Adriana Karembeu may be smiling every day, but she carries with her the after-effects of past trauma. The 54-year-old star was raised by an abusive father who subjected him to horrors…
There are stories that shake up more than others. This is the case of Adriana Karembeu’s latest book, I love you because I love you and that’s all. Published on March 5, it questions all the forms that love can take through the testimonies and research of numerous experts and the 54-year-old model also talks about her… moving story.
Adriana Karembeu raised by an “abusive father”: The “after-effects” she left
Adriana Karembeu opened the doors of her privacy to our colleagues at Paris Match by inviting them to his native country, Slovakia. “At the time, the country was called Czechoslovakia and was under the control of the USSR. Added to the grayness of the regime, in Adriana’s daily life, was an abusive father”they write elsewhere. His childhood and adolescence were “wasted“by the horrors she suffered because of her father. And she kept “after-effects“from this period, in particular”fear of motherhood“.
Abused by her father since she was very young, Adriana Karembeu is now lucid: “He will never tell me. And I don’t think he knows it himself. If I have to try to understand, I tell myself that he was very young when I was born”. “He found himself the head of his family at the age of 23 even though he had not finished his studies. When, after undoubtedly having a blast with his student friends, he returned to his remote village in Czechoslovakia (…) It was a radical change of life for him. He must not have been ready. But that is not an excuse”she explained.
Adriana Karembeu, facing “torture”: the terrible choice imposed on her by her father
Today, the television woman no longer has any contact with her father. And this has been happening for many years! When she was only twelve years old, and her parents’ marriage was starting to struggle, he asked her to make a choice between them: “He asked my sister, who was 6 years old, and me to choose between him and our mother if they separated. But who asks that of their children?”.
“It’s nothing but torture. I will never forget that moment. I was terrified. My sister remembers it less because she was little”confided the one who today shares her life with singer Marc Lavoine. Result: Adriana Karembeu never completely felt in her place as a child, to the point of hesitating to become a mother herself.
“As an adult, I wondered how to desire something that everyone talks about but that I have never experienced: the love of my child, with the anxiety of reacting like my father. I did not want to take that risk”she even admitted. Against all odds, Adriana Karembeu finally became a mother. Her daughter Nina, born from her former love with businessman Aram Ohanian, is now seven years old.
