Heartbroken John Cena still wants to raise a family with Nikki Bella after their wedding was called off last month.
“I don’t want anybody else,” Cena, 41, said on the “Today” show on Monday. “I love Nicole, and I’m really trying to support her in her trying to find whatever it was that made this fall apart in the first place. I don’t have any other hopes than that one day maybe we can work it out.”
Cena told hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb over a glass of white wine that he and Bella, 34, still talk, even though it’s “difficult” in their current state.
“It’s all messed up, it’s a relationship,” he said. “I love her, I want to be with her, I want to make her my wife, I want to be the father of her children. And that’s all from [my heart].”
The wrestlers were together for six years, many of which were documented on reality shows “Total Divas” and “Total Bellas.” Cena proposed to Bella live on “Wrestlemania” last year.
The couple pulled the plug on their engagement in April, just weeks before they were set to tie the knot, reportedly due to Cena’s reluctance to have children, an issue he confessed may have led to the relationship’s demise.
“Over the six years of our relationship, if you look at me five years ago: Stubborn, selfish, self-focused,” he admitted. “Life had always been about me, and slowly, over time, this woman comes in and steals my heart. And whether I want to realize it or not, she becomes my No. 1. So I’m willing to go back on all these things that I say, a lot of them I was holding onto just out of stubbornness: ‘I won’t have kids.’ It took a very strong look in the mirror for me to be like, ‘Why? This person is my No. 1, and it’s something that’s very valuable to her.’”
As for Bella, the reality star hinted that a reconciliation may be possible someday, explaining to “Extra” on Monday that she needed to take a break and find herself to be sure marriage and kids were what both she and Cena really wanted. She also revealed that her own mental health was a factor in the breakup.
“I felt so much pressure from the cameras, the world, my family, John, and I think I started taking care of everyone and forgot about me,” she said. “That’s what caused me, I don’t know — I don’t want to say ‘snapped,’ I don’t want to say ‘a breakdown,’ but something like that.”
