Hailey and Justin Bieber gave one of their most candid interviews on their marital struggles on the “In Good Faith with Chelsea & Judah Smith” podcast today—and for the first time, Hailey really opened up about the toll watching Justin struggle with his mental health had on her as his new wife.
In February 2019, reports came out about Justin seeking treatment for depression; he and Hailey had gotten married just months before in September 2018. Hailey later called the first year of their marriage “very difficult” in a March 2021 interview with ELLE.
To Chelsea and Judah, Hailey spoke about the moments she nearly broke under the weight of watching her partner struggle. “I remember I called [my mom, Kennya Baldwin] a few different times, one particular time [when] we were in Brooklyn and I was calling her, I was crying, and I was like, ‘I just can’t do it. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to do this if it’s going to be like this forever,’” she started. “And I just remember she was so calm on the phone and she was like, ‘It’s going to pass, and you’re going to be fine and he’s going to be healthy and we’re here for you.’ And I do feel like we had a lot of support. I feel like if I didn’t have support, it would’ve been 10 times harder, and it was already the hardest thing in my life at the time so I also just think I was in it. I made a decision. I know for a fact that I’ve loved this person for a very long time and now would not be the time to give up on him. I just wouldn’t do that to him.”
“Imagine abandoning somebody in the middle of the worst time of their life, potentially. I’m not that type of a person,” Hailey continued. “So I was going to stick it out no matter what the outcome was going to be. It was really hard. There were days where I literally was like, ‘I don’t know if he’s going to be okay.’ Something really deep down inside of me was like, ‘He’s going to get through it.’ I just didn’t know how long it was going to take. That’s what I think was the hardest thing. There’s no guarantees.”
“I was having these out of body experiences where I would say things like, ‘I just feel my hands in a weird way…’” Justin said.
“Very weird sensory stuff,” Hailey added.
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Justin credited time with helping him and Hailey become truly unconditional partners, not any one breakthrough moment. “I think it was just time that healed things, just us showing up for each other every day, being consistent, me seeing that she wasn’t going anywhere,” he said. “I think I had a lot of, like, rejection issues that I had to just fight through, but just her just continuously showing up every day and being there for me. And I just kept seeing that over and over and over. And I just became more secure, and more secure with where we were at in our relationship.”
“I think neither of us were going to be the person to say, ‘I quit,’” Hailey added. “Neither of us were going to be the one to walk away from the situation. Because we were just both like, ‘Hey, we chose to fight for this, so we’re gonna keep fighting past whatever we need to.’”
Hailey also addressed their rapid-fire romance: The two got back together in June 2018, engaged in July, and married that September. But they had dated before and knew, she said, that if they did date again, they would do so with the plan to get married eventually.
“We’d have conversations when we were younger, [and] we always knew if we ever do get back together, it will be with the intention of getting married,” she said. “We used to say that to each other and talk about that. I don’t think it was that surprising for us. I don’t know if I ever thought it would be that soon. I didn’t think I’d be getting married at 21. I always used to think in my head, ‘Oh, if Justin and I ever get back together, we’ll be a little bit older and it’ll be later in life,’ and God was like, ‘Yeah, that’s really funny because here’s you at 21.’”
You can listen to Hailey and Justin’s full conversation here.
Alyssa Bailey
News and Strategy Editor
Alyssa Bailey is the news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton).
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