If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention to pop culture and celebrity news lately, I’m sure you’ve heard the online discourse surrounding Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber. Yes, it’s the tale as old as time: Everyone knows that Gomez dated Hailey’s now-husband, Justin Bieber, for quite some time. While Selena and Justin had a pretty on-again off-again relationship, it’s safe to say he also did with Hailey, who he’s now married to. Just when I thought the whole Gomez versus Hailey drama couldn’t have been more escalated, now fans online are questioning the Biebers marriage in full. Yes, everyone is wondering… did Justin and Hailey Bieber have an arranged marriage? Her Campus reached out to Justin and Hailey Bieber’s teams for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
If you’re a little bit confused how Gomez’s relationship relates to the Biebers’ marriage at all, I’ll fill you in. Honestly, it’s a little unclear when Justin’s relationship with Gomez ended and his romance with Hailey began. Nevertheless, Justin and Hailey got married back in 2018, so it looked like talk about Gomez and Justin would be over. Of course, Jelena stans have reminisced on the two being together for quite some time, but when Hailey took to the popular Call Her Daddy podcast in September 2022, conversation about the situation quickly picked up again.
I really think that Hailey’s appearance on this podcast was an attempt to diffuse some of the drama between herself and Gomez that has plagued the internet for years. And that it did… for a little while. The two even took a picture together that broke the internet at the Academy Museum Gala late last year. Things took a turn for the worse, however, when Hailey posted a TikTok video that fans felt she was using to shade her husband’s ex, which Gomez actually responded to. And it just keeps going (cue laminated brow-gate) with one of Hailey’s longtime friends, Kylie Jenner, getting involved in the whole debacle.
Fans have seemed to rush to Gomez’s aid, as a bunch of old videos of Hailey and Justin have been resurfacing. Everything from old pictures of Hailey holding a magazine cover with Jelena on it to her being accused of shading Gomez’s best friend Taylor Swift have been swarming my TikTok FYP.
The amount of old videos that are reappearing online include some claiming that Hailey was determined to start a relationship with Justin. With that have come some pretty questionable videos of Justin himself talking about his relationship with Hailey. Yes, I’m talking about his appearance on The Ellen Show in 2020 where he appeared to realize he was in an “arranged marriage.”
In the video, Justin talked about how he met Hailey through efforts from her father. “I think because she was raised Christian and they found out that,” to which Justin completely stopped his train of thought to say, “I think it was an arranged marriage, I’m pretty sure. Looking back now, it was definitely an arranged marriage, they set this whole thing up.” The guest celebrity host, Demi Lovato, laughed Justin’s comments off, which were clearly said in a joking manner. As Justin went on to continue talking about how he believed the Baldwin family admired his own Christian beliefs, he just kept on repeating how he thought it was an “arranged marriage.”
So, it seems that fans online were not the source of these rumors of Hailey and Justin’s marriage being arranged — it was Justin himself. Of course, Justin was clearly joking, but users have taken this interview as “proof” and run with it, posting videos that depict why they believe the union between these two celebrities was somewhat forced, including videos of Justin appearing to leave Hailey behind or shut the car door on her when caught by paparazzi throughout the years.
Hailey has revealed that when she first met Justin in the lobby of The Today Show that she actually “didn’t really know a thing about him.” Their first meeting was all the way back in 2009, and it was actually captured on film, where audiences can see just how young the two celebrities really were upon first meeting.
In 2020, Hailey dished this information on The Tonight Show revealing that he was pretty new in the industry at the time and that, “I met him and his mom, and my dad kind of just connected [with them] as friends.”
Despite the many coincidences leading to Hailey and Justin being connected, I think it’s safe to say that the marriage was not intentionally arranged, no matter how much Jelena fans may want to think so.