Mel B has admitted she found it hard to be "intimate" with fiancé Rory McPhee after splitting with husband Stephen Belafonte.
The former Spice Girl has told how she struggled to trust Rory when they first started dating.
"I always said to Rory, 'I'm never gonna get married, I'm never having kids.' This is when we were not dating but kind of were like cuddly, because it took me a long time to do anything else basically," she told Olivia Attwood on her So Wrong Its Right podcast.
"'But I wasn't looking for anything and I honestly thought, 'If I've been through that, how can I even begin to trust anybody because I was in love with that monster and I stayed with him and had a baby, and is that my judgment?'"
She added, "That's what abusers do, they love bomb you."
Mel, 48, is now engaged to Rory, 36, her former hairdresser. They started dating in 2019 after Mel moved back to the UK after leaving her marriage and home in the US.
“He was just there patiently waiting, always there to give me a hair treatment, always there to talk. He’s a great listener. And he just became more and more of a friend, and more and more important in my life,” she told People. “It’d been a long time that anybody was that kind to me."
Mel was married to Stephen from 2007 to 2017, and they share daughter Madison, 12. She has accused Stephen of physical, emotional, and financial abuse. He has denied all the claims.
