Why Shannen Doherty Believes Her Father’s Illnesses Affected Her Choices in Men: ‘There’s Only a Few That Mattered’

The ‘Charmed’ alum is making a link between her late father and her romantic partners

Shannen Doherty is reflecting on her romantic relationships — and how her late father may have influenced her choices.

On Father’s Day, June 16, the Charmed alum, 53, released a new episode of her Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty podcast titled “Let’s Talk About Dads…with Shannen Doherty.”

The actress got candid about how seeing her father John Thomas Doherty Jr. suffer from various health issues before his 2010 death affected how she chose the men she would allow into her life.

“I think watching him go in and out of the hospital and the fear that I constantly felt of, is this going to be the last time I see him? Is he going to die? Is he not going to come out of the hospital?” Doherty explained.

According to the actress, the uncertainty brought on “feelings of abandonment.”

“But it wasn’t like he was doing that to me. It was more that I was projecting that onto myself because I was so scared that the most important man in my life was not going to be there, that there was parts of me that sort of shut down as I got older,” Doherty said. “And I think I definitely, we’ve discussed this before, you guys, where I chose men that were not like my dad, that were not that kind and that gracious and that great.”

The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum has been married three times.

Her ex-husband, Rick Salomon, whom she was married to from 2002 to 2003, appeared as a guest on her podcast in early May.

“I think we got married in 2002, January. I just looked it up. I would never have any idea otherwise,” the actress said. “And we got annulled in May 2003. So technically we don’t have to call each other ex-wife and ex-husband because we got annulled, but we still do.”

In April, Doherty’s ex-fiancé Rob Weiss joined her in an episode of the podcast.

While Weiss was on the show, the Little House on the Prairie talent opened up about wanting to pay tribute to her late father with a tattoo but said she couldn’t because due to her Stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis, she could not risk getting an infection from the needle.

Weiss did his best to keep the conversation upbeat, joking that it was never his intention to “take you to some like, alley tattoo parlor.”