You guys… Vogue released their March cover story and editorial and it is a TRIP. As we previewed earlier, Justin and Hailey Bieber are the cover stars. While the cover is iconic (I’m not being sarcastic), it’s not the most flattering for Hailey. The rest of the Annie Leibovitz photos are great though – you can see the editorial here. But the real iconic thing is the interview!!! Vogue has gotten into a terrible rut with their cover interviews for years now – an endless parade of anxious 20-somethings who only talk about meditation and diets. This article is… crazy. It’s because Justin has already lived so much life and so much drama at 24 (he turns 25 in a few weeks). Hailey is only 22, and she’s a million times more organized than him, and she’s the mature one, trying to figure out how they’re going to make this marriage work. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Hailey on how they’re already in marriage counseling: “The thing is, marriage is very hard. That is the sentence you should lead with. It’s really effing hard.”
They briefly dated three years ago: Both intimate that a betrayal occurred. “Negative things happened that we still need to talk about and work through,” Hailey explains. “Fizzled would not be the right word—it was more like a very dramatic excommunication. There was a period where if I walked into a room, he would walk out.”
Justin is unstable: “I’m the emotionally unstable one. I struggle with finding peace. I just feel like I care so much and I want things to be so good and I want people to like me. Hailey’s very logical and structured, which I need. I’ve always wanted security—with my dad being gone sometimes when I was a kid, with being on the road. With the lifestyle I live, everything is so uncertain. I need one thing that’s certain. And that is my baby boo.”
His abuse of drugs & Xanax: “I found myself doing things that I was so ashamed of, being super-promiscuous and stuff, and I think I used Xanax because I was so ashamed. My mom always said to treat women with respect. For me that was always in my head while I was doing it, so I could never enjoy it. Drugs put a screen between me and what I was doing. It got pretty dark. I think there were times when my security was coming in late at night to check my pulse and see if I was still breathing.”
Hailey on Bieber’s sobriety: “I grieved very intensely over the whole situation. I just wanted him to be happy and be good and be safe and feel joy. But I’m really proud of him. To do it without a program, and to stick with it without a sober coach or AA or classes—I think it’s extraordinary. He is, in ways, a walking miracle.”
He got back with Hailey when he was doing a year-long celibacy thing: When the couple reconnected last June, Justin was more than a year into a self-imposed tenure of celibacy. He had what he calls “a legitimate problem with sex.” It was his remaining vice, an addiction that had long since ceased to provide him any pleasure. Not having sex, he decided, was a way for him to feel closer to God. “He doesn’t ask us not to have sex for him because he wants rules and stuff,” Justin explains. “He’s like, I’m trying to protect you from hurt and pain. I think sex can cause a lot of pain. Sometimes people have sex because they don’t feel good enough. Because they lack self-worth. Women do that, and guys do that. I wanted to rededicate myself to God in that way because I really felt it was better for the condition of my soul. And I believe that God blessed me with Hailey as a result. There are perks. You get rewarded for good behavior.”
They did get married so they could have sex: People have speculated that Justin and Hailey married because she got pregnant, which is false. (No babies for at least a couple of years, Hailey says.) Justin admits that while a desire finally to have sex was one reason they sped to the courthouse, it was not the only reason. “When I saw her last June, I just forgot how much I loved her and how much I missed her and how much of a positive impact she made on my life. I was like, Holy cow, this is what I’ve been looking for.”
It’s like a slow-motion disaster and you can’t avert your eyes. To be clear, this was the most I’ve ever liked Justin – he comes across as extremely vulnerable throughout, and like he leans heavily on Hailey. That’s a lot for a 22-year-old young woman though, so I ended up feeling sorry for her too. Mostly, I came away from this thinking that they have no business being married.
Hailey and Justin Bieber by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue Magazine, March Issue 2019. – I pic.twitter.com/JMIbIKr6KT
— IMONATION (@THEIMONATION) February 7, 2019
Photos courtesy of Vogue/Annie Leibovitz.
