John Cena, Nikki Bella Split After Six Years Together
John Cena and Nikki Bella have called it quits.
On Sunday, April 15, 2018, the WWE stars announced in an Us Weekly exclusive that they had officially broken up, ending their engagement after six years of dating.
"While this decision was a difficult one, we continue to have a great deal of love and respect for one another," they released in a joint statement. "We ask that you respect our privacy during this time in our lives."
A rep for the former couple later confirmed the sad news to E! News.
Over the weekend, Cena shared a couple of cryptic messages on social media, which pointed toward the impending breakup. On Saturday, April 14, he took to Instagram with a Walt Whitman quote, which read, "We were together. I forget the rest."
Early Sunday, he shared another Whitman quote on Twitter: "Keep your face always toward the sunshine — and shadows will fall behind you." In the caption, the pro wrestler wrote, "Anybody feeling down, check out #WaltWhitman has always been a helpful voice in times of crisis. Beautifully wild thinker, and was certainly onto something with ideas like these."
As Nicki Swift previously reported, Cena, 40, and Bella (real name Stephanie Nicole Garcia-Colace), 34, got engaged at WrestleMania 33 in April 2017. The pair, who had been together since 2012, documented their longtime romance on E!'s reality TV series, Total Divas and Total Bellas.
Just last month, Cena publicly hinted that there was trouble on the horizon when he opened up about what it takes to maintain their relationship. "Relationships are hard," he admitted to Us Weekly at the time. "Don't ever think that love is easy. Love is beautiful, but we've had to come to the realization after being together for five years that love is not easy."
The Blockers star added, "We work every day on us. We have our problems just like everybody else. Some of our problems are very public, some of them aren't. But we work every day on us. Anytime I get upset, I always just realize that I can't live without her and I love her and that's why I cave in on a lot of stuff. It takes being able to mesh two lives."