Shannen Doherty admits cancer makes dating difficult because she ‘might have an expiration date’

Shannen Doherty says she thinks she might be a "hard sell" on the dating scene because her cancer diagnosis could be difficult for a potential romantic partner to handle. 

"I think it’s hard for somebody like me, in my personal opinion, because it’s hard to go into dating someone when you know that they might have an expiration date," she told Kelly Ripa on the "Live" host’s Sirius XM "Let’s Talk Off Camera" podcast this week. 

She continued, "And I don’t think men handle death and illness – most men, I don’t want to generalize and say all men – but they don’t handle any of that as well as women do." 

"I’m a very hard sell," she added, which Ripa said she disagreed with, explaining that she is always trying to find a match for her. The morning host said she thinks Doherty needs an older man with his own money who is not "intimidated" by the "90210" star's success. 

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Shannen Doherty said she thinks she might be a "hard sell" on the dating scene because her cancer diagnosis could be difficult for a potential romantic partner to handle. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Hallmark Channel)

Doherty also revealed she is no longer into "bad boys," giving the example of a man she met recently who showed a red flag in less than an hour and she "just retracted." 

"I went, ‘Nope, I can’t do this anymore,’" she told Ripa. 

Doherty had short-lived marriages to both actor Ashley Hamilton from 1993 to 1994 and Rick Salomon from 2002 to 2003. She is currently in the middle of a divorce with photographer Kurt Iswarienko, who she says she found out was having an affair just before she had to have brain surgery last year. 

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"I went into that surgery early in the morning and I went in after I found out that my marriage was essentially over, that my husband had been carrying on an affair for two years," she said on the debut episode of her podcast "Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty." "To not go in that surgery, even though, being very clear, he wanted to go, I couldn't go into that surgery with him there. I felt so betrayed."

Shannen Doherty with estranged husband Kurt Iswarienko. (Vivien Killilea/WireImage)

She added, "At the end of the day, I just felt so incredibly unloved by someone I was with for 14 years."

In a recent legal filing, Doherty also accused Iswarienko of prolonging their divorce "in hopes that I die before he is required to pay me" spousal support. 

Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 but said she was in remission in 2017. In 2020, she announced that the disease was back. She is currently undergoing treatment for stage four breast cancer. 

Doherty told Ripa that she was OK with dating a guy as old as 80 and even joked she would not mind a gay man "because it’s more for companionship than anything else."

She explained she is "a little self-conscious" about her body "’cause I have so many scars from surgery that it’s like how do you explain, ‘No, that isn’t from giving birth, that’s from reconstruction surgery'? You just start to feel as a woman, I think, very insecure about yourself. Not that I was ever -- I’ve never been secure with myself."

Shannen Doherty was briefly married to Rick Salomon in the early 2000s, but the star said they remain good friends. (Evan Agostini /Getty Images)

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The 53-year-old explained that on a weekly basis she asks God why certain people get cancer and others do not, even if they have lived unhealthier lifestyles than her. 

"What I finally had to wrap my head around in order to accept my stage four diagnosis and everything I go through with it is that it happened to me because of the platform that I have and because I can help others." 

She said she is also grateful that she is "relatively still healthy and still around" even though she has had stage four cancer since 2019. 

"I’m still here," she said. "This is my purpose in life. This is what God chose me for specifically. It wasn’t acting. That just catapulted me to the point where people would know me and could listen to my voice. This is what I’m actually here for, and I truly and deeply believe that." 

She said that being open about her diagnosis and treatment and supporting others going through it has become a "career" in itself. 

Shannen Doherty and Ashley Hamilton were married from 1993 to 1994. (Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)

While discussing why she does not have a therapist, she said, "To open up to anyone is incredibly hard" because she has been "burned" so many times by people she thought she could trust. 

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However, she said opening up on her podcast "feels like therapy" to her, adding that it is "rewarding" to see comments from listeners that talking about her cancer helped them.

"People’s comments bring me to tears," she revealed to Ripa.

Later in the podcast, Doherty said that her exes Rick Salomon and Rob Weiss are two men from her past she can still rely on and who would "drop everything to help me." 

She called Salomon "unbelievably loyal," even through his drug addiction. "He had a legitimate disease," she said, adding that he had conquered it 15 years ago. 

Rob Weiss and Shannen Doherty at the "Mallrats" movie premiere in 1995. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

She said she felt like Weiss was "the one that got away" because they were so young when they were together. 

However, she added, "Everything works out exactly the way it’s supposed to, I think." 

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"I don’t know where I am with dating," she admitted, adding that it has only been a year since the "fiasco" with her husband. 

"I’m still fighting a divorce and it’s still so hard and raw, and I was really, really in a dark place for like nine months after I found out what he did and, you know, I had brain surgery when I found out. It was like a whole fiasco that it’s only recently that I’ve completely recovered where I have zero for him anymore."