MY TAKE: In the Stan Culture we live in, Justin Bieber who has this large and obsessive fanbase who are very loud about personal life especially his relationships, feels the need to legitimise Hailey by making her the WIFE.
I don’t think the first few months of marriage should be THAT hard honestly. I am too old to work this hard at any rate. This all sounds soooo exhausting.
Agreed. But they were never ready to begin with. They just wanted to have sex and since they were rediscovering their religious beliefs I suppose, they thought this was the best recourse.
Me either. If you already need marriage counseling 3 months in, I’m thinking it’s not gonna work. Marriage counseling is for 10-20 years down the road when you have decades of resentment built up around kids, money, intimacy, etc… that you need help fixing.
i agree. they’re rich, 22 and married for less than six months. it actually shouldn’t be eff-ing hard at this point. it should be blissful and exciting.
Good luck to them, but this doesn’t sound like a truly stable relationship which I think is required for a healthy, long marriage.
Indeed. I’m really cheering for them because he has something innocent about him and she is a lovely, sweet person. I hope they’ll be happy and heal. but this does sound bad. she is his crutch and no person deserves to be that. everybody deserves a partner that’s really a partner, an equal. and she won’t be able to fix him. he has to seek help and heal and mature by himself.
LOL already in marriage counseling before you’re married? Yeah, I’m sure this will last forever.
Vogue is a big old joke.
I think it was premarital counseling, which is really a great thing. A lot of religions recommend it.
It can help people see the light when they shouldn’t get married because it forces them to consider and address big issues that often get swept under the rug when you’re engaged…common or divergent values when it comes to money, children, the direction you see your relationship going in, etc.
I think the bigger problem with these two is you can’t really answer any of those questions accurately at that age, especially not with their careers.
ETA: I just re-read the part and I think you’re right, they’re talking about actual counseling to work through old issues from their last breakup. Good luck with that.
pre-marital counseling is great and to make sure you’re prepared for marriage & aware of views/habits you & your partner share and where you’re different
In this case, she comes right out and says that the betrayal from their first brief dating period is one they still need to address. It should have been addressed & resolved prior to marriage – especially if they had pre-marital counseling!
They may not have any business being married, but they are. So, let’s root for their best interest.
Agreed! And I think all couples should be in marriage counseling for the first year…to head off bad habits/dynamics!
We did premarital counseling, and it was helpful. No shade for that.
I’m so glad you said this, and oh yes, let’s root for the best!
Agree, good luck to these two and hope they are good for each other.
And I actually think the stuff Biebs said about sex addiction is rather insightful.
I can see why he ended up with Hailey instead of Selena who seems to have her own issues. People like this need someone stable. Both Justin and Selena seems dramatic.
Clear as day hes codeendent she’s narcissistic this will not end well either way right now she’s love bombing him and he’s idealizung her ugh the next part of the story gets ugly
They seem to both idealize each other, but I think she actually sees his flaws and accepts them. He is projecting his image of “perfect wife” onto her and she’s trying to live up to it. He’s going to be disappointed. He wants a fairytale, she knows they’re not real, IMO.
A whole mess.
Oh wow…he really does seem more likable but these two should NOT be married right now.
“A lot of things we still need to talk through?” Sober without a coach, classes or programs-so basically, she’s his support for that? Basically got married so they could have sex? Wow.
And why is she praising that like it’s more impressive? It’s just riskier and more likely to lead to failure.
Wow. This is so sad. Don’t normally comment on relationships because each journey is different and unique but she is so young and he admits he has a lot of demons he’s still working through. And it appears he’s working through some of these demons alone without outside help. Which means she’s shouldering the burden and she is very young to deal with these burdens.
I’m stressed out for the both of them.
