Selena Gomez is looking for love after heartbreak and after staying single for two years.
The 27-year-old singer this week released two surprise singles, a balled titled "Lose You to Love Me" and a pop-dance song titled "Look at Her Now." Both are widely believed to be about her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber, who months following their 2017 breakup, went on to rekindle a romance with and then, in a surprise move, marry Hailey Baldwin, aka Hailey Bieber.
"You're in a phase of life where you experience love for the first time and I think that can just be just a little toxic," Gomez said on an episode of the Zach Sang Show, released on Friday. "You have this codependency that you think is love and then you have this addiction to the passion and the frustration with each other that