Ellie Goulding Reveals 'Trauma' Over Niall Horan Cheating Allegations

Persistent rumors that Ellie Goulding cheated on Ed Sheeran with Niall Horan date back to 2014. According to a recent interview, the "Anything Could Happen" singer denied ever being in a relationship with Sheeran in the past and opened up about the effect the relationship had on her in the long run as well as the real-life difficulties she faced. "It's fascinating how many people are interested in that," she told Daily Mail via Billboard on Feb. 19. "It happened nine years ago. You know, completely honestly, it caused me a lot of trauma, actually. "I envy the fact that my friends just spent their 20s having flings and one-night stands and what every 20-something goes through in private," Goulding continued. "But every single thing I did was written about. I was made to feel like a terrible person, and I really struggled with that because I know I'm not." It is easy to grasp what the public assumed took place between the three artists just by listening to Sheeran's "Don't" — a harsh single on X about being cheated on by someone who makes "money the same way," which fans concluded was about Goulding since both she and the "Shape of You" singer are musicians.

The song also has the following noteworthy lyric: "It's not like we were both on tour/ We were staying on the same f–king hotel floor/ And I wasn't looking for a promise or commitment/ But it was never just fun, and I thought you were different." However, Goulding denies that she was ever even involved with Sheeran. "I did go on a few dates with Niall, but I was never in a relationship with Ed," she told Elle UK in 2015. "I have absolutely no idea where that came from and why it was turned into such a big thing." Although she is willing to discuss her dating history, Goulding finds it annoying that her relationships are often the focus of conversation. "I find it so frustrating that female musicians are constantly defined by the men they have or haven't dated. It's something I've talked about with Taylor a lot," she said, referring to Taylor Swift, who is also Sheeran's friend. "She definitely feels that. She gets bothered by it. It's like, you can be a great artist, you can write great songs, but the thing that everyone is going to talk about is some relationship they think you have had or not had. It's definitely something we both think happens to female artists over male artists."

Recently, Goulding replied to a comment accusing her of cheating nearly 10 years ago on one of her TikTok videos, to which she responded, "False !!!!" "I can laugh about [the rumor] now but it changed things for me," Goulding said about the TikTok post. "I became kind of reclusive. I didn't want to perform. That's why I wrote that comment because every day I get comments about this stupid teenage situation. It was nothing and it was private – and it caused me such a huge amount of grief and I resent it."After marrying Caspar Jopling in 2019, Goulding welcomed a son in 2021, while Sheeran has two daughters with wife Cherry Seaborn. "It is in the past and we're friends," Goulding says of her current relationship with Sheeran. "We're adults."