Justin Timberlake appears to be feeling the heat in the wake of Britney Spears’ newly-released memoir, . In the book, Spears details quite a bit about her relationship with Timberlake from 1999 to 2002, which has led to a voracious reaction from the pop princess’s fans. Now, Timberlake is putting an end to that discourse — on social media, at least — by disabling the comments section of all of his Instagram posts.
The move to censor comments comes amid several highly publicized revelations from Spears’ memoir, including an admission from Spears that she became pregnant by Timberlake and had an abortion. She wrote in the book that she would have gone through with having the baby but that Timberlake wasn’t ready to be a father.
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“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much,” Spears wrote. “I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
Spears claims that they decided to keep the pregnancy and abortion a secret due to their fame and that the procedure should be done at home. “It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home,” she wrote, adding that they didn’t even tell her family.
She described the physical pain of the medication abortion as “excruciating.” She wrote, “I kept crying and sobbing until it was all over. It took hours, and I don’t remember how it ended, but I do, twenty years later, remember the pain of it, and the fear.”
Elsewhere in the book, Spears admitted to cheating on Timberlake during their relationship with dancer and choreographer Wade Robson. “We were out one night and we went to a Spanish bar. We danced and danced. I made out with him that night,” she wrote, adding that she and Timberlake “agreed to move past” the cheating. She alleged that Timberlake had also been unfaithful to her, but did not name the famous woman he allegedly cheated with, saying that she has a family of her own now.
Since Spears and Timberlake broke up in 2002, Timberlake went on to marry Jessica Biel, with whom he shares sons Silas, 8, and Phineas, 3. Spears and her ex-husband Kevin Federline are parents to sons Sean Preston, 18, and Jaden James, 17. Timberlake has not publicly reacted to the revelations made in The Woman in Me, but before the release of the book made it clear he was not concerning himself with the memoir.
“Justin has been focusing on his own family and trying not to concern himself with Britney’s memoir,” a source told Entertainment Tonight. “In recent years, Justin has tried to be supportive of Britney from a distance. They dated so long ago, but he still has respect for her. Justin and Jessica just want everyone to grow and evolve instead of continuing to bring up the past.”