Cheryl Burke was questioning everything when she and Matthew Lawrence decided to get a divorce.
The Dancing with the Stars alum, 40, filed for divorce from Lawrence, 44, in 2022 after nearly three years of marriage. When their relationship was ending, she remembers wondering what she'd done wrong.
"I think the first thing we do is, in a way, shame ourselves, blame ourselves, and definitely try to put the pieces together and get answers," she said of what was going through her mind during the split on the Feb. 6 episode of the I Do, Part Two podcast with Jana Kramer. "But sometimes, there's just no answers, right?"
Related: Matthew Lawrence and Cheryl Burke's Relationship: A Look Back
Despite knowing better, Burke said, "I think naturally, my brain went to, yeah -- what did I do wrong? Did I not sleep with him enough? There's all these questions that I ask myself. Was I not there emotionally?"
"But ultimately, intellectually, I know, of course, it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with that person."
Had she not been "in therapy for as long as" she had, Burke said, "It would have really taken a toll on my own self-esteem, my confidence, just me as a woman in general."
More than a year after she filed, Burke told PEOPLE that finalizing the split was "really healing" as she shifted her focus to her single era -- which she said "couldn't have happened at a better time."
"I think I definitely have a lot of growing and evolving to do, and now...I have the time to really do that without the anxiety of a timeline," she said.
Related: Cheryl Burke Questions If Ex Matthew Lawrence Felt 'Emasculated' by Her Financial Success: It 'May Have Taken a Toll'
"I feel at peace, at ease and I'm just excited. I feel like I've been a reborn human being here on this planet because it's so many changes, right? My career, my personal life."
She also said she was not in a rush to get back out there, but was rather "being selfish" for the "first time" in her life. "I mean, I deserve it. I've always put everyone in front of me."
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Lawrence began dating TLC's Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas in January 2023, PEOPLE confirmed at the time, and for his part, said that his life was in "complete bloom" amidst the new relationship.
The couple are still together and Thomas, 53, said in a May interview that she doesn't "have any fear at all when it comes to" her boyfriend. "This is the first time that we have both experienced being in a relationship to where, I mean, there's no drama at all," she said on Fox 5 Atlanta's Portia lifestyle show. "We get along and we have differences but we, still to this day, we've never had an argument."