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Today, you’ll know that Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom are happily together and share a 4-year-old daughter, Daisy.
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But what you may have forgotten is that they actually put a year-long pause on their relationship before they got engaged in 2019.
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In case you need some extra context, Katy and Orlando — who started dating in 2016 after hitting it off at a Golden Globes afterparty — announced in February 2017 that they were “taking respectful, loving space” from their relationship after a year of dating.
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Katy and Orlando seemingly remained friends, and by early 2018, they were spotted on vacation together, sparking rumors of a rekindled romance.
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Since then, Katy and Orlando’s relationship has gone from strength to strength. They made their red carpet debut in September 2018, got engaged in February 2019, and announced in March the following year that they were expecting their first child together.
Daisy Dove Bloom was born in August 2020.
Spotify / Call Her Daddy
And now, appearing on this week’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Katy opened up about the decision to step back from their relationship and why it was for the best.
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Spotify / Call Her Daddy
“We weren’t really in it from day one,” the Teenage Dream singer said, revealing that their romantic intentions weren’t fully aligned when they first started dating.
“He was [in it] because he had just done a huge time of celibacy, and he had set intentions,” she said. “And I was fresh out of a relationship, and I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I need to swim in a different pond, but I had yet to do a lot of like, real work.”
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Katy revealed that right before their split, Orlando took part in the Hoffman Process, which she describes as a week-long retreat where participants engage in activities to “rewire the way you think about yourself” and “rewire all the bad habits.”
“[It] rewrites all your neuropathways through different physical activities,” she said. “So there’s no medicine or plant medicine. It’s literally just scientists and therapists that have put together programming that help you quiet that imposter syndrome.”
Spotify / Call Her Daddy
When Orlando returned from the retreat, Katy said it became clear that they needed to part ways as he was no longer interested in playing along with her “games.”
“He wasn’t playing this cat-mouse game anymore. And I was like, ‘This is boring. I’m moving on,’” she said. “I was so used to this push-pull. Because once you have it. I was playing games. It was a dopamine hit.”
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The time they spent apart was “really tough” for Katy, but she eventually went and tried the Hoffman retreat for herself. Fast-forward to today, and she credits this experience with helping rebuild their relationship and changing her life.
“I would be dead without it,” she said of the retreat, which apparently gave her the “tools” to understand Orlando better.
“I would not be on this planet without that process — and meditation,” Katy explained. “Because the noise got so large. When Witness came out and, things started to shift, and I thought I really loved myself, and I thought I really had that center, but actually that core was created from outside validation.
She continued: “It just helped me rewire what I think about myself, and it helped me connect my head to my heart.”
Spotify / Call Her Daddy
Elsewhere in the interview, Katy gushed about Orlando and listed off her favorite things about him, from “his adventure spirit” to his healthy habits.
“He’s got a free spirit, he’s super healthy,” she began. “He shows up, he’s loyal, he’s a Capricorn, he’s not scared… He can get his hands dirty; he loves the elements. He’s spontaneous.”
Phillip Faraone / Getty Images
Katy also said that she and Orlando continue prioritizing couples therapy to strengthen their bond.
“We want to evolve,” she said. “That’s, I think, why we’re in our relationship to become better humans so we can raise this beautiful human being.”
“It’s been different layers,” she said later in the conversation when discussing their dynamic. “The more we do the work, the more we find the next level. And sometimes we get stuck… But we’re gonna do it. And we find the next level. That’s why we’re continuing in the relationship.”
You can find the full episode of Call Her Daddy here.
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