Why ‘damaged’ Katie Price can’t stop sabotaging romances & ‘trading down’…& how she can finally find happiness
KATIE Price has had a turbulent relationship history to say the least – from being cheated on to being accused of being the cheat.
Her former love Carl Woods is the latest of her exes to go public with lurid allegations about life with Katie.
In a bombshell interview with The Sun, he claimed Katie would call him by another man’s name during sex to “taunt” him” and she cheated on him four times.
The used car dealer, 35, and glamour model Katie, 46, met in a kebab shop and had an on and off romance for three years before they finally called it quits in 2023.
Carl said: “Twice in bed she called me another fella’s name. I pulled her up on it. She got a mental kick out of saying it and then pretending it was role play.
“She would do weird things to get into my head.”
He also issued a warning to Katie’s latest beau, former Married at First Sight star JJ Slater, saying it wouldn’t be long before she swapped him out for someone younger.
Love Islander Carl, Katie’s eighth fiance , said: “Her new boyfriend JJ is coming up to 32 soon so it won’t be long before he’s an old-timer.”
“She met me around that age and then swapped me for a younger version when I got too old.”
But relationship expert and psychologist Jo Hemmings says that while Katie has clearly made many relationship mistakes in the past, a lot of it is due to her early disastrous dating life.
“I think she has got low self-esteem,” explains Jo. “She is quite insecure. I think she has got facial and body dysmorphia. We know the amount of operations she has had.
“She is 46 now, she seems to have a fear of growing older, she peaked when she was very young. She seems to trade down so each subsequent partner is younger.
“I think she is looking for validation and security all of the time that somehow, because of her low self-esteem, she never quite finds.”
Here Jo analyses how some of Katie’s most high-profile relationships impacted her – and how each one has led to her damaging behaviour.
DANE BOWERS – 1998-2000
Katie has called Another Level singer Dane Bowers the “love of her life,” and claimed he cheated on her.
“The hardest break-up I ever went through was with Dane Bowers. My heart was literally in bits,” she said on her Youtube channel.
“Everyone always thinks my hardest break-up was Pete [Andre] but it wasn’t that it wasn’t a hard break-up, it’s just what came with it with Pete that was hard. ‘So definitely Dane broke my heart – literally.”
Jo believes this experience of early heartbreak could have led to Katie’s trust issues in future relationships.
She tells us: “If what she says is true and he broke her heart and did cheat on her, and that is in her early days so that has already set the start of a pattern of a lack of trust – I am not good enough, or someone is going to hurt me.
“It is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy when you can’t quite believe someone could love you that much and therefore they will cheat, then there is almost that self-sabotage.
“So before she can be hurt by someone she will hurt them, or do something damaging in a relationship so when they break up she knows that it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t the right person for her.
“It is really hard to break that pattern.”
DWIGHT YORKE – 2001-2002
Katie and former Manchester United star Dwight Yorke had a brief relationship which ended when she heard he had been partying with other women.
She then discovered she was pregnant – only for Dwight to deny paternity until a blood test proved he was baby Harvey’s son.
But he has played little or no role in Harvey’s life, leaving devoted mum Katie to care her him on his own and cope with his complex disabilities.
Jo says Dwight’s denial of paternity would have had a devastating effect on Katie.
“That is one of the most awful things you can do to a woman really,” she says.
“That was her first child, we know she loves being a mother and then your boyfriend or your ex says, ‘It is not mine, it is someone else’s,’ ie. ‘you have cheated on me.’
“It is almost like being accused of cheating has maybe turned her into a cheat in some ways.
“It is about trust and insecurities and it’s a pattern emerging from the very start.”
PETER ANDRE – 2004-2009
This was the love story that the nation watched unfold live on TV as Katie and pop star Peter Andre’s romance blossomed in the I’m A Celeb Jungle.
It didn’t seem to bother Katie that she had a boyfriend – Scott Sullivan – back in the UK who was also watching the sexual chemistry sizzle between her and Pete in the Aussie outback.
