She has a secret past! Nikki Bella knew that her longtime love John Cena had an aversion to marriage because his first marriage ended in a nasty divorce — but she didn’t let that stop her from pursuing a relationship with him. And it turns out that their pasts are pretty similar — just like John, Nikki also was previously married and went through a divorce. Keep reading below to find out more about Nikki’s ex-husband.

Nikki kept her marriage a secret for nearly a decade and she actually revealed the details to her family on a previous season of Total Divas. “I got married when I was 20 and got divorced at 23 to my high school sweetheart,” she said. “Basically, we got married by Elvis. We drove to Vegas, did it, and even when I started walking down the aisle, I know this was a huge mistake [like] how can I get out of it, and I couldn’t and I tried to forget about it.”

Nikki’s mom Kathy Colace was shocked that she kept such a big secret from her for all those years and Nikki said that it was because she was ashamed of the whole situation. But her family weren’t the only ones in the dark — she hadn’t even told John at that point. She was worried about breaking the news to him because they’ve had multiple conversations about marriage before and she never mentioned her own previous marriage to him.

But Nikki eventually gathered enough courage to tell John at her sister Brie Bella’s 2014 wedding to her husband Daniel Bryan. She revealed to John that she had previously been married for three years and he was extremely forgiving and understanding — probably because he was also previously married to his high school sweetheart and got divorced after only three years, too.

“I don’t care,” he told her. “What you did before you met me is what you did before you met me, I don’t need to know everything about you. It’s just when you can tell other people and I kind of would like to be on that totem pole somewhere — I don’t have to be at the top, I just would like to be on it.”