This Morning star Michelle Elman appeared on the show on Wednesday as she revealed her cheating ex fiancé was found on a dating website while he was with her.
The life coach and author, 30, who has frequently appeared on the ITV show to give advice about relationships, tearfully took to her Instagram last week to explain that she had ended their engagement after just 24 hours.
The TV star teared up as she declared that her partner had ‘f***ed up’ and ‘ruined a really good thing’, but insisted she was going to be OK.
Now she has appeared on This Morning where she told how she was messaged by another woman who found her now former partner on a dating site.
She told hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley: ‘We met on a dating app, he was my first date after the pandemic. Love of my life, healthiest relationship I had ever had.
This Morning star Michelle Elman appeared on the show on Wednesday as she revealed her cheating ex was found on a dating website while he was with her
The life coach and author, 30, who has frequently appeared on the ITV show to give advice about relationships, tearfully took to her Instagram last week to explain that she had ended their engagement after just 24 hours
‘I was engaged and then a woman reached out and asked if he was my fiancé. I ended up speaking to her for an hour on the phone. He was on a dating app, he was on a business trip and yeah…’
She added of the deceit: ‘I fully back myself. I am emotionally intelligent, smart, intelligent woman. I have every tool in my tool kit to notice red flags. If someone wants to lie to you they will.
‘Wholeheartedly I did not see any red flags. As a red flag the second you go on their phone, the relationship is gone. The trust is gone.’
She went on to explain that her partner was with her when she got the first message about him being on a dating site.
She said: ‘He was with me when I got the first message. I thought it was a colleague. It took a while to figure out. My first reaction was shock and I kept saying please tell me first ,I don’t want to find out from her.
‘He admitted it and to others as well but I think my reaction was just was ‘you have ruined a good thing, this is supposed to be happiest day of my life’.
Michelle flew back to the UK over the weekend a day after revealing she had dumped her fiancé Ben for cheating on her.
This Morning’s relationship expert shocked fans after she revealed her engagement had ended in less than 24 hours after discovering her partner of three years had been seeing another woman.
Now she has appeared on This Morning where she told how she was messaged by another woman who found her now former partner on a dating site
She said: ‘I was engaged and then a woman reached out and asked if he was my fiancé. I ended up speaking to her for an hour on the phone. He was on a dating app’
Michelle had been on a solo trip ‘on the other side of the world’, going on dates while she was away yet has returned now to speak of her heartbreak.
Writing on Instagram, the TV personality said: ‘I flew back a day early because I didn’t expect all of this to blow up so much.
‘I was feeling quite powerless half way across the world with rubbish signal not being able to address all of this so I’m home now and I am choosing to speak to This Morning because they have been my greatest champion from day one.’
In a separate post, Michelle shared a clip of her appearing on This Morning last week despite going through her break-up.
The TV star said that she was not going to let her ex ‘drag down the joy’ her career brings.
It suggests the break-up took place a few weeks ago with Michelle only choosing to go public with the separation this weekend.
‘Last week I went on This Morning and it was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in a while but it was worth it,’ she wrote.
‘It reminded me of my power and he’s taken enough away from me so I wasn’t going to let him drag down the joy my career brings me too.
‘Part of me wondered if it was too soon but the timing was too perfect to be a coincidence. The day they asked me to be on was the only morning I was free for three weeks and the only day I wasn’t staying with my sister or on my solo trip.’
She went on to thank those who work on This Morning – from the editors to make-up artists – for holding her together.
‘Everyone wrapped me in bubble wrap, kept me safe so I could go on air and be my best,’ she said.
‘Genuinely never felt more a part of the family to be surrounded by so much compassion and love and felt myself for the first time coming up for air.’
Michelle, the author of books including The Selfish Romantic, had previously announced her upcoming nuptials with her boyfriend of almost three years with a photo on social media.
However, she explained that later the same day one of her followers messaged her to reveal he had been cheating on Michelle with her.
Michelle became a motivational coach after living through her own childhood experiences of life-threatening health problems, long stays in hospital and fifteen complex surgeries that left her scarred, both mentally and physically.
She had a brain tumour, a punctured intestine, an obstructed bowel, a cyst in her brain and a condition called hydrocephalus – where fluid builds up in the brain, causing, dangerous pressure that can be fatal if untreated.
Explaining her absence from social media last week, Michelle began: ‘I don’t know how to make this video so I’m just going to get into it. The last you heard from me I was engaged and I’m not anymore.
‘The day I posted that engagement photo is the day I found out he had been cheating on me and one of the women he was cheating on me with actually followed me and that’s how I found out.
‘She’s a lovely woman, and she didn’t know, and you’ve got to love his taste in women. You’ve got to laugh. We’re laughing and crying a lot over here.’
She continued: ‘The main thing people always say with cheating is “Did you know?” And obviously not because I said yes to marrying him.
‘But also does it matter? I think what I’ve realised through all of this is if someone wants to actively deceive you they will.
‘When it comes to life coaches there’s this illusion that we’re perfect, we’re all knowing or that we have our lives together and it’s just not true.
‘I’ve always said I’m just five steps ahead and that’s how I am able to teach other people.
‘The only difference is I have all the tools and resources to make sure I’m okay right now and that I know I’m going to learn from this.’
