For years, Selena Gomez felt “haunted” by her on-again-off-again relationship with Justin Bieber, enduring relentless questions from paparazzi and a never-ending narrative about her Hollywood romance the world couldn’t let go of, even long after they broke up.
“Everything was so public,” Gomez, who never acknowledges Bieber by name, reveals in her forthcoming documentary, “Selena Gomez: “My Mind & Me,” premiering Friday on Apple TV+.
“I felt haunted by a past relationship that no one wanted to let go of,” she says in the documentary. “But then I just moved past it. I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
In 2019, a year after Gomez’s final breakup with Bieber and following her own mental breakdown in 2016 following years spent in and out of rehab centers, the singer is seen giving a speech at the 2019 McLean Award dinner where she received the award for mental health, noting that her past struggles helped her heal. She wrote her chart-topping ballad “Lose You to Love Me” in just 45 minutes.
In the next scene, she refers to her relationship with her ex.
“I feel like I had to go through the worst possible heartbreak ever and then just forgetting everything at the drop of a hand, it was really confusing,” Gomez says in the doc. “But I just think that needed to happen and ultimately, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Gomez, 30, dated the 28-year-old “Sorry” singer in 2011 after years of friendship and were off and on for years until 2015. In December of that year, Bieber became romantic with his now wife, Hailey Baldwin Bieber, though the duo then temporarily split. Gomez and Bieber got back together during the interlude, but ultimately ended things in 2018. Months later, Bieber proposed to Baldwin.
The trio’s romantic drama has been a source of contention for years, prompting Baldwin Bieber to finally address it in a September “Call Her Daddy” podcast episode in which she said she never “stole” Bieber from Gomez, and noted she was cyberbullied and trolled by Gomez fans over the rumors. She added there was “no drama personally” between her and Gomez. “It’s all respect. It’s all love.”
Gomez cleared the air for the first time in September when she shared a message of being kind to fans, a hint at an olive branch between her and Hailey.
“It’s not fair because no one should ever be spoken to in the manner that I’ve seen,” the Rare Beauty founder told fans on TikTok.
“If you support Rare, I cannot thank you enough,” the singer went on, “but know that you are also representing what it means, and that is: words matter, truly matter.”
The duo nearly broke the internet in October when they posed for a series of photos together hugging each other and visibly debunking feud rumors, with Gomez later confirming in an interview with Vulture published Wednesday the photos were “not a big deal,” telling the outlet, “It’s not even a thing.”
Gomez’s ability to surpass the publicly fueled drama is what led her to build more mental strength, a subject she talks about in the documentary and in a recent Rolling Stone interview.
“Somebody made a comment and it involved me, and then for two days I felt bad about myself,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview published Thursday, referring to Hailey’s September podcast interview, though not mentioning her by name. She went on to say that years ago, such drama would have crippled her for months.
Now, she can face the music and move on.
“I was like, I’m just going to say, ‘Everybody be kind to each other. Everybody just focus on what’s going on in the real world,’” she told Rolling Stone.
