Christine McGuinness has revealed she dates women as she opened up about her sexuality following her split from former Top Gear host Paddy McGuinness.
The pair announced they would be divorcing after 11 years of marriage in 2022, shortly after the airing of their documentary Our Family and Autism in 2021.
They remained living together in their seven-bedroom Cheshire home throughout the separation to focus on co-parenting twins Leo and Penelope, 10 and Felicity, seven, before their divorce was finalised in October last year.
However, McGuinness, 37, has said that media scrutiny over her private life has forced her to come out and discuss her sexuality.
“I’ve struggled more because of the attention around my sexuality and that’s something that I haven’t discussed publicly and I haven’t discussed it intentionally because for me it’s took me years to process why it’s big news who I date,” she told Elizabeth Day on the How To Fail podcast.
“It shouldn’t matter somebody’s gender. It never mattered to me.” McGuinness said her sexuality was “never a secret”, however tabloid attention following her split made her go “back into myself.”
“I went extremely quiet from feeling quite comfortable and happy and free,” she continued. “I almost was going backwards and I could feel myself shrinking and staying quieter because of the noise around it, it almost made me feel like, well, I must be doing something wrong because why would it be front page news?”
She said that photographs of her dating woman had circulated “multiple times over three years” and she believed interest would die down, but it hadn’t. “I’ve intentionally stayed quiet on it because I didn’t want to draw any more attention to what is my normal.”
However, she said she now feels forced to address the issue head on, despite being told “to never discuss it ever”.
“It’s just got to the point where I’m like, okay, if I don’t actually acknowledge this at some point, then I don’t know if it’s ever going to go away, and I just want to be able to date and I want to be able to just enjoy it, and I want to be able to just feel free if I want to hold somebody’s hand,” she said.
“It shouldn’t matter if they’re male or female, it shouldn’t matter what their gender is. I shouldn’t really ever even have to explain in any way who I want to spend my time with. That’s my business.”
She added: “I’m just at the point where I think I’ve got a nice balance of going, yeah I date women and so what, what’s the big deal? But also knowing that I don’t have to go into big, massive detail about it either.”
McGuiness said she does not feel comfortable describing herself as lesbian or bisexual but a “free spirit”, adding: “That’s the only word I would put on it.” She explained she had first dated boys and girls when she was 14 or 15 years old and had her first kisses with people of both genders.