It appeared that Peter had finally provided the stability and security that Katie so craved and the couple married in a lavish pink-theme fairytale ceremony in 2005 and head two children, Junior and Princess.
But the fairytale came crashing down in 2009 and they split.
While both Katie and Peter denied anyone else was involved, Katie later said that Peter suspected her of having an affair with her riding instructor Andrew Gould.
And Jo believes the failure of this relationship has perhaps had one of the biggest impacts on Katie.
Jo explains: “Whatever went on there, I think she would admit to having screwed up somewhere along the way in that relationship.
“We watched it on TV, and it was incredible to watch them fall in love.
“I know she was with someone else but we all sort of dismissed that, to see them grow close together in the jungle.
“She was really beautiful, she looked incredible even with no make-up on and her hair in those plaits.
“That was the one relationship that we thought at last she has found someone that she is going to stay with.
“When it didn’t work out I think the old pattern re-emerged. She was a tougher person and she felt more insecure, and that is a difficult combo to work with.”
ALEX REID – 2009-2011
Just weeks after her split from Peter, Katie was pictured out on the arm of a new man – former MMA fighter Alex Reid.
They tied the knot in Vegas after a whirlwind romance – but it wasn’t to last and they divorced just 14 months later.
Katie later accused Alex of using their marriage to “promote himself,” while he said he had suffered “years of abuse” from Katie.
But Jo says this relationship was doomed before it even started.
She explains: “She needs to have a man and this was very much the rebound relationship, to be seen out and about with someone else, partly to say to Peter, ‘look this is what you are missing, this is how easily I can find another man.’
“I think all the reasons for getting into that relationship were wrong at every level.”
LEANDRO PENNA – 2011-2012
There should be no barrier to the language of love – unless you literally cannot speak the same language.
But Katie didn’t let the fact that she couldn’t speak Spanish and Argentinian model Leandro couldn’t speak English, get in the way of a passionate romance.
The pair met at the 2011 Academy Awards and embarked on an intense relationship which Jo witnessed first-hand, as the consultant psychologist on Katie’s dating show, Signed by Katie, filmed while she was dating Leandro.
And she believes the language barrier was Katie’s perfect excuse not to totally surrender herself to the relationship.
“He didn’t speak any English and she didn’t speak any Spanish.
“I would see them on set daily and they couldn’t even communicate with each other and she was in this intense relationship with him for a while.
“That seemed very revealing to me, she is cared of going too deep in the relationship as she is terrified of being hurt and she doesn’t have a lot of faith in herself particularly as she gets older for a relationship to work out.”
KIERAN HAYLER – 2012-2018
Katie wed Kieran in the Bahamas in January 2013 – just two months after meeting.
They had children Bunny and Jett before the love story came crashing down when it was revealed that Kieran had had affairs with Katie’s friends Jane Puntney and Chrissy Thomas.
Kieran received therapy for sex addiction and the couple worked on their relationship.
But Katie later filed for divorce after suspecting that he had also cheated on her with the children’s nanny.
Jo believes the double whammy of both her husband and her friends’ betrayal will have destroyed Katie’s trust even further.
“Can you imagine anything worse?” She says. “A girlfriend that you deeply trust.
“And there are lots of people who liked to tell stories about Katie particularly around that time, so I don’t think she trusts that easily, but she really trusted that girl Jane.
“And then to find out someone who I think she really did love, Kieran, had cheated with one of her closest friends is about as low as life can get for a woman.
“I think there are probably things Katie does wrong in every relationship.
“She is flawed, we are all flawed aren’t we, but there will have been things.
“They were doing a TV show and you sensed that he didn’t want to be on it that much, there were rows sometimes.
“So it wasn’t the perfect relationship, but instead of communicating their differences and trying to resolve them, he did the thing that some men do which is to go off and have an affair with someone else.
