Yahoo Home Jessica Simpson doesn't expect John Mayer to publicly apologize for toxic romance
Jessica Simpson does not expect a "Justin Timberlake apology" from ex-boyfriend John Mayer.
The singer and actress, 40, promoted the release of Open Book in paperback on the Tamron Hall Show and a sneak peek reveals she was asked if she wants Mayer to make a public mea culpa to her — like Timberlake did to ex Britney Spears recently. In Simpson's memoir, which originally came out last year, she called the guitarist "emotionally manipulative" and their on-and-off-again relationship "dysfunctional."
"No, I definitely don't feel that I'm owed a public apology," Simpson told Hall. "I mean, you can't take it back."
Simpson called herself "a very forgiving person," but added, "I'm also honest. So, in the memoir, if I'm gonna talk about stuff that caused me pain, I'm going to be honest about it. And that was a time in my life where I was very manipulated and very also in love, or seemingly."
She said now that she has "the love of Eric," referring to her husband of six years, Eric Johnson, she knows that true love is "such a different thing."
So, "I wouldn't expect an apology. I don't think there's a need for an apology," Simpson said before pointing out that, "He may not be sorry — and that's OK. We were kinda like on-off, on-off at that time. But to talk about anybody sexually is kind of disrespectful, but I mean that's on him."
In Simpson's memoir, she wrote that she and Mayer, who dated on and off from 2006 to 2010, broke up "close to nine times" throughout the course of their relationship. The "disrespectful" comments were the ones he made detailing their sex life to Playboy in 2010. He infamously called her "sexual napalm" and said she was like "crack cocaine to me." He publicly apologized at the time, and has subsequently called himself a "jerk" for discussing Simpson and other exes in interviews.
Simpson wrote that she met Mayer in 2005 — amid her troubled marriage to Nick Lachey — and they began exchanging intimate notes. After she and Lachey filed for divorce that November, she began dating Mayer who "told me he was obsessed with me, sexually and emotionally." However, she said he made her feel insecure, and she "constantly worried that I wasn’t smart enough for him." Those insecurities fueled her drinking, which became a problem in her life. She's been sober since 2017.
In the book, she did give him credit for publicly apologizing for the Playboy comments, but said she didn’t accept it. She wrote that the headline-making humiliation of it all is what led to her ending all contact with him forever. She deleted his contact, changed her number and her email. ("I was done with this man in a way I never thought was possible," she wrote in her book.)
Months later, she met Johnson, who is the father of her three kids.
Simpson's book was an instant New York Times bestseller when it came out last year. Mayer was asked about it on his friend Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live show.
"I've heard about it. I've heard some bits," Mayer said of the book. "As Pee Wee Herman says in Pee Wee's Big Adventure before the movie of his life is about to play out at the end, he's not watching the movie, and the reason he's not watching the movie, he says, 'I don't have to watch it, Dottie, I lived it.' And I think that's prescient here."
As for Timberlake's public apology to his ex Spears, calls were made for him to do so after an old comment he made post-breakup about having sex with her was resurfaced in the Framing Britney Spears documentary. He also apologized to Janet Jackson for the way he handled the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show controversy. He posted the apology, written in the notes app of his phone, on social media in February.
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