Prince Harry has said he wants to “break the cycle” of the “pain and suffering” of his upbringing with his own children.
Harry, who is expecting a daughter with his wife Meghan and is already father to Archie (2), compared his life to “a mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo”.
Speaking on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, he said: “There is no blame, but certainly if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on.
“It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway, so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say, ‘You know what? That happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you’.
“It’s hard to do, but for me it comes down to awareness. I never saw it, I never knew about it.
“Then suddenly I started to piece it together and go, ‘OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened. I also know that is connected to his parents, so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?’
“And here I am, I moved my whole family to the US. That wasn’t the plan, but sometimes you’ve got to make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.”
He also revealed he met up with his future wife in a London supermarket in the early days of their relationship and the couple pretended not to know each other.
“The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket, pretending as though we didn’t know each other, texting each other from the other ends of the aisle.
“There were people looking at me, giving me all of these weird looks, but there I am texting her while we’re shopping, asking if this is the right thing and she’s replying, ‘No, you want the parchment paper’.
“It was nice with a baseball cap on looking down at the floor, walking along the street and trying to stay incognito.
“Trying to stay incognito is like ‘whoa – signpost, someone’s dog’. It’s amazing how much chewing gum you see.
“So living here now I can actually lift my head and I feel different. My shoulders have dropped, so have hers, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free. I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle. I would never have had the chance to do that.”
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