People magazine has an excerpt from Jennifer Lopez’s forthcoming memoir, True Love that recalls the day she revealed her marriage to s singer Marc Anthony was over and the thoughts about relationships that followed.
The entertainer was on the set of a photo shoot in July 2011. At the time, she had just celebrated her seventh wedding anniversary (June 5), her twins Max and Emme were thriving and her latest single, “On the Floor,” had soared to number one around the world. But on the inside, Lopez was struggling with her relationship.
“In a blur of fear and panic, I looked at Benny [Medina] and my mother and blurted out the words: ‘I don’t think I can be with Marc anymore.’ Then I burst into tears,” Lopez writes. “It was out. The thing I feared more than anything in the world. I collapsed into their arms and began to sob.”
Lopez and Anthony publicly announced their divorce on July 15, 2011. “Hardest. Day. Ever,” she summed up.
In the year that followed, Lopez launched her Dance Again tour, on which she wanted to show the “truth about abusive relationships.”
J.Lo never says her seven-year marriage to Anthony was abusive, although she once called their relationship “very Sonny and Cher,” and also opens up about abuse in her past.
“I’ve never gotten a black eye or a busted lip, but I’ve been in relationships where I have felt abused in one way or another: mentally, emotionally, verbally,” she writes. “I know what it feels like for your soul to be diminished by the way your loved one is treating you.”
The singer’s list of exes include Diddy, Casper Smart, three ex-husbands Ojani Noa, Chris Judd and Anthony and a highly publicized engagement to Ben Affleck.
Lopez says it took her years to learn that abusive relationships fall on the shoulders of both partners. “Because every day that you don’t walk out that door, every day you accept things in your partner and in yourself, is a day that you’re saying it’s okay,” she writes.
“True Love” is due on Nov. 4.
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