A full year has passed since Hunter Schafer and Dominic Fike ended their brief relationship, but the actress is still grappling with the impact of their time together. During a recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the 25-year-old revealed that while they split amicably, she was left “fundamentally changed” by the experience of being cheated on for the first time.
“It’s part of my truth, but that fundamentally changed me as a person. And it was this whole process of realizing that cheating has nothing to do with you at all,” Schafer explained. “And it has everything to do with that person and whatever kind of pain they’re in or whatever they’re dealing with. It’s all of that, but it’s so hard.”
The Euphoria star added that she wasn’t necessarily reluctant to bring up the musician’s infidelity, mainly because he’s discussed it himself within his music. Last year, following their split, Fike released his sophomore studio album Sunburn. Schafer admitted that she typically finds herself falling for musicians: “It’s like the little sucker in me that’s just like, ‘Oh, my God, you are so charismatic and you play the guitar, whatever.’ And I’m like, goo goo gaga.”
But her pairing with Fike, who also appeared in the second season of Euphoria, was more than a starry-eyed encounter. It was Schafer’s first time in a monogamous relationship and her first with a cis-gender man, having largely learned how to navigate dating in polyamorous, queer relationships. “Most, if not all of my deeply painful experiences I’ve had in life have been with men,” she shared. “And so I really came into this complex of, I never want to let a man back close to me in my life. I don’t see a world in which it’s possible.”
With Fike, Schafer was able to let her guard down. “That’s what was so amazing about my last relationship too, that’s kind of what was cool about the public aspect,” she said. “This is a straight guy who is in the music scene, too. And we are in a public relationship. He’s dating a trans woman, and he’s completely straight. He’s only dated cis women before, and he’s toting me around, happy to be my boyfriend in front of the world. And people are saying horrible, nasty shit because it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re so gay.’ He didn’t care at all.”
The relationship, Schafer continued, changed her in the sense that it provided her with a deeper understanding of how to approach monogamy. “My understanding of relationships and love and everything, really was rooted in polyamory and queerness, and sort of the way that that world works, which is very open,” she said. “I don’t know where I totally land on it now because I’ve done both. And I think there’s validity in both, and it’s really a choice, and it comes down to each individual thing.”
She added: “But coming from that as my background, and the way I learned to love, I really looked at monogamy as, like, you’re shorting yourself and whatever. And then I got into a monogamous relationship. Oh, bitch, I get it. I loved it. But then it opens up the door for that kind of betrayal, which is a different world of pain.”
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
