Hailey Bieber spoke candidly about Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez‘s reunion when the 25-year-old model joined host Alex Cooper for the season 2 premiere of the Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday (Sept. 28). Justin, 28, and Selena, 30, went their separate ways in March 2018, and by September 2018, he and Hailey were married. “The timeline that I think is sometimes in question of us getting together and getting engaged and him [Justin] having been spending time with his ex [Selena] before that,” said Hailey on Call Her Daddy. “I understand how it looks from the outside, and there’s a lot of perception there, but that was a situation where I know, for a fact, that it was the right thing for them to close that door.”
Justin, 28, and Selena, 30, according to Hailey, “were not in a relationship” at the time of their March 2018 split. “Of course,” Hailey added. “There’s a very long history there. It’s not my relationship, and it had nothing to do with me. So, I respect that a lot but I know it closed a chapter, and I think it was the best thing that could’ve happened for him to move on and be engaged and get married and move on with his life in that way.”
“It’s hard for me to talk about it because I don’t want to talk on either one of their behalf because it was their relationship and I respect that very deeply,” continued Hailey. “But I know what was going on when we got back together, and I know what had to happen for that to come back together in a healthy way. I think it was the most healthy, mature decision that he could’ve made, and I respect that.
“As a woman, I would never want to get into a relationship with someone and be engaged to them and get married to them and think in the back of my mind, ‘I wonder if that was really closed for you,'” said Hailey. “And I know for a fact that the reason we were able to get back together is because it was very much, completely closed. And that is respectful to me.”
Before the discussion of closing doors, Hailey clarified the timeline issue, since many “Jelena” fans wondered if there was any overlap between the relationships. Hailey stressed that she never hooked up with Justin while he was with Selena – or anyone else – saying that it is “not my character to mess with someone’s relationship.” Hailey also revealed that she’s spoken with Selena since her and Justin’s 2018 wedding. “It’s all respect. It’s all love,” added Mrs. Bieber.
Hailey seemed keen to shut down this talk once and for all. “Were you ever with Justin romantically at the same time as Selena?” Alex asked Hailey in a teaser released a day before the episode. “This is so crazy. I’ve literally never talked about this ever,” Hailey added. “A lot of the perpetuation and the hate comes from ‘Oh, you stole him.’… It’s about people knowing the truth. Because there’s a truth.”
THIS WEDNESDAY 9/28 Hailey Bieber opens up about the public-generated controversy between her and her husband's ex. Hailey makes it clear she wants to discuss this one time and one time only…on Call Her Daddy. pic.twitter.com/TXuc5WuXBg
— Call Her Daddy (@callherdaddy) September 27, 2022
The model previously talked about the hate she faced by becoming Mrs. Justin Bieber. “In the beginning of our marriage, I just wanted to hide,” Hailey said in a 2021 interview. “I was like, ‘I don’t want people so in my business. I feel like everybody’s up my ass.’ I was like, ‘Can there be no anonymity? Can I have any of it back?’ I remember someone telling me that [turning off comments on Instagram] really lowers your engagement. And I was like, ‘I could give a f-ck about engagement! People are terrorizing me. Engagement, enschagement. I don’t care!'”
One year after their courthouse nuptials, Hailey and Justin married again in front of 154 guests at Somerset Chapel in the Montage Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, South Carolina. In Sept. 2022, Hailey commemorated their fourth wedding anniversary with a sweet message. “4 years married to you,” she wrote to the “Ghost” singer. “The most beautiful human I’ve ever known…love of my life. Thank God for you.” Justin responded with his own message, “Happy anniversary to my best friend and wifey @haileybieber .. thanks for making me better in every way.”
The marriage hasn’t been all rainbows and love. Justin spoke with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden in May 2022, and during the talk, he said about having “an emotional breakdown” because he “thought marriage was going to fix all my problems and it didn’t.”
“It just kind of was a reflection,” he said, adding that he felt like “a bit of a hypocrite” during those early days of being married. “You want your wife to do something that you’re not doing, and it’s like, it’s hard sometimes to look in the mirror and really have to realize, man, maybe you’re not the person that you necessarily thought that you were. And that’s just a result of trauma and life circumstances.”
Though Selena has been subject to the occasional dating rumor, she hasn’t had a public relationship since the 2018 split. Romance has not been a priority, it seems. However, it should be noted that the breakup had a silver lining: Selena’s song about the breakup, 2019’s “Lose You To Love Me,” was her first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.