Comedian Chelsea Handler said Tuesday that ending her relationship with comedian Jo Koy was "one of the most difficult things," but she didn't want to ignore her own needs.

Handler, 47, and Koy, 51, dated for about a year after a long-time friendship. Handler reflected on the split on Brooke Shields' podcast "Now What?"

Handler said she felt so lucky because she had apparently checked all the boxes, but eventually realized there were problems with the relationship.

The two met about 20 years ago and announced they were a couple in September 2021. They officially broke up in July.

Koy, whose full name is Joseph Glenn Herbert, was a frequent guest on Handler's late-night show on E!, "Chelsea Lately."

"I really believed that this was my guy. I thought, 'Oh my God, I won.' Like, I got everything. I have my career. I have respect. I have my family. I have so many friends. I have all of these things. And then I thought this was gonna be the person I spend my life with," Handler said.

Handler said there were some things that she and Koy could not agree on, including marriage.

"I'm not that hard up to get married, but I was open to the idea of it, and we definitely discussed it at length because it was important to him. And then, towards the end of the relationship, it just became clear that this was not my person," Handler said.

"Walking away from him was one of the most difficult things that I have ever had to do," she said.

She said that going along with ideas she did not align with would have been a form of "abandoning" herself, and no matter how much she loved him, she was not going to do that.

"I was not going to abandon myself. I am not going to change the way that I behave in order to make you feel more comfortable. I'm not doing that, and I had to walk away from something that I really believed was gonna be a forever relationship. So that was difficult," Handler said.

Handler has previously been romantically linked to television executive Ted Harbert, rapper 50 Cent, and hotel executive Andre Balazs.