“I think most of my experiences in relationships have been cursed,” Gomez, 28, recently told Vogue Australia. “I’ve been way too young to be exposed to certain things when I was in relationships. I guess I needed to find what was that word for me, because I felt so less than in past relationships, and never really felt equal.”

The singer explained that her love for the word rare, which has now inspired a song, a tattoo and her makeup company, came from personal growth.

“So that word to me – when I first heard it … I just said this is what I want to feel about myself,” she explained. “So it wasn’t even necessarily like: ‘Oh, I feel that way, let me sing it.’ It was almost like: ‘Actually, I need to feel that way about myself.’”

Gomez dated Justin Bieber on and off from 2011 to 2018. She was also romantically linked to The Weeknd in 2017.

Since then, the Disney alum told the magazine that she is now “surrounded by real people,” and reflected on the development she would like to see for herself from here.

“I’m just really happy with who I am. I’m grateful that as I step into 29 – even just two years ago – I was different,” she said. “It’s only gotten better, and that’s kind of what people say, you know, when you get older, you feel a bit more confident with who you are. I don’t know if that’s gonna be every year for me. Maybe it is. But I just feel like I’m constantly growing in the right direction.”

This isn’t the first time that Gomez has talked about her personal life and how it inspired her creative projects.

“None of what I’m doing now would have stemmed from the mindset I had before,” the Texas native told The Newsette in November 2020. “My best stuff is happening now. And then the greatest thing ever in my music was ‘Lose You to Love Me.’ … I remember I had a moment where I couldn’t believe it because the first and second day, the reactions were crazy, and I remember I smiled and I was like, ‘That’s why it’s worth it. All of these years of confusion and being in love and all of this stuff … and it was finally a clean slate.’ And it wasn’t even because everyone liked it; it was just a realization of why I went through everything I went through.”

This story originally appeared on: US Magazine - Author:Yana Grebenyuk