Lily Allen admitted her “codependent behavior” with her first boyfriend was a major “red flag.”
When a listener called into her and Miquita Oliver’s “Miss Me?” podcast to ask about kissing one’s own children, Allen recalled that her experience with intimacy changed when she began dating.
“It’s funny because I think I was a tactile kid, but as soon as I got my first boyfriend, Lester, complete transference of intimacy,” the “Smile” singer said on Monday’s episode.
“Not only did I not want to touch or be cuddled or be kissed by anyone in my family, I couldn’t engage in it with them either. It was like, this person is where I’ve put that now,” Allen went on to explain.
Allen — who recently split from husband David Harbour — acknowledged that it was an unfavorable quality of hers.
“It’s incredibly like, red flag, codependent behavior that I just put all of my emotional dependency on one person,” the 39-year-old said.
Oliver, 40, then chimed in and said that Allen was likely reacting to having a “safe male figure” in her life which perhaps made her then-self “over the moon.”
“Yeah. . . maybe,” the London-born musician replied.
Earlier in the episode, Allen detailed how she approaches physical intimacy with her two daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12.
“One of them, when I say give me a kiss, she just puts her forehead forward for me to kiss her on the forehead,” she said.
“And the other one wants full on kisses on the lips. And yeah, I don’t have a problem with either. Whatever they want. Whatever they’re comfortable with.”
Allen shares her daughters with ex-husband Sam Cooper. The pair were married from 2011 to 2018.
Her confession about her past behavior in relationships comes on the heels of her split from Harbour — whom she married in September 2020.
Sources confirmed the split to People on Feb. 3 saying that, “Her marriage has been crumbling and they have split.”
Allen also admitted that she was “not in a good place” during an episode of the podcast released one month before the split was announced.
“I know I’ve been talking about it for months, but I’ve been spiraling and spiraling,” she told Oliver during the Jan. 9 episode. “It’s got out of control. I’ve tried.”
Chatter of Allen’s split from the “Stranger Things” actor began to swirl near the end of 2024 when she allegedly had a profile on the celebrity dating app Raya, per the Daily Mail.
Earlier this month, the mother of two admitted to having checked into a treatment center for “emotional turmoil” following news of the split.
Meanwhile, Harbour is reportedly moving on and has been linked to aspiring model Ellie Fallon, 27.
