Pete was 11 when his parents divorced

Strictly semi-finalist Pete Wicks recently revealed he’s felt angry for “most of his life”, sharing the reason for this “overriding” feeling in an intimate podcast chat.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast in November, Pete shared his challenges with anger, revealing that he thinks it’s always been a “safe space” for him.

He added that he thinks it stemmed from his dad leaving following his divorce from Pete’s mum. Pete was 11 years old at the time.

Strictly star Pete Wicks recently reflected on feeling angry for the majority of his life (Credit: YouTube)

Strictly star Pete Wicks on heartache behind his anger

Speaking to Jake Humphrey, Pete shared: “Anger has probably been one of the overriding feelings I’ve probably had for most of my life. But I don’t necessarily think that’s because I’m always angry. I think that was just the easiest emotion for me to be able to express.

“I think sometimes, not just men, it’s not a gender thing, but I think more commonly men struggle with processing their own emotions and how they’re feeling. So a lot of the time it can be anxiety or whatever else and it shows itself as anger. And I think that’s been the case with me. Because it’s kind of been the go-to thing to get angry – it’s a way of releasing whatever you’re feeling.”

Strictly star Pete then shared: “Anger’s been a safe space which sounds like a really ridiculous thing to say. But that’s kind of how I viewed it and, as I’ve got older, I’ve kind of realised that. But at the time you just think, I’m just a really angry person.”

He added honestly: “I felt more comfortable being angry than I did happy.”

Explaining that happiness is sometimes “fleeting”, Pete continued. “Pretending to be happy all the time isn’t being happy because it’s not really acknowledging how you actually feel. And I think for me angry was something that I felt more comfortable being because I understood it. I didn’t feel uneasy being angry but I felt uneasy being happy.”

Pete was on It Takes Two this week sharing his upset at ‘abuse’ levelled at him over his semi-final place (Credit: BBC)

Cause of Pete’s anger

Speaking to the host, Pete then continued. He commented: “I wasn’t an angry child, but then it kind of came out of nowhere, well not really out of nowhere, I think I look back on it and think it was out of nowhere and actually doing the book was quite cathartic to recognise things that may have affected why I was angry.

“You know, my mum and dad divorced, and that’s a fairly normal thing to happen to people so there’s no reason why that should have been a trigger for for me. But I think the situation in how they divorced and what happened thereafter I didn’t fully understand.

“Pretty much from from the divorce, that was it. My dad, he kind of left and I didn’t see him very often. I really looked up to my dad so not having him around…” he shared.

“And it’s not like he was a real kind of emotional cuddly dad, but I thought he was just the best. Everything I did was to try and make him proud and then not having that there, I kind of didn’t know where I was.

“Then my mum had a new man who wasn’t my dad. My mum’s mental health was bad at the time really bad and that’s something I didn’t understand. Because I felt like my dad had left so he didn’t want me. My mum wasn’t really present properly which again probably made me feel like she didn’t want me. So I had to then do things on my own and I think I was angry about that.

“I was angry that, why am I not enough for people to want to stick around? And then that kind of made everything an issue,” the star said. 

Could Pete leave this weekend? (Credit: BBC)

‘You’ll spend the rest of your life learning’

The star concluded that writing his autobiography helped him to finally process how he felt.

“I think you’ll spend the rest of your life learning different things about you, and different things will happen, and different situations, you know,” Pete said. 

“I lost my nan, and that’s what kind of made me think about looking back at things and reflecting on things to work out why I am the way I am now, and who I am now, and what that has come from.”