Trisha Goddard recently announced the sad news that she was divorcing her husband Peter Gianfrancesco, after almost 20 years of marriage.
The popular TV presenter and Peter had been married since 1998, but never welcomed children together.
And in a recent interview with Lorraine, the 60-year-old shared that her battle with breast cancer eventually proved to be the final straw in ending her decades-long marriage.
Speaking on Lorraine, she confessed that the diagnosis may have proven a “death knell” for the relationship, admitting that she was “made to feel very, very ugly”.
She shared how her entire relationship changed following her terrifying battle with the disease – and that sadly, they weren’t able to make it through their difficulties.
Trisha admitted, “I ended up feeling very, very ugly…I’m choosing my words very carefully because there are other people involved.
“But I was made to feel very, very ugly. I did work very hard at keeping the marriage together, but there came a point when I just had to call time, because mentally, physically, everything else, I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
She went on to confess, “I have to say, it probably, in the end, proved a bit of a death knell for my relationship.
“What do you say. It’s difficult. It’s 20 years. He absolutely was my rock, but then things really started going downhill. I think both of us changed.”
Trisha was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, but was given the all-clear at the end of 2008 after a difficult recovery. In the past, she has described how nauseous she felt while receiving treatment, and how the pain of the illness left her feeling “as if [she was] 103 years old”.
During her interview with Lorraine, Trisha continued to share how difficulty it was to get through marital troubles after her illness.
“How you feel after breast cancer, and what it does to you, and how it affects your love life…there’s a statistic out that says there’s a very high risk of women’s marriages and relationships breaking down after breast cancer, although if a man has cancer it’s not the same way.”
However, it seems Trisha’s personal life is now on the up, as she recently revealed that she’s met a new man, who she says has helped her to feel “sexy again”.
“I didn’t intend to meet him…I’d kind of given up.”, she admitted to Lorraine.
“The real crux of it and why I trusted him was because he was a widower. He had lost his beloved wife to breast cancer, stayed with her until the end, nursed her all the way through. Was a single dad to an 11 and a nine year old.
“This is somebody who…you can’t at our age just jump into bed! I say ‘Oh I’ve got to take all my meds’, and he is so cool with it. And having that support, knowing I’m coming up to my 10 year scan, he’s there for me. He understands. He gets it.”
Trisha continued, “I don’t know where it’s going to go, what’s going to happen…but I feel womanly again, and if you like, sexy again.”
