“I really had myself fooled,” she said in a new interview.
Demi Lovato Says Her Engagement to Max Ehrich Was to ‘Prove to the World' She Was ‘Okay’
Demi Lovato just opened up about what led to her whirlwind engagement to ex Max Ehrich—and how she feels now that she's living for herself.
"I really had myself fooled, because it was the safe and expected thing," she told Entertainment Weekly of her pandemic romance with Ehrich ahead of her new YouTube documentary series, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil. "Obviously I cared deeply about the person, but there was something inside of me that was like, 'I have to prove to the world that I'm okay.' Now that I'm not engaged or married and I'm okay, I'm like, 'Wow. Isn't that so much more empowering?' It's not this false sense of security."
Lovato recently spoke at length with Glamour about the ways in which she attempted to fit different molds and grappling with her identity as a queer person. “I was trying on different identities that felt authentic to me but weren’t me,” she told Glamour for the March cover. “The super-feminine pop star was an identity that sounded like it fit and looked like it fit, so I put it on like it fit.”
Even her home décor was projecting an image that wasn't truly Lovato's. “I almost designed this house for a straight couple,” Lovato explained, referring to her new L.A. home.“I’m not straight, but it was a hetero situation. This could have been a very normal-looking house.”
Demi Lovato now describes herself as “really queer," though there's still much exploring to be done. “When I started getting older, I started realizing how queer I really am,” she said.“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.”
For now, she's “too queer” to consider a cis man. “I hooked up with a girl and was like, ‘I like this a lot more.’ It felt better. It felt right,” Lovato continued. “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.”
Still, she's not ready to put too many labels on herself just yet. “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,” Lovato said. “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.”
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Condé Nast
