It seemed like Jake Paul had finally found his happily ever after in his relationship with Erika Costell, so when he announced their breakup, fans were left rather confused. The pair appeared to be stronger than ever in Shane Dawson’s docuseries, The Mind of Jake Paul, but now in the 21-year-old’s new YouTube series, Jake Paul Uncut, he’s getting real about what happened that led to the demise of Jerika.
In the second episode of the series, Jake pinpoints the exact moment the relationship started to shift and that was when he and Erika went on vacation to Greece, a vacation they had excitedly spoken about just weeks before in Shane’s docuseries. He goes on to also explain how he hopes to ultimately grow as a person from the breakup.
“All of Erika and I’s problems started when we went to Greece. That was my first vacation in a couple of years and that’s when everything started to go downhill for us,” Jake said. “I can’t even focus on [anything] majority of the time because I’m just thinking about Erika or that whole entire situation and it ruins my days and I don’t know how to deal with it at all. The whole entire breakup, in general, has made me realize I need to be happy on my own. I put a lot of happiness on Erika and us as a couple and I lost sight of who I was and what made me happy. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all, but it’s kind of weird to go from that to all of a sudden being on your own.”
But he did state during the episode how he believes they will always stay in each other’s lives.
“I know no matter what, we’re going to be best friends,” he said. In the first episode of the series, Jake got candid about the former couple’s relationship and how overall, Erika did help him become a better person. But ultimately, their relationship began to deteriorate and just wasn’t healthy anymore.
“For the past month or so, Erika and I’s relationship has been super rocky. It turned into this downward spiral where we were just super, super toxic for each other and we know everything about each other and we know how to hurt each other. And it’s so sad it got to that point, but it did,” Jake said. “We got to a point in our relationship where we just tear each other down. She’s broken up with me like five times, I would come back to her, she would come back to me.”
Things just weren’t working out anymore and Jake admitted that he felt a need to hold on to his relationship with the 26-year-old because so many fans were invested in their love story since it started out on-camera and has always been a part of their vlogs and web star personas. Plus, in Shane’s docuseries, the Jerika relationship was painted in a very positive light.
“I just feel so trapped because of the fans and the whole Shane thing. I give Erika all the credit in the world and she did help me out so much, but Shane just made it seem like she’s the only thing good in my life that I had which I don’t think was fair of him to do that. She is great and she’s an amazing girl, but we’re just toxic to each other,” Jake said. “Jerika was one of the best things that happened to me this year, but it did turn toxic in the last few months of our relationship. I just knew deep down that it would be better for both of us if we just move forward without each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. We love each other almost too much.”
Jake and Erika’s split happened off-screen, although it’s obviously a major plot point in this YouTube series. He went on to say that leanring to live with this new norm if being single without Erike has been anything but easy for him.
“My heart instantly shattered, it makes me want to cry just thinking about it,” Jake confessed. For now, the fate of Erika is unclear but currently, they’re not together and Jake seems to be taking it pretty hard. Whether Erika will take to YouTube to share her side of the story remains to be seen, but we have plenty more episodes of Jake’s series to look forward to and we’re sure he’ll keep spilling all the tea.
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