I know. It is bringing out the mom in me! Girls and young women often do so much emotional labor for their romantic partners before they get a bit older and learn to see their needs and well-being as being of equal to those of others, and Haley sure as hell seems to be shouldering A LOT for Justin at a very young age. Justin needs professional help, not some girl he dated on and off for a couple of years to fix him by becoming his wife.
I just feel (know) that this isn’t going to end well.
Exactly! My heart actually hurts for both of them. Maybe it’s the mom in me as well. I just think they feel love will help them conquer all and are not equipped for all the issues. Marriage is hard at times do therapy is always great. However, there are so many more issues here besides their marriage. She should also be in therapy. Who is shouldering her burdens? Being a caretaker can break a person down. She’s so young and truthfully at the age where she should be having so much fun. But now she’s a wife to a man who appears to be want to be better but admits he has a lot to work through. Are they equipped to handle this during such a young marriage?
I think Haley has her angles… this cover is not one. I’m blown away that she’s only 22 too.
Also, yikes to this whole thing. Got to feel bad for both of them.
This thing is gonna implode right in front of our eyes.
He is a mess and it should not be her job to clean in it up.
Guys. MARRIAGE COUNSELLING IS A GOOD THING. Particularly if you haven’t lived together before you got married, or haven’t had any stability, or don’t have any education in emotional communication, like these two. If I were 22 and married I’d want to be counselled too. Marriage is long; putting in the work to know how to do it isn’t shameful.
I think it was the marriage counseling plus the “start this thing with marriage is hard” part. They should be in the honeymoon period right now. Not waxing about how hard it is to be married.
I disagree with the notion that the beginning of a marriage should be easy-peasy. I’ve been married for… um… 13 years, been with my husband for 20. It’s easy-peasy now, it wasn’t in the beginning. I didn’t know how to “relationship” and he didn’t either. We had issues, mental health and whatnot. We made it through alive. They can make it through.
That’s a little different though. There are always going to be communication issues in a marriage, that’s true, but you don’t ever go into a marriage or a relationship with the starting idea that it’s something to “fix.” It’s not perfect and there are problems, but it’s like, you don’t automatically start from a negative place. They’re working through past issues from their relationships before, but if that’s the case then they simply shouldn’t have gotten married just yet.
Agree. I think they are smart to recognize they need that help. (Gad! Did I just say they’re smart? lol)
Actually, I agree. They both seem to lack basic emotional skills – his admission to avoiding pain by drug use and sex is revealing, classic strategy – and it’s healthy to seek help if you don’t know how to deal with stuff. I wish them the best of luck. I’m no Bieber… what do they call themselves?… Bieberbaby? … whatever, I’m not a fan, I don’t listen to his music, I don’t think much of her modelling skills, but just from the stuff in this interview I think this might just work out fine.
That’s really sad…dating someone for a month or two, getting engaged just to have sex at 22/25, and getting marriage counseling before the wedding just spells disaster.
I have a friend who has been married 20 years and she said the first year was by FAR the hardest, she told me she would have walked away except that the shame of having such a short marriage made her stay! She’s glad now that she stayed, but she said it was tough. A lot was about finances and communication…combining two lives can be hard.
Yes, for us the first couple years were the hardest. We were madly in love with each other but still in the honeymoon phase. Living together, we fought like cats and dogs. It was hard for me to compromise. We fought in different ways. I wanted to be left alone when mad, he wanted to go on and discussing it. Which would make me even madder. Finally he started backing off a bit when I was mad. Then i would cool down and we would make up. It was hard to confront our differences and work through it. I truly had no idea how different marriage would be. I’ve lived w guys before but getting married changed everything. In good and bad ways. We worked through it and are still together and have a stronger, deeper love now. We were offered premarital counseling at the courthouse, standard. I wish we had done it. We probably would have worked things out a whole lot easier.
I think that is true in general, but maybe not here. They were dating for a very short time before getting married. So many of these issues are things you should try to work out before getting married. I think it is good that they are in counseling (and I hope they make it) to help figure things out though.
