Perrie Edwards says she felt bad for Little Mix bandmates over One Direction frustrations

Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards Addresses “Toxic” Relationship With Zayn Malik

Perrie Edwards got candid about her relationship with Zayn Malik in the early days of Little Mix and One Direction, calling their relationship “toxic” despite him being her “first love.”
Perrie Edwards recently gave a shout out to her ex.

The Little Mix star shared that while Zayn Malik—who she dated from 2011 to 2015—was her “first love,” she believes her time with the One Direction singer affected her view on relationships in a way that “wasn’t ideal” following their breakup.

“Meeting someone at that time in your career, who’s kind of at the same point, is refreshing,” she said on the Aug. 19, episode of the We Need to Talk podcast, “’cause it’s like, ‘Oh, you get it. We kind of get each other. We’ve got this like same kind of thing going on.’ And it kind of just worked and maybe we clicked from that. It was pretty easy at first.”

But, as Perrie put it, “It got more difficult obviously as it went on.”

“At the time, I thought everything we experienced in our relationship was normal because it was my first relationship, first love,” she shared. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is how it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to feel a little bit toxic in some ways. This is probably normal, right?’”

She continued, “And then when I become single, I was almost thinking like, ‘I never ever want to go through that again. I didn’t even want to meet anybody.’”

Emphasizing how “grim” the heartbreak felt, she added, “I remember thinking, ‘I’m done with men forever.’”

In fact, when Perrie met now-fiancé Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in 2016, her outlook on love initially put a strain on their romance.

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“I had so many issues in our relationship at the beginning that I probably didn’t notice at the time. But now reflecting back, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, that probably wasn’t it it wasn’t good.’ And I’ve noticed it a lot,” she explained. “Like in the start of the relationship, I would handle things differently with Alex, and he’d come at it with such a level head that it would throw me, if that makes sense.”

And now that Perrie—who welcomed son Axel, 3, with Alex—is in a positive relationship with the soccer player, she can look back at her time with Zayn as a lesson learned.

“I think it definitely shaped me,” she noted. “I think I learned a lot from the relationship.”