The retired rugby player dated the former ‘Love Island’ presenter until May 2019. Danny Cipriani has revealed that the late TV presenter Caroline Flack gave him “the gift” of fully expressing his emotions and feelings. Cipriani, a retired rugby player, dated Flack until May 2019, and he said they were in regular contact and that he heard from her the day before she died by suicide on 15 February 2020 aged 40.
![[Caroline Flack photographed in 2019]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/04/11/08/AFP_1P13DM.jpg)
In a new interview, the former Gloucester rugby union reflected on his relationship with the former Love Island presenter, saying that the “gift she gave me was having to dive into my emotions in a way I hadn’t before”. He continued: “I hadn’t really cried or felt visceral feelings before.”.
Reflecting on the grief he experienced in the wake of Flack’s death, Cipriani said he was “devastated” and confided in his Gloucester rugby club teammates. The club used a premiership match against Sale Sharks to raise awareness of mental health issues, in response to the abuse that Cipriani received on social media following Flack’s death.
Cipriani said he has dealt with grief by “sitting with it and honouring it”. “You can’t avoid grief,” he said. “When I was trying to run away from emotions or not feel certain things, they would come back up in a different way. So give yourself time to feel the discomfort and pain, and sit with it.