Breaking into tears, she added: ‘My own life coach says we never let a good crisis go to waste, and this is a crisis. I think I am a good life coach because I f*** up more than you and I learn from it.’
She then corrected herself and said: ‘Actually, let me rephrase that one because I didn’t f**k up – he did. And he ruined a really good thing. And it was a good thing – when it was good, it was really good.’
Michelle often shares photos of her scars from her various operations to inspire others to be confident.
In 2018, she told how she nearly died while undergoing brain surgery to treat her tumour at the age of 11.
She remembered the experience of ‘floating’ above her bed and that the experience of ‘dying’ was a ‘calm sensation’.
Addressing fans who have followed her journey, she said: ‘I know a lot of people follow me for positive representation around dating and then healthy relationships and knowing that you have chronic illnesses or are plus size, all the things that I am, you can also find love.
‘And for those people listening, please keep that hope because I still believe in love. I still believe it’s worth it and to be honest if I could go back and swipe right, knowing how it would end I would still go back and make the same decision.’
Michelle – who kept her ex-boyfriend’s identity private until their engagement – also asked her followers not to try and track him down, saying she had forgiven him almost ‘instantly’ as while their relationship was over, she still loved him.
She explained: ‘This was a person I loved for many years and still do love in many ways and so calling him names or chucking the ring out or pouring his wine down the sink, or any other suggestions have not been helping me.
‘And frankly I wouldn’t be a life coach if I didn’t believe people could learn and grow from their mistakes.
‘It was a pretty f***ing big mistake, but it was a mistake and people are not their behaviours.’
Replying to a fan who asked if she had considered forgiving her ex, Michelle elaborated: ‘I already do forgive him. It was pretty much instant for me because he is the person who has loved me most in the world and this has really taught me that unconditional love does exist because I do still love him.
‘The love is unconditional, the relationship is not and I won’t be staying but I do forgive him.
‘I’ve been comparing it to a bank account. All the love he has poured into me in the last three years has put coins in the bank, his cheating drained the bank account but I’m not leaving the relationship in debt’
At the end of her video, Michelle put on a brave face and said she was ‘healing’.
She said: ‘All of this f***ing sucks but I always say this or something better. So I guess I’m due something better.’
She added: ‘And another sentence that’s been helping me is that you know how everyone says you are who you attract? I just don’t believe that’s true, it’s not about who you attract, its who you keep.
‘So I am single and can’t wait to share part of my single journey at some point, but for the moment I am definitely healing.’
Taking one last sly dig at her ex, she quipped: ‘I mean you’ve got to laugh, I was engaged for 24 hours. At least the ring was beautiful. Even if it didn’t fit.’
Captioning the clip, she said: ‘This is where I’ve been. This is the longest I’ve gone without posting in over a decade and I’ve missed you. I’m OK (or at least, I will be!) and I’m ready to come back.
‘One of the main reasons I waited so long to share him is because I never wanted to make this kind of video and yet I don’t regret it because that’s how I found out and wow, am I so glad I did.
‘So grateful to the wonderful woman who was brave enough to send me a message letting me know.
‘I’m really putting my heart on my sleeve here and this is the most vulnerable I have ever got on here. Sending love to anyone who has a similar story. Onwards and upwards’.
Michelle later took to her Instagram Stories to thank her followers for their outpouring of support with a selfie, and explained that she was on a solo holiday.
The writer also revealed that the couple had been trying for a baby for several months before they had split, and said she had begun dating while away.
She wrote: ‘I’m so overcome by all the love. Thank you for all the kindness. Do you remember when I said I was going to book a solo trip?
‘The part I didn’t tell you is because we had been trying for a bay for three months so I wanted to do it before I was pregnant.
‘So I’m on the solo trip now. Coming back tomorrow. Grateful I’m not pregnant and also have gone on dates while here.’
Michelle had been single for eight years when she began dating her former partner in August 2021.
Opening up about their relationship back in November, she shared a picture of them swimming together and explained he had been her first date after the pandemic.
She wrote: ‘I’ve always hated the narrative of “I knew” so to be clear, I didn’t know on the first date. I didn’t know a year in. It took me a long time to be sure and that’s not a him problem.
‘For years, I had a faulty picker when it came to the men in my life so I took this slow, careful and purposely didn’t project a future together and focused on living in the moment.
‘This year I also wrote a book about him, just joking it’s not about him its about the eight years I was single. How I learned to date without feeling bad about myself. The last chapter was about him.
‘When you’re single you think being in a relationship is going to change your life but it’s just not the case.
‘ Life is about peaks and troughs. He’s a bright spark in the trough, and it’s nice to have someone to tell the details to in your life.’
Writing for the Daily Mail in January last year, Michelle explained that her first relationship had been ’emotionally abusive’ and that she had dated ‘a slew of awful men’.
She penned: ‘Yet I stayed with some of them because I thought I was lucky to have any relationship.
‘Women who look like me can’t be picky, I thought — and I’d sit, phone in my hand, waiting desperately for a crumb of a text.’
She explained she realised how unhappy she was and changed her dating strategy and outlook.
Michelle wrote: ‘Today, I am in a relationship with someone who values me for who I am and doesn’t call me “high-maintenance” the moment I ask for my needs to be met.
‘Is it the fairytale? I can’t say (I don’t think anyone truly can) but what I can say is that it is far healthier than any relationship I could have imagined for myself ten years ago.’
