Selena Gomez, 31, shared in a new interview that her breakup with Justin Bieber, 29, led to her choosing to prioritize her mental health by stepping away from social media for a while. “I had just gotten my heart broken,” Selena told Fast Company in an interview published October 3. “I didn’t need to see what everyone was doing,” she added. “Then there were those moments of not feeling positive about how I looked because of what I’d see on Instagram. Wow, I wish my body looked like that.”
Selena split from Justin for good in 2018 after a years-long, on-and-off relationship. Around the same time as the breakup, the Only Murders in the Building star was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It was a very difficult time in Selena’s life that she looked back on in her 2022 Apple+ documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me. In the doc, Selena surprised fans by calling her breakup with Justin “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Everything was so public. I felt haunted by a past relationship that no one wanted to let go of. Then I just moved past it, and I wasn’t afraid anymore,” she said in the doc. “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. But I just think that needed to happen and ultimately it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Selena rarely speaks about her turbulent relationship with Justin. Shortly after their 2018 split, Justin started dating Hailey Baldwin, and they got married by the end of the year. Selena sang about the breakup on her 2019 track, “Lose You To Love Me,” which features heartbreaking lyrics like “In two months you replaced us” and “I needed to lose you to love me.” She never explicitly said that the song is about Justin, and even clarified in an interview with NPR at the time that it’s “not a hateful song.”
“It’s a song 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,” the former Disney Channel star explained in early 2020. “I felt like this was a great way to just say, you know, it’s done and I understand that and I respect that.”
After splitting from Justin, Selena dated The Weeknd for 10 months in 2017. She was briefly linked to Drew Taggart of The Chainsmokers earlier this year, but it apparently wasn’t a serious romance. Since then, Selena has poked fun at her relationship status on social media by making it clear that she’s single. She even released a new song, “Single Soon,” and shut down the speculation that the track is about her relationship with The Weeknd.