the “nail in the coffin”.

Talking about the breakup, Perrie admitted it was far from easy. “Like when you go through heartbreak, it is hellish. It’s the worst thing in the world. You can’t eat or sleep. You feel horrendous,” she said on Jamie Laing’s Great Company podcast.

“And you feel abandoned and you don’t feel good enough and you feel like you’ve been left for something better or whatever it is.”

However, she explained that dealing with the breakup in public made everything even harder. “And then what makes it even worse is, I felt like the world was then looking at me, laughing at me,” Perrie said. “Not my fans, my fans were like, ‘we love you, we’ll fight your corner no matter what.’ But I felt embarrassed. I felt horrified. It was awful.”

She experienced ‘serious breakdowns’ during that period

via Perrie Edwards/Instagram

“I didn’t,” she said when asked how she stayed sane through it. “I had like serious breakdowns. Because it wasn’t just the heartbreak I was dealing with. I was dealing with everybody looking at me and I felt ridiculed. I just couldn’t cope with it.”

Perrie added, “I hated it. I was breaking down in performances, which isn’t like me at all. I was breaking down, crying constantly. And I think I was depressed.”

But for Perrie, the hardest moment came after the relationship had already ended. She suggested there had been “a bit of an overlap” between the end of her relationship with Zayn and him moving on.

“I need to be careful how I say this, but there was, let’s just say there was a bit of a… I’m just going to say it. So there was a bit of an overlap,” she said.

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She added, “When you’re the one left behind, that’s when it’s hard because it’s like, ‘Oh sh*t, they’ve left me for someone more beautiful than me, someone better than me.’ Whatever it is, that’s how it felt at the time.”

She then appeared to reference Zayn’s 2016 Pillowtalk music video, which starred Gigi Hadid. “And then you have a song that they’ve written about you, but then someone else is in the video,” Perrie said.

‘It was like the nail in the coffin’

via Perrie Edwards/Instagram

She admitted that finding out about it was incredibly difficult. “It was one thing after the other, after the other. And I remember finding out about that and I just went in and my dad and my brother were at the house at the time and I just moved into my little bungalow in Surrey.”

“And I just remember finding out about that and it was like the nail in the coffin and I thought this is all getting a bit much and then I started crying my eyes out.”

She added that her father was heartbroken watching her go through it. “Then my dad started crying and he was like, ‘I don’t know how I can take this pain away’ and I’m like ‘you can’t nobody can this is hellish.'”

Although Perrie admitted she had “spilt some beans”, she also suggested there is still loads about that period that she has never spoken about publicly.

Thankfully, things are very different for Perrie now. She is engaged to footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and says being in a healthy relationship has completely changed her view of love.

“It made me realise that that was very unhealthy,” she said of her past relationship. “And I think now that I’ve experienced what healthy love is, with Alex. It’s so nice. It doesn’t make you feel like you’re not worthy or you’re not good enough. And it doesn’t feel competitive, it doesn’t feel toxic. Like that’s exactly what I would say it was.”

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