Former Dancing With the Stars pro Artem Chigvintsev says his marital saga with his ex-wife Nikki Garcia (formerly known as Nikki Bella) that began last year has been devastating.

“It completely ruined everything for me,” Chigvintsev said on a recent episode of The Glamorous Grind Podcast. “It completely ruined everything for me. From every angle, it ruined my life completely.”

See the moment at about 24 minutes into the video below.

Chigvintsev and Garcia were paired on the ABC dance competition in 2017’s season 25, and they married in 2022. Then he was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence at his and Garcia’s home last August. While Allison Haley, the district attorney in California’s Napa County, announced in September that she wouldn’t be filing charges, the dancer felt like other people didn’t see it that way.

“When a person has a mugshot, ” he said, “you’re guilty immediately.”

Two weeks after Chigvintsev’s arrest, Garcia filed for divorce. Both parties initially sought and were granted restraining orders against one another. They also both pursued custody of their young son, Matteo. They agreed on a settlement, enabling them to avoid a showdown in court, in November. At the time, a rep for Garcia said both sides were dropping their restraining orders “to move on with their lives and effectively co-parent their son.”

One of the two podcast hosts, who were both attorneys, told Chigvintsev that he “looked way more balanced” and “had more life in [his] eyes” than he did a year ago.

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“Divorce was just one of the things I was facing at the time,” Chigvintsev answered. “I mean, there was a criminal charge. I was cut off from every outlet of support, except for maybe my parents. Like, I was cut out from every angle. Sometimes people go through divorce, but they have their job…and have their friends. There’s still certain support. I didn’t have a family support, because that was cut off. My work was cut off. And then, on top of it, there was a criminal case.”

As for his work, Chigvintsev was not part of the Dancing With the Stars cycle that aired in the fall. EW confirmed at the time of his initial arrest, however, that he had never been scheduled to be part of the season.

Garcia has described an utterly painful time, too.

“It’s been really tough. I’ve been heartbroken. Sad,” she said on her podcast, The Nikki and Brie Show, when she returned in December after months away following Chigvintsev’s arrest . “You know, you dream of having this family and you have this incredible love and it just goes the other way. And you go from having a great love story to having a terrible one. And I never saw any of it coming, you know, as far as, like, what the ending would be.”