By : Aminata Diallo
These days, it feels almost hesitant to open a new headline about a former One Direction band member, who was the center of many of our pre-teen fixations. Recently, a more unprecedented headline involving Zayn Malik on the infamous Call Her Daddy podcast has our now grown-up minds raising concerns about the exhausting reality of love. In a sit-down with host Alexandra Cooper, Zayn stated that he will “always love” his former supermodel girlfriend, Gigi Hadid, with whom he shares a daughter, but followed it with, “I don’t know if I was ever in love with her.”
Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik had a public, on-and-off relationship for nearly five years, until the end of 2021. Zayn’s love life, like that of many members of the now-disbanded boy band, was constantly up for speculation and often used by the public as “relationship goals” content. Some may argue that his statement was simply an expression of his honest thoughts after years of reflecting on the relationship. But for me, the question becomes: when does the line between ego and honesty begin to blur?
Surely, growing up as a heartthrob since your teens forces you into the center of the narrative. There’s a possibility that Zayn may experience a sense of detachment when it comes to discussing a love life that is indefinitely open for public discussion. But like Zayn, Gigi is also a heavily discussed public figure who surely would not want to wake up to amplified drama caused by a fellow star who shares the same inconvenience. Zayn, who rarely gives interviews about his personal life, has now sparked a broader conversation about whether it was appropriate to tell the entire world that you were never in love with your girlfriend of five years and the mother of your child.
Whether his statement was a misguided attempt to assert independence from his former relationships or to shift the narrative, it is disappointing to see, as it leaves someone as graceful as Gigi on the unnecessary receiving end. Personally, it seems like revisionist history around the end of long-term relationships is a trap many people fall into. It’s a common post-breakup trope, often seen as a “defense mechanism” for those who cannot fully process their feelings, and it sparks broader discussions about fear of commitment and the impact of dishonesty. Do we ever truly know how our partners feel about us?
This shocking statement also brings up a past but significant controversy involving Zayn and Gigi’s mother, Yolanda Hadid. Hadid accused Zayn of a domestic dispute with her, a year after the birth of Zayn and Gigi’s daughter. This period marked the end of the on-and-off relationship between the two young stars, though they reportedly remained on cordial terms, as they now co-parent their five-year-old child.
Like most celebrity news, we will truly never know the ins and outs of Zayn and Gigi’s relationship, nor the full extent of the cordiality between them now. On a speculative level, it’s shocking to hear the invalidation of what many of us thought was an intense and messy display of love. Guess not!