Selena Gomez Says Justin Bieber Was Emotionally Abusive: “I Do Feel I Was A Victim To Certain Abuse”

Selena Gomez says Justin Bieber emotionally abused her when they were dating.

In a new interview with NPR, Gomez opened up about her on-again, off-again relationship with fellow singer Justin Bieber. The former couple first became official back in 2011 and ended their love affair in 2018. But Gomez says the relationship was filled with so much emotional abuse that she had to escape. “I’ve found the strength in it. It’s dangerous to stay in a victim mentality. And I’m not being disrespectful; I do feel I was a victim to certain abuse,” said Gomez.

She continued: “I had to find a way to understand it as an adult. And I had to understand the choices I was making. As much as I definitely don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about this, I am really proud that I can say I feel the strongest I’ve ever felt and I’ve found a way to just walk through it with as much grace as possible.” The singer also said her song “Lose You To Love Me” was about getting over their relationship.

“I’m very proud of it,” she explained of the song. “It has a different meaning to me now from when I wrote it. I felt I didn’t get a respectful closure, and I had accepted that, but I know I needed some way to just say a few things that I wish I had said.”

However, she said she and Bieber didn’t always have bad times. “It’s not a hateful song; it’s a song that is saying — I had something beautiful, and I would never deny that it wasn’t that. It was very difficult, and I’m happy it’s over. And I felt like this was a great way to just say, you know, it’s done, and I understand that, and I respect that, and now here I am stepping into a whole other chapter,” she said.

But now, Gomez says her new album, “Rare,” is about controlling her own narrative. “The reason why I’ve become so vocal about the trials and tribulations of my life is because people were already going to narrate that for me. I wasn’t going to have a choice because of how fast everything moves now. Most of the time, yes, it’s not true, or it’s an embellished version of what the truth is. I want to be able to tell my story the way that I want to tell it.”