Why did Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake break up?
Why did Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake break up? The actual cause of the breakup is not known but it has been widely speculated that Britney Spears cheated on Justin. Or the other way around. In the music video for his 2003 song “Cry Me A River,” Justin sings to a Britney lookalike who cheated on him.
In The Woman In Me, Britney explained how devastated she was after their split. “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood,” she shared (per the New York Times). A source confirmed to Us Weekly that Spears that after Timberlake broke up with her over a text, he visited her in Louisiana to deliver her a breakup letter.
“After seeing the message as I sat in my trailer in between takes,” she wrote of being on the set of her “Overprotected” music video, “I had to go back out and dance. For as much as Justin hurt me, there was a huge foundation of love and when he left me, I was devastated. When I say devastated, I mean I could barely speak for months. Whenever anyone asked me about him, all I could I do is cry. I don’t know if I was clinically in shock, but it felt that way.”
She continued: “I barely left the house. I was that messed up. I lay in my bed and stared at the ceiling.” Then, she described the day he brought over a handwritten note. “He brought me a long letter he’d written and framed,” she explains, “I still have it under my bed. And at the end, it said—it makes me want to cry to think about it—‘I can’t breathe without you.’ Those are the last words in it.”
“It almost felt like I was suffocating,” she noted, “like I couldn’t breathe after all that happened. The thing is, though, even after I saw him and read the letter, I didn’t come out of the trance. He did all that, he came there to see me and I still couldn’t talk—to him or to anybody.”
In an interview with Barbara Walters after the breakup, Justin said of the breakup, “We’re not perfect. I don’t judge anybody. It’s just young love. It’s just young love. It was a very intense relationship, that’s for sure.”
Meanwhile, Diane Sawyer grilled Britney in a scathing interview in 2003. Britney, who was 22 at the time, was asked invasive questions about her “big breakup” from Justin. “You broke his heart. You did something that caused him so much pain, so much suffering. What did you do?” Diane asked during the interview. Britney responded, “I was upset for a while. We both are really young and it was kind of waiting to happen. I will always love him … he is such a great person,” she replied.
When asked if she “betrayed” him as depicted in the “Cry Me A River,” Britney responded, “I’m not technically saying he’s wrong, but I’m not technically saying he’s right either.”
Justin also revealed in Vanity Fair in 2011 that they hadn’t spoken in “nine or ten years.” “We were two birds of the feather — small-town kids, doing the same thing,” he told the magazine. “But then you become adults and the way you were as kids doesn’t make any sense. I won’t speak on her, but at least for me, I was a totally different person. I just don’t think we were normal; there was nothing normal about our existence.”
In the wake of the documentary Framing Britney Spears, Justin made a lengthy apology post on Instagram to both Britney Spears and Janet Jackson, the latter whom he headlined with for the Super Bowl in 2003. “I’ve seen the messages, tags, comments, and concerns and I want to respond,” Timberlake said. “I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right. I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism. I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”
He continued, “everyone involved deserves better and most importantly, because this is a larger conversation that I wholeheartedly want to be part of and grow from.” The 39-year-old father of two young boys then wrote that the music industry is “flawed,” and that it sets men, “especially white men,” up for success.
“It’s designed this way. As a man in a privileged position I have to be vocal about this,” he continued. “Because of my ignorance, I didn’t recognize it for all that it was while it was happening in my own life but I do not what to ever benefit from others being pulled down again.”
