YouTube star Jake Paul is opening up about his recent breakup with Erika Costell, calling his relationship with her “super, super toxic.”
On his new series “Jake Paul Uncut,” which he calls a reality show of his life that’s actually real, Paul went into more detail about the end of their romance and why they needed to part ways.
“We know how to hurt each other. It’s so sad it got to that point. But it did,” he said. “… Our relationship is so complicated because of the business; the personal [side]; [how] she used to be my assistant. We all have our insecurities. I have trust issues. We got to a point in our relationship where we would just tear each other down. We went into this downward spiral that we couldn’t control.”
He said in the previous months, Costell had broken up with him five times before the two would make up and get back together a few days later. He called their relationship at that point a “cycle of shit” and said they metaphorically “fucking beat each other up all the time.”
Before showing any video in “Uncut,” Paul said he was aware of the criticism that he was exploiting the end of his relationship with Costell—the first episode, after all, is titled, “Here’s Why Erika & I Broke Up.” But he doesn’t subscribe to that theory because their relationship began and flourished on camera. If their entire relationship was shown on YouTube, he figures, how can the end of it be seen as exploitive?
Paul also discussed the recent Shane Dawson documentary episode that made him seem sad and which showed Costell defending Paul against his former friends who left Team 10, his brother Logan Paul, and the fact his father was living with him.
“I give Erika all the credit in the world. She did help me out so much,” Paul said. “But Shane made it seem like she was the only good thing in my life that I had. I don’t think it was fair of him to do that.”
Paul doesn’t show any new footage of Costell, and he said he sent her the “Uncut” episode to preview before he dropped it on YouTube on Sunday night. As of Monday morning, Costell hadn’t responded to the video on social media.
In recent weeks, Paul has been in the news for getting together with an Instagram model named Nikki Banner, who subsequently told the Daily Dot that she was told by Paul during their fling that he and Costell were no longer an item. “You can’t break up a broken up couple,” Banner said.
At a recent shoot for an episode of Team 10 member Justin Roberts’ new web series, “Work in Progress,” Paul and Costell have an encounter, and beforehand, Paul said he doesn’t know how to act. Maybe he should be really nice to her, he thinks out loud. Later that day, they apparently broke up (though Paul doesn’t show any of that on camera). “My heart instantly shattered,” Paul said afterward. “Our relationship is too toxic.”
Here’s the entire video: