Months after Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin surprised fans with their quick engagement and rush to marriage, the married couple sat down with Vogue and opened up about life together — revealing that they waited the old-fashioned way to have sex until they were husband and wife.
After being somewhat forced friends since 2009 through their parents, who are born-again Christians, Bieber and Baldwin dated for a few years before getting in an explosive blowout fight that ended things.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“Negative things happened that we still need to talk about and work through,” Baldwin explained. “Fizzled would not be the right word—it was more like a very dramatic excommunication. There was a period where if I walked into a room, he would walk out.”
But in June 2018, they met at a church event and put the past behind them. “The common denominator, I promise you, is always church. By then we were past the drama,” Baldwin said. “I just gave him a hug. By the end of the conference, he was like, ‘We’re not going to be friends.’ I was like, ‘We’re not?’”
Within a month, Bieber had proposed to Baldwin, and she said yes.
The couple admitted that their rush to the courthouse may have been fueled by Bieber’s tenure of self-imposed celibacy, which he was more than a year into when he and Baldwin reconnected. He said he decided to abstain because of “a legitimate problem with sex” — and said not having sex helped him feel closer to God.
“He doesn’t ask us not to have sex for him because he wants rules and stuff,” Bieber explained. “He’s like, I’m trying to protect you from hurt and pain. I think sex can cause a lot of pain. Sometimes people have sex because they don’t feel good enough. Because they lack self-worth. Women do that, and guys do that. I wanted to rededicate myself to God in that way because I really felt it was better for the condition of my soul. And I believe that God blessed me with Hailey as a result. There are perks. You get rewarded for good behavior.”
But sex wasn’t the only motivating factor in getting Baldwin down the aisle.
“When I saw her last June, I just forgot how much I loved her and how much I missed her and how much of a positive impact she made on my life. I was like, Holy cow, this is what I’ve been looking for,” he said.
Five months into marriage, the two are still planning a “real” wedding and learning the ins and outs of what cohabitation entails.
“The thing is, marriage is very hard,” Baldwin said. “That is the sentence you should lead with. It’s really effing hard.”
“I’m fighting to do this the right way, to build a healthy relationship,” she clarified. “I want people to know that. We’re coming from a really genuine place. But we’re two young people who are learning as we go. I’m not going to sit here and lie and say it’s all a magical fantasy. It’s always going to be hard. It’s a choice.
“You don’t feel it every single day. You don’t wake up every day saying, ‘I’m absolutely so in love and you are perfect.’ That’s not what being married is,” she continued. “But there’s something beautiful about it anyway—about wanting to fight for something, commit to building with someone. We’re really young, and that’s a scary aspect. We’re going to change a lot. But we’re committed to growing together and supporting each other in those changes. That’s how I look at it. At the end of the day, too, he’s my best friend. I never get sick of him.”
