Jessica Simpson and John Mayer Broke Up 9 Times: A Wild Romance Flashback

When Jessica Simpson married Eric Johnson in July 2014, it seemed like it was for good — but, with the announcement of their split about a decade later on Monday, January 13, we remember the last time the singer suffered a public breakup. This would be his on-again, off-again relationship with John Mayer, which ended in 2010, just months before he met Johnson. Let’s look back at what happened during this improbable union, including nine splits in four years.

How it started

Simpson, now 44, helpfully told this story – and many others! — in his very revealing 2020 autobiography, open book. When she first met Mayer, now 47, it was 2005 and she was still married to Nick Lachey. The two musicians, stylistically very different, were presented at Clive Davisat Mayer’s pre-Grammy party, with Mayer complimenting Simpson on her hit ballad, “With You.” They became occasional pen pals and then, when Simpson divorced Lachey in 2006 after four years of marriage, they began seeing each other in secret.

By early 2007, they were regularly seen together, but it wasn’t until Mayer was interviewed by Ryan Seacrest at the Grammys that year, he seemingly confirmed their relationship… except, true to his offbeat style, he did so in Japanese, uttering words that roughly translated to “She’s a lovely woman and I’m happy to be with her.” Oh-kaaaay.

How long did it last

The couple’s first split was widely reported in May 2007, but they quickly got back together. In fact, Simpson recalled while promoting his book that they broke up eight more times before finally ending their relationship in 2010. “We were good at intimacy,” he said. she said in a 2020 press release. Today interview. “We knew how to love each other very well. It was easy, but the relationship was very complex. And it was always again, again and again, again and again. And I went back almost nine times!

How it ended

Well, you may already know this part. In a 2010 interview with Playboy who quickly rose to infamy, Mayer got a little too revealing about his intoxicating relationship with Simpson, destroying any chance of them getting together for the tenth time – thank goodness!

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“This girl, to me, is a drug,” he said. “And drugs are not good for you if you use a lot of them. Yeah, this girl is like crack to me. Sexually, it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm. Have you ever said, “I want to leave my life and just sniff you?” If you charged me $10,000 to fuck you, I’d start selling all my stuff just to keep fucking you.

Naturally, Simpson, professionally impeccable, was not pleased to be described in such lurid terms (she later said, “I was stunned and embarrassed that my grandmother was actually going to read that”) and she immediately cut the singer-songwriter of his life. “I deleted his number,” she wrote in her memoir. “He made it easier for me to leave. I did not accept his apology. I deleted all of his contact information from my phone. I was done with this man in a way I never thought possible. When he contacted me, I changed my number and email. Delete.” Boom, there’s that napalm in action!

What they said about each other

Luckily, some of the couple’s other comments about their relationship were a little more grandmother-friendly.

“He would walk into a room and pick up his guitar, and you would faint,” Simpson said. People in 2020, recalling his first impressions of Mayer when they met. “I didn’t really know the man behind the guitar. And that was my mission.

And during a conversation in February 2007 with Free time in New YorkMayer said he didn’t care if people thought they were an odd couple. “I’m having the best time of my life,” he said. “So if the names don’t mean anything to people, it’s so small to me.”

What they say now

Since their relationship was so surprising and, ultimately, controversial, it’s a topic that has come up repeatedly in interviews over the years – as well as a full analysis in open book.

“He wanted to have all of me or nothing,” Simpson wrote. “Time and time again, he told me he was obsessed with me, sexually and emotionally. I got up to go to the bathroom and John asked me, “Where are you going?” “. When I was married, my ex-husband didn’t bother to know what city I was in. It was sure to be desired. I know John would never cheat on me and this trust was a new feeling for me.

Simpson said Mayer’s intensely sexual comments about her felt like an unexpected betrayal from the man she thought she could count on to adore her. “He thought that was what I wanted to be called,” she wrote. “We never talk about a woman and how she is in bed. It was shocking. He was the most loyal person on the planet, and when I read that wasn’t the case, that was it for me.

When promoting the book, Simpson said AND! News that Mayer is forgiven…sort of. “I absolutely don’t think I’m owed a public apology,” she said. “You can’t take it back. And I’m a very forgiving person, but I’m also honest. So in memoir, if I’m going to talk about things that caused me pain, I’m going to be honest about it. And it was a time in my life where I was very manipulated and very in love, or apparently so.

Simpson, older and wiser, also now knows that her friends were never on board with the relationship. “He would dump me, then come back and say he found out he loved me after all,” she wrote. “I always saw him as him mercilessly pulling me out of the cold. Every time John came back, I thought it was the continuation of a love story, while my friends saw a guy coming back to sleep with a stupid girl.

Simpson also noted in the book that, during their relationship, she worried that Mayer was too smart for her – a source of sensitivity due to the fact that she was caricatured at the time as a “dumb blonde”, which , of course, we have since learned. couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I was constantly afraid that I wasn’t smart enough for him,” she wrote. “He was so intelligent and treated the conversation as a friendly competition that he had to win.” She even said she used to ask friends to proofread her messages, in case they found any typos. “My anxiety was increasing and I poured myself another drink,” she said. “It was the beginning of my reliance on alcohol to mask my nerves.”

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Since Playboy interview, Mayer reasonably stayed a little quieter about his time with Simpson – but when open book was released in 2020, Mayer’s close friend Andy Cohen broached the subject with him. “I heard about it,” Mayer said of his memoir. “I heard a few snippets of it. But as Pee Wee Herman says in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure before the movie of his life is about to unfold at the end, he doesn’t watch the movie, and the reason he doesn’t watch the movie, he says, “I don’t have to watch it, Dottie, I lived it.” And I think that’s prescient here.

But has Mayer ever officially apologized for the “sex napalm” comments that devastated Simpson? Well almost. On stage in Nashville in 2010, he was filled with regret, explaining, “In a quest to be smart, I completely forgot the people I loved and the people who loved me” and saying he had been in “a wormhole of selfishness, of greed.” and arrogance.”

Later, in 2012, in an interview on NPR All things consideredhe offered a similar explanation. “I had nothing to say,” he said. “I was going through a time in my life where I didn’t really want to share what was going on, but I didn’t want to be boring. When you are just open, but not honest, then you start freely associating garbage. That doesn’t mean I can go back and erase it, but I understand it now.

Key Takeaways About Relationships

This relationship was basically a ticking time bomb. As Simpson herself said in her book: “He loved me as best he could and I loved that love for a very long time. Too long. And I went back and forth with that for a long time. But it controlled me.

Some people even thought that Simpson had changed her image for Mayer, dying her brunette hair, her hair blonde, to please her – but she maintains that wasn’t true. “He didn’t make me turn brown,” she said Seduce after their separation. “John doesn’t deserve the credit for making me brown. He’d like to think so, but he doesn’t deserve the credit.

With both stars now apparently single, we doubt Simpson will unblock Mayer’s number anytime soon. Because at the end of the day, as she says, “That was Jess in her 20s.”

Now, as a 44-year-old mother of three, she knows better – and as for Mayer? He hasn’t behaved this recklessly since, so maybe they both learned something.