AceShowbiz - Cheryl Burke got candid about how childhood trauma has impacted her love life. When appearing on the "Allison Interviews" podcast, the "Dancing with the Stars" pro revealed how "no constant father figure" led her to choose the wrong partners.

"I unconsciously fell into the pattern of falling for the same type of men which were abusive, non-available, non-committal, infidelity, all of that," the 38-year-old said in the Tuesday, August 9 episode of the podcast. "I now, through the years of therapy, I have been able to understand why."

Cheryl said those issues were caused by "no constant father figure" in her life and being sexually molested by "an older retired mailman" when she was a child. She then elaborated, "My definition of love was not real... To me, love equaled infidelity, love equaled being treated like s**t, love equaled physical violence, love equaled mental abuse."

The dancer claimed she would immediately recoil when a "nice man" came into her life. "I wouldn't understand why I felt so disgusted with that," she shared, before adding, "It was because I didn't have that as a little girl."

Cheryl, who filed for divorce from husband Matthew Lawrence in February, said she's currently working on herself when it comes to her romantic relationships. "If I don't retrain my brain, I will be attracted to the same person," she said. "I will marry that person who resembles the person before and it will just be a vicious cycle."

Cheryl described her father, who died in 2018, as a "very non-committal" person. Back in September 2020, Cheryl said he was an alcoholic, and his death has been a huge wake-up call for her to get sober.

"My father passed away, and then my dad was an alcoholic, so either I was gonna crash and burn and check myself into rehab or I was gonna just quit cold turkey," she spilled on the "LadyGang" podcast. "That's just my personality. It's either black or white."