Britney Spears is recalling what ultimately led to her divorce from Kevin Federline. In her memoir, The Woman in Me, the 41-year-old pop star claims Kevin was hungry for fame.
“One time he came home late and told me he’d been at a party,” Britney writes in the book. “‘Justin Timberlake was there!’ he said. ‘Lindsay Lohan was, too!’ Kevin was so enthralled with the fame and power.”
She added, “Again and again in my life I’ve seen fame and money ruin people, and I saw it happen with Kevin in slow motion.”
Britney also claims that Kevin eventually stopped contacting her, and that he refused to see her, alleging that he wanted to pretend that she didn’t exist. This was a huge departure from how their relationship started, after they first met at a club.
“There was a connection between us — something that made me feel like I could escape everything that was hard in my life,” she writes. “That very first night we met, he held me — and I mean held me — in a pool for hours. It was beyond a sexual thing. It wasn’t about lust. It was intimate.”
Britney also writes that she felt “safe and alive and sexy all at the same time” when she was around Kevin. That level of magnetism she felt had been unmatched by anyone at that point. But early on there were red flags Britney says she ignored, like when she said she had “no idea” that her new beau was a dad to a toddler with another baby on the way.
“I was clueless. I was living in a bubble, and I didn’t have a lot of good, close friends to confide in and get advice from,” she writes. “I had no idea until after we’d been together for a while and someone told me. ‘You know he has a new baby, right?’ I didn’t believe it, but when I asked, he told me it was true. He told me he saw them once a month… I had no idea.”
Even so, the couple stayed together and Kevin even accompanied her on tour. They got married in the fall of 2000. Britney went on to welcome Sean Preston in 2005 and Jayden James the following year. After their children came into the picture, Britney and Kevin “grew more and more estranged.”
These are just some of the many bombshells Britney shares in her new memoir, out now.
As ET previously reported, Kevin and his wife, Victoria, moved to Hawaii with his and Britney’s sons earlier this year. Britney consented to the move back in May after Kevin broached the topic earlier this year.
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