“Ultimately I see Katie as a victim in that relationship rather than a perpetrator.”
KRIS BOYSON – 2018-2019
Again Katie moved on quickly from her split with Kieran to date personal trainer Kris Boyson.
The pair had an on-off relationship for a year, with allegations of cheating from both sides.
Bur despite this, the couple got engaged before splitting for good in 2019.
Katie later admitted to Kris that she had in fact cheated on him twice – with toyboys Chris Drury and Alex Adderson.
Jo says this may have been a subconscious backlash from Katie who was struggling with how badly Kieran and her friends had treated her.
“Psychologically that is very often what happens,” Jo explains. “It is almost like you are subconsciously punishing a different partner for their behaviour by doing the same thing yourself.
“It is an awful cycle of trust, self-sabotage, destroying that trust. It is because as your self-esteem takes a battering and you need a bit of validation and you think you aren’t getting it.
“I think she is quite intense in her relationships, quite demanding in them, if she is not getting what she wants, somehow doing what other people have done to her, betraying them.
“I am not sure she is consciously doing it deliberately she is just always seeking this validation and if she doesn’t see it in one person she will find it elsewhere and it is a really sad cycle for her to fall into.”
CARL WOODS – 2020-2023
Katie and Carl got engaged in April 2021 following a whirlwind 10-month romance and had openly been trying for a baby before their toxic split last year.
This weekend Carl lifted the lid on his and Katie’s tumultuous relationship with allegations of her infidelity.
But Jo says Carl’s “kiss and tell” will achieve nothing other than damage Katie further.
She says: “I don’t really condone him kissing and telling, selling his story everywhere, that seems mean.
“He could have put a patchwork together of instances in her past and created this story, some of it probably is true, there is some that may not be true.
“But all he is doing by revealing this is damaging her further.
“Her trust is going to be lessened by his behaviour, so I am not sure how much of it we can truly believe.
“But the fact is further damage is being inflicted on her by him telling these stories.
“This is not going to make her more settled moving forward.”
And she casts doubt over his claims that Katie would taunt him by using other men’s names during their intimate moments.
She explains: “I am not convinced by this – it seems an unlikely thing for Katie – or anyone – to do, unless she was angry or frustrated in some way.
“Maybe it was her response to him saying something nasty or unpleasant to her?
“Frankly, this feels like his imagination running away with him or possibly made-up revenge for her cheating.
“From all I know about Katie, this feels very out of character. Why would she do it unless to hurt him for hurting her?
“Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.”
JJ SLATER – 2023-2024
Katie’s latest man is former Married At First Sight star JJ, who at 32 is 14 years her junior.
So far the relationship seems to be drama-free – but how long will this last?
“This one seems quite stable,” says Jo. “But they all for a little while seem quite stable and then the rot seems to set in somehow and again.
“I think it comes to her own insecurities.
“There have been so many relationships where they have gone public, they have been seen on TV, there has been a drama in every one of them.
“There has not been a drama-free relationship that Katie has had.”
Can Katie find happiness?
Jo believes that for Katie to finally find true happiness she needs to be honest with herself about what she wants out of life – and maybe go for a man who has no interest in celebrity or public life so the relationship can play out in pirvate.
“I feel she goes into every relationship with the greatest faith that this one is going to work and then some minor things have happened, because of her self-esteem being low, because of the dysmorphia, she just seems to trigger a bit of drama,” says Jo.
“She has got to be absolutely brutally honest about what she wants out of life.
“I would like to see her with someone who isn’t particularly famous, who hasn’t come from a reality TV show, or doesn’t want their own publicity.
“I feel like she needs someone who wants her for her actually rather lovely self, who has just made a lot of errors.
“I think she needs to pull back a bit about being so public about what is essentially a very private relationship. Just a good guy who wants nothing more than to love her, the kind of guy she can trust and who won’t kiss and tell afterwards in that kind of repeat pattern that happens.”