Shannen Doherty fears men won’t want to date her because she has an ‘expiration date’
Shannen Doherty admitted that she’s hesitant to start dating again amid her battle with stage 4 cancer.
“Listen, I think it’s hard for somebody like me, in my personal opinion, because it’s hard to go into dating someone when you know that they might have an expiration date,” she told Kelly Ripa on Wednesday’s episode of the latter’s podcast, “Let’s Talk Off Camera.”
The “Charmed” alum, 53, explained that “most men” struggle more than women when it comes to handling “death and illness.”
“I think that I’m a very hard sell,” she confessed.
“It’s more companionship than anything else. Anyway, I’m a little self-conscious, because I have so many scars from surgery that it’s like, how do you explain that ‘No, that isn’t from giving birth, that’s from reconstruction surgery.'”
Doherty further added that, while she’s had a complicated past with her confidence, the surgeries following her cancer diagnoses have made her “very insecure.”
The former “Beverly Hills, 90210” actress has been battling the disease ever since she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015.
Although she went into remission in 2017, the cancer returned three years later. By 2023, it spread to her brain and bones.
Since then, the actress has gotten candid about her health struggles — and even revealed that she has been downsizing and moving her material things into storage units to create an “easier transition” for her mom, Rosa.
“My priority at the moment is my mom. I know it’s going to be hard on her if I pass away before her. Because it’s going to be so hard on her, I want other things to be a lot easier. I don’t want her to have a bunch of stuff to deal with. I don’t want her to have four storage units filled with furniture,” she said on an April episode of her podcast, “Let’s Be Clear.”
Amid her battles with the disease, Doherty filed for divorce from estranged husband Kurt Iswarienko in April 2023 after 11 years of marriage.
The “Fortress” actress went on to claim Iswarienko had been having an affair, a fact that she found out right before she underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor. A source for Iswarienko denied the allegation.
The divorce is still ongoing one year later and most recently, Doherty accused Iswarienko of purposely delaying their divorce to get out of paying spousal support.
“It is simply not right that Kurt be permitted to prolong our divorce in hopes that I die before he is required to pay me while he continues to live his life and shirk his responsibilities to his dying wife of more than 11 years,” Doherty wrote in the filing.
Iswarienko’s attorney shut down the allegation and claimed he wanted to finalize the divorce in a September 2023 settlement that she turned down.
