Hailey Bieber DENIES she 'stole' husband Justin from Selena Gomez

Hailey Bieber has set the record straight regarding the timeline of her and Justin Bieber’s relationship after years of fan-driven speculation that she ‘stole’ him from Selena Gomez.

During her appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the model, 26, insisted to host Alexis Cooper that Justin, 25, had not cheated on Gomez, 30, with her.

‘No, not once,’ she stated, adding that she and Justin began ‘hooking up’ after he’d already split from his former on/off girlfriend in early 2018.

‘When him and I started hooking up, or anything of that sort, he was not in any relationship, It’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship, I was raised better than that,’ Hailey stressed.

Justin and Hailey, who’d had a previous fling in 2016, rekindled their flame in mid-2018. They were engaged by July and tied the knot two months later.

‘I understand how it looks from the outside, but that was a situation where I know for a fact that it was the right thing for [Justin and Selena] to close that door, but of course, there’s a very long history there and I respect that a lot.

‘I don’t want to talk on either one of their behalf’s,’ she explained.

Being that Justin and Selena dated on/off for nearly a decade, fans of both artists felt emotionally invested in their highly-publicized ‘Jelena’ romance.

So, when they called it quits and he moved on with Hailey, she became the main target of online backlash and fan conspiracies. 

‘A lot of the hate comes from like “oh you stole him” and the fact that he wished he ended up with someone else. And that’s fine, you can wish that all you want, but it’s not the case.’

‘There’s a certain numbness that you get,’ she said of coming across hate comments and posts from ‘Jelena’ devotees.

‘It still happens to this day, if I was to go live right now, it would still be happening. You reach a point where you have to ignore it,’ she told Cooper.

‘If we have moved on, why can’t you?’

Earlier in the day, a snippet from Hailey’s Call Her Daddy interview was teased online which touched on rumors that there was some crossover between her and Selena.

‘This is so crazy I’ve literally never talked about this ever,’ the model responded after Cooper remarked on how the public was ‘obsessed’ with the relationship between Justin and Selena.

Then Cooper asked outright, ‘Were you ever with Justin romantically at the same time as [Selena]?’ 

Bieber said she did want to finally address the claims about her stealing Justin from Selena. ‘It’s about people knowing the truth. Because there’s a truth,’ Hailey explained, but the ‘truth’ was not revealed on the clip. 

Selena and Justin began dating in 2010.

The former Disney star was about 18 at the time, Justin, about 16.

The couple’s first big break happened in 2012 and was followed by a series of makeups and breakups until 2018.

Justin and Selena were last seen together in March of that year.

The public first became aware of the Sorry singer’s relationship with Hailey in June and after a whirlwind courtship, the pair tied the knot in a September 2018 courthouse ceremony in New York.

Hailey and Justin walked down the aisle in a religious ceremony the following year.

Selena spoke about the nearly decade long relationship with the Love Yourself artist on NPR in January 2020 while promoting her album, Rare.

The Lose You to Love Me singer revealed the song helped her process her breakup with Justin, and in processing the work she realized the relationship was healthy.

‘It’s dangerous to stay in a victim mentality. And I’m not being disrespectful, I do feel I was a victim of a certain abuse….’

Justin exhibited some volatile behavior during his late teens, including arrests for drunk driving and vandalism. The Confident artist revealed he was addicted to drugs in the documentary series Justin Bieber: Seasons.

‘It was just an escape for me. I was just young, you know, like everybody in the industry and people in the world who experiment and do, you know, just normal growing up things.’

He continued, ‘But my experience was in front of cameras and I had a different level of exposure and people and, like, I had a lot of money and a lot of things. So then you have all these people around me just kind of hanging on, wanting stuff from me, knowing that, like, I was living this lifestyle that they also wanted to live—drinking, smoking.’

Instead of going to rehab, the superstar turned to his pastor, using faith to become sober. In June 2022 the Beautiful Love artist revealed he had been diagnosed with Ramsey Hunt syndrome, which caused partial facial paralysis, making it difficult for him to perform. He paused his concert scheduled in at the time of the diagnosis and officially cancelled the rest of his world tour earlier this month.

When asked by Lulu Garcia-Navarro if she was referring to emotional abuse, Selena answered, ‘Yes, and I think that it’s something I had find a way to understand it as an adult.’

‘And I had to understand the choices was making,’ she continued. ‘As much as I definitely don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about this, I am really proud that I can say I feel the strongest I’ve ever felt and I’ve found a way to just walk through it with as much grace as possible.’

The Calm Down singer has since gone on to become a mental health advocate, launching the Wondermind website earlier this year. The site offers tools to help with various struggles and works to destigmatize mental health issues.