Demi Lovato Admits Failed Engagement Encouraged Her To ‘Live Her Truth’ About Her Sexuality

After her short-lived romance with Max Ehrich, Demi Lovato says she realized ‘who I am’ and that she’s ‘really queer.’

“When I started getting older, I started realizing how queer I really am,” Demi Lovato said in the May issue of Glamour. In the interview, the 28-year-old singer proclaims she is “really queer,” which comes about six months after she called off her engagement with actor Max Ehrich. The short-lived romance, according to Demi, brought her some clarity. “This past year, I was engaged to a man, and when it didn’t work, I was like, ‘This is a huge sign.’ I thought I was going to spend my life with someone. Now that I wasn’t going to, I felt this sense of relief that I could live my truth.”

“I hooked up with a girl and was like, ‘I like this a lot more.’ It felt better. It felt right,” she told Glamour while adding that she feels “too queer” to be involved with a cis-gender man. “Some of the guys I was hanging out with—when it would come time to be sexual or intimate, I would have this kind of visceral reaction. Like, ‘I just don’t want to put my mouth there.’ It wasn’t even based on the person it was with. I just found myself really appreciating the friendships of those people more than the romance, and I didn’t want the romance from anybody of the opposite sex.”

“I know who I am and what I am, but I’m just waiting until a specific timeline to come out to the world as what I am,” the singer told Glamour. “I’m following my healers’ timeline, and I’m using this time to really study and educate myself on my journey and what I’m preparing to do.” She said that getting a pink pixie cut was a symbol of her shedding the expectations of a heteronormative society and that ultimately, she’ll shave her head.

Much of Demi’s truth will be featured in Dancing With the Devil, her new YouTube documentary. The doc will also cover her and Max’s relationship, from engagement to breakup. It’ll also cover how she was left questioning if she’ll ever be able to open herself up to another person again. Because Demi “denied my intuition of all the red flags that had popped up,” she says she had “no one else to blame but myself.”

“So I was like, ‘How am I ever going to trust again?’ But really, I was like, ‘Bitch, you should have trusted yourself. If you had trusted yourself, you wouldn’t have ended up in this position,’” says Demi, who says that since she embraced her real self, she’s ready to give love another chance. ”I’m very much listening to my intuition, and that’s not to say my boundaries or my guard is up. It’s just saying my ears are perked a little higher, and my eyes are open a little wider.”