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Selena Gomez dug super deep to sing about her breakup from Justin Bieber on her Jan. 2020 album, Rare, but reliving those painful memories from her past actually helped heal her. “I’ve found the strength in it,” Selena told NPR in a new interview, published on Jan. 26. “It’s dangerous to stay in a victim mentality. And I’m not being disrespectful — I do feel like I was a victim to certain abuse.” When the interviewer clarified that Selena meant ’emotional abuse’ with that statement, she confirmed, “Yes.”
“I had to find a way to understand it as an adult,” Selena explained. “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 most obvious Justin-inspired song on Rare was Selena’s first single from the album, “Lose You to Love Me.” On the track, she sings about how he moved on and got married to Hailey Baldwin so quickly after her last breakup from him in 2018. However, she’s made it clear that the song was not meant to be spiteful.
“I felt I didn’t get a respectful closure, and I had accepted that, but I needed some way to just say a few things that I wish I had said,” Selena revealed. “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. 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.”
Selena and Justin started dating in 2010 when they were just young teenagers, but they didn’t go public with their relationship until they hit the red carpet together at the 2011 Vanity Fair Oscars party. After that, they broke up and got back together countless times over the years. Their last romantic reconciliation was in the fall of 2017, following Selena’s breakup from The Weeknd. Things were hot and heavy for several months, but fizzled out at the beginning of March. By that July, Justin was engaged to Hailey, and they got married on Sept. 13, 2018.