Why Phoebe Burgess quit dating apps

As she navigates single motherhood, Phoebe Burgess details what led her to delete celebrity dating app, Raya, and the one thing the former WAG ‘won’t risk’.

The signs of change are small, but they are there for Phoebe Burgess.

It’s in the way she’s carving out small pockets of her day to do some Pilates, a Piers Morgan podcast on in the background because the shock jock intrigues her.

Or time spent trying on a new outfit, one that isn’t covered in the breakfast porridge she made for her two children, Poppy, 7, and Billy, 5.

“I used to feel so ashamed if I took time out,” Burgess explains to Stellar. “But I’m realising it’s kind of OK for me to have a little life that my kids aren’t in on. It feels a bit naughty. But it’s exciting – and I’m allowed to feel excited. I think I was always waiting for the sky to fall down on me.”

Five years ago, it actually did. Up until that point, Burgess admits, she was spoiled for opportunities.

As a young journalist, she had worked in the newsrooms at the Seven Network and on the now-defunct Cleo magazine. She was from a tight-knit family, the middle of three girls born to Mitch and Sarah Hooke.

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

To top it all off, she was married to star NRL player Sam Burgess, the father of her two children. From the outside, she appeared to have it all.

As has since been well documented, the reality was far more complicated. The couple married amid a blaze of headlines in 2015, but after a turbulent few years eventually separated in 2019, not long after the birth of their second child.

What followed were high-profile allegations of drug and alcohol abuse (Sam Burgess was fined by the NRL for breaking multiple rules, but cleared in court of domestic violence, allegations of which he has always denied) and a public admission of infidelity.

At the time, his ex-wife sought solace on the grounds of her parents’ property in the NSW Southern Highlands. She’s still living in Bowral, but it’s a very different woman who is showing up for her photo shoot with Stellar.

“The shame of what I felt for a long time, it has really dissipated. I’m actually kind of proud of where I’m at with the kids now,” she says.

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

Reflecting on the healing that has taken place these past few years, surrounded by her family, Burgess says she is wary of disturbing the life she now leads, and is reluctant to take on work opportunities that incur too much time away from her children. An in-demand content creator with more than 100K Instagram followers, she recalls grappling with the 90-minute commute to Sydney she’d make to fulfil her past commitment as a podcast host.

It was, she says, “that niggling feeling. Every time I left, we would have to say: ‘And what does Mummy always do? Mummy always comes back.’”

Listen to the latest episode of Stellar’s podcast featuring Andy Lee and Bec Harding below:

Being a single parent, she says, is akin to living a constant face-off. She has to be both her children’s greatest source of love, but also their disciplinarian. Nonetheless, she insists, “Mine is not a special story. There are so many women doing this and I know how privileged I am, honestly. But I do sometimes allow myself to think: I wonder how this would have looked had I been able to raise kids with someone …

“I spend more time with a five- and seven-year-old than I do with anyone else. I find myself trying to create that team because it can be so isolating when I have to be a bad cop. But they’re my sole source of love as well. I feed off the love. And then when my daughter – as daughters and sons inevitably do – blames me for something completely irrational, I have to let her do that. But I need her love, too.”

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

Six months ago, the 36-year-old signed up for Raya, a dating app used by people with a public profile to allow them to date without the interference of wider attention. Once on there, however, she couldn’t get past the section that required her to upload a photo of herself.

“I don’t want my children to ever feel they are not my top priority,” Burgess says.

“I’m sensitive to that. And I have this fear that they would ever get that message from me.

I want them to know how wanted and loved and cherished and important they are. And they’re my most important thing, my focus. That’s the thing I will not risk for anything in the world, because they don’t deserve it. I think they’ve had that feeling. And it’s something I won’t allow to come from me.

“I became a single parent on the brink of a pandemic, which offered a sanctuary and a way to feel safe. I don’t want to risk my own personal freedom again because even though [single-parenting] at times can be a sh*t-show, I have the autonomy and the freedom to make choices.”

But amid binge-watching Bridgerton when her children are asleep, she allows herself to ponder what a new love would look like.

“The biggest fear is waking up at 45 or 50 and my kids being healthy, happy humans, off seeing the world, studying, falling in and out of love, hopefully safely … And it’s a terrifying thought that I might be really and truly alone,” she says. “But, for me, that’s the sacrifice.”

While dating might be on hold for now, Burgess has managed to carve out a niche for herself where she can fulfil her career ambitions yet still be present in the afternoons to pick up her children from school and take them to soccer practice.

Phoebe Burgess, centre, with her two children.

At Australian Fashion Week in May. Picture: Getty Images

“We have to just be so creative with the way we’re able to work and fulfil that need of being there for [them],” she says.

Which is why Burgess is so proud that she’s been able to tick her lifelong ambition to become a children’s author off her to-do list, having recently teamed up with Zyrtec Australia to write Zach And Zoe’s Hide And Sneeze, a book that aims to raise awareness of allergic rhinitis in kids. Both she and her children suffer from the allergic response by the immune system that causes sneezing, running nose and watery, itchy eyes. Like hayfever, it can be caused by environmental triggers, such as pollen, dust and mould.

Burgess says that watching her children grow up on a country property, spending hours climbing trees to play the ultimate game of hide-and-seek, or with horses, is her dream for them.

But it has come with its fair share of triggers: “I remember Billy was playing soccer outside and Dad had freshly mowed the soccer field. And then in summer, it’s a cricket pitch. And Billy gets sweaty and he’s rolling around … and suddenly he ran up to me, scoring at his chest. And we were so far from the house, so I got a garden hose on him.”

While the main characters in the book may have different names, the comparison with her children is evident. So what are we to make of the fact the mum in this story shows up wearing a superhero cape?

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

“I have no embarrassment in that at all!” she says with a laugh. “I think the desire was for the children reading it to see that in their parents, but I [also] wanted to remind parents that you’re doing great. We do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

For Burgess, that means continuing to forge a path for herself on her own terms.

“For a long time I felt that if there wasn’t this thing I could easily label, like ‘podcaster’ or ‘columnist’ or ‘correspondent’ or whatever, I was lacking. Like what’s something that people will look over at you and say, ‘She’s done well. She was a bit broken there for a while, but she’s picked herself up,’” she explains.

“But [for] so many of the things I’m actually deeply proud of, there’s no word. There’s no label. There’s no title. It’s about letting go of that pressure and reminding myself of what I love.”

Zach And Zoe’s Hide And Sneeze will be available as a free gift with the purchase of Zyrtec products at select pharmacies from September 1, or as a downloadable e-book.

For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as Why Phoebe Burgess quit dating apps