I definitely think it is a good thing but in their case it’s a sign they rushed into marriage with an already poor relationship. They should have sorted all that stuff from when they previously dated BEFORE they made the lifelong commitment. The reason they’re spouting how hard it is is because they did a stupid thing they were in no way prepared for and now they’re stuck with the consequences.
My first year of marriage was a little difficult yes but not because of the huuuuuuge reasons these kids have. It was normal adjustment issues, let’s not pretend these kids have anything that mundane to deal with.
Must have been tough on Biebs considering they spent pretty much the last year making out 24/7
What a mess. I wish them the best, but marriage is hard enough when you have things going for you. They’ve got a lot to deal with (emotionally, baggage-wise, addiction) and they’re so so young.
Iconic? Doesn’t it take time for something to become iconic,excuse my ignorance.
So she’s basically his sober coach, missing dad, therapist, and f*ck buddy all rolled into a 22 year old insta model with celebrity parents. Yeeeeesh.
They are young and messy but they are aiming for what they think a healthy grown up relationship looks like. I can’t hate on that.
I just don’t get any vibes of happiness or joy at all from this couple. What a depressing interview. You shouldn’t have to suffer so much at the beginning of a marriage. He seems emotionally traumatized and she’s playing the role of the caretaker. Not good.
Trauma bonding. Google it.
Ooooh boy. I cannot see ANY WAY in which this ends with a happy ever after for them. I hope for their sake I’m wrong, but yikes.
I will never shade anyone for counseling, at any point in any relationship! It’s a positive thing and if we all had access to regular counseling, we would all be impacted for good.
I really wish my husband and I had some marriage counseling before we got married! It can’t hurt, and I’m sure it would have helped with communication.
I tend to agree, but not in this case! Beiber clearly has SO MUCH personal work to do. All this interview tells me is that he’s going to displace ALL of his toxic stuff he hasn’t worked through onto her. And the religious counselling I’m sure they get will turn it into her wifely duty to subject herself to it. In my opinion, the individual work has to come before (or at least coincide) with any couples work.
Marriage counseling should not be a substitute for the therapy Justin so obviously needs (and that Hailey WILL need after spending her early twenties basically parenting her husband).
God, these two really have no business being married or in a relationship really. Especially Justin seems to regards his marriage as a kind of treatment for what ails him? Hailey is going to have a RUDE awakening should she ever fail to be a dependable rock for her husband to lean on for five minutes or God forbid need some emotional support herself.
smh
YES! Thank you! You said it perfectly. I couldn’t explain why this upset me, but this is exactly why! She’s totally serving as his emotional surrogate, and he will download all his personal issues onto her and their marriage. It’s pretty irresponsible of the counsellor actually. But I’m sure it’s a church counsellor, so it’ll be framed as a “wifely duty” thing.
He has very little self awareness, insight, or EQ. Not a surprise, since he’s had no treatment! Not only does he treat his marriage as a form of therapy to service his wounds, but as a reward for “good behaviour”. Blech! Women aren’t prizes! He hasn’t grown one bit. He cannot and will not ever emotionally show up for her, and I feel kinda bad for her.
Very well said. It’s clear that Justin still isn’t in a good place, and he’s putting so much pressure on Hailey to be his entire emotional support system. It’s like her only purpose is to be his grounding force, but what about her needs? This doesn’t sound healthy and is likely not going to end well.
“And I believe that God blessed me with Hailey as a result. There are perks. You get rewarded for good behavior.”
Wow, so he doesn’t have sex and gets rewarded with a hot wife. This is so incredibly problematic. Just to be clear I have absolutely no problem with celibacy but he has a lot of young and impressionable female fans and he is promoting very toxic ideas regarding sex and purity.
*shudders* Oh God, I hadn’t even put two and two together on that one!
And what happens when that reward has her own emotional needs and opinions and goals? She is not a trophy, she’s a human being, FFS. Is his church teaching him this nonsense or is he coming up with it himself?
Beiber and the church share the same brand of nonsense! And she doesn’t know she’s being used to modernize and market the concept of the dutiful, submissive wife to millennials.
What @jay said. The whole idea of “you get rewarded for your faith” is a classic American Evangelical line. The more overt faith you display, the more god will be pleased, the more he’ll give you stuff like money and fancy cars and hot wives and big houses. If you’re poor and unattractive and single, then that means you didn’t have enough faith and therefore don’t deserve god’s favour. And if you want god’s favour, you better start cutting a check to the church. (If this sounds very capitalistic to you, that’s because it absolutely is, and that’s also why it’s incredibly American).
And what first attracted you to the millionaire Justin Bieber……………………………………………..????
Yikes. Beiber needs so much therapy of his own before he’d ever be ready for marriage counselling. They’re just downloading all of his issues onto their marriage. I give them 6 months of lukewarm ok-ness followed by 5 years of misery because their religious beliefs keep them from divorcing.
They are so damn young. They may be celebs, but they are really just kids with a lot of money. I wish them well individually and together.
When you’re 22, it’s really easy to confuse care-taking with “being someone’s rock”.
Agreed. Their relationship sounds very codependent, which is roughly what I assumed it to be from the photos. Codependency is an easy pattern to get into at that age, and it’s one that I definitely lived through in a relationship with a boy when I was 23-24. It’s taken me a decade, plus counseling, to try to unlearn the pattern of feeling like I need to “take care” of a man, and adapt my behavior to make him happy. Ugh.
I wish them well, I really do.
poor babies. wish them best of luck. I hope they heal and mature.
This sounds exactly like Carly Simon and James Taylor. Tumultuous. Toxic. And TOO YOUNG. They, too, had already lived a lot of life at that point and it didn’t help them – in fact, the wounds caused by this exact same lifestyle only made things worse. Good luck …
Good luck. Seems like they are going old school with this the way my parents’ generation did it. My mother and father were engaged three months after dating and married a few months after. And yes my mother waited for her wedding night.
I hope he can beat those demons. Wishing them the best, good for them for gettting help and I really hope they don’t reproduce until they figure this out.
Never marry someone who is emotionally immature and unstable – you can’t fix them, you’ll only enable them.
And ruin yourself in the process.
They are living out what Pete/Ariana wanted to do last year. At least Ari smartened up and didn’t go through with it.
Getting married just to have sex? What is this, the 1800’s? He’s looking for a parental figure, not a wife.
This is a classic case of a girl who’s married too young and too soon to take so much emotional responsibility for other people. And it’s going to shape her for her the rest of her life. And the sad thing is she doesn’t see that. She’s too entrenched in this idea that she’s helping him get better, and it’s a powerful feeling to know that a person you love is willing to change so much for you. But Justin Bieber is not Hailey Baldwin’s responsibility. And she cannot make the basis of this relationship a situation where she is responsible for his well-being, her own well-being, and the well-being of this marriage, no matter how powerful or wanted or loved or respected or adored that’s going to make her feel.
I wish her the best and I hope it works out. But Selena Gomez is the real winner in this relationship if you ask me.
Absolutely. When I was her age I got involved with an equally immature and screwed up man but I was so naive I couldn’t see it. I just thought our love would make everything right. Two years later my life was hell, he’d sucked everything out of me and it took me a few years to get over it after I mustered the courage to leave him.
Same, girl. Same. Mine was about a year, right around this age, but by the time I pulled away from him, I felt like he was a vampire who’d sucked his teeth into me and fed on my heart. I was squeaky clean. He was a toxic, pessimistic, cocky, troubled, self-harming, drug user. He was also charming and funny, attentive, adored me, and seemed to need me desperately. The worst part was I’d shared things with him that I’d never shared with anyone else. He was the first boy I’d truly opened up to and trusted.