Chelsea Handler Reveals Cryptic Reason She Broke up With Jo Koy

Chelsea Handler explained why she and Jo Koy broke up over the summer, noting that there were “some behaviors” they “couldn’t agree on.” The comedian felt she would have to “abandon myself” in order to keep the relationship going, and she was not willing to do that. Handler and Koy, who worked together on Chelsea Lately, split in June, just before they would have marked their one-year anniversary.

In the latest episode of Brooke Shields’ Now What? podcast, Handler kept the precise reasons for the split vague, but she said that “walking away” from Koy was “one of the most difficult things” she has ever done. “There were just some behaviors that we couldn’t agree on, and it felt to me like I would have to abandon myself – which maybe I would have been OK to do if I were 20 or 25 – but I wasn’t willing to do that,” Handler said, via Entertainment Tonight. “No matter how much I loved this person – and I loved him so much – I was not going to abandon myself.”

Handler stood firm with Koy, telling him that she would not change the way she behaves “in order to make you feel more comfortable,” she recalled. “I had to walk away from something that I really believed was gonna be a forever relationship, and so that was difficult.” Handler said they tried therapy and other methods to help them stay together, but she soon realized it was “futile.”

Since the split, Handler and Koy have not spoken to each other lately. However, she hopes they could renew their friendship. “I don’t think we can have a friendship until there’s some accountability and some responsibility taken,” she told Shields. “We had a really great friendship and I would love to have that again, you know, but without a couple steps in the right direction, I don’t see that happening.”

Handler’s relationship with Koy changed her perspective on love and it influenced her newest Netflix special, Revolution. “It’s sharp, it’s funny, it’s poignant, and it’s a story,” Handler said of the new special, which is now streaming. “It’s a love story. It’s about me kind of losing my faith in men and kind of all the examples of why, and then finally meeting Jo Koy and renewing my faith in men, and then even, you know, after that not working out, not to shut down and close off, to not use a failed relationship or a relationship that didn’t go the distance as a reason to say, ‘F— it. I’m single again.’”

Handler said she hopes her experience will inspire other women to “never settle.” They did discuss marriage because it was important to Koy. “And then, towards the end of the relationship, it just became clear that this was not my person,” she said.

As for Koy, the Easter Sunday star has said the two will remain friends. in August, he told Entertainment Tonight their relationship was “great” and he was looking forward to the “next chapter.” The comedian added, “We’re great friends and that’s how it will always be. I’ll always champion for her and she’ll always champion for me – and we’re gonna win, everyone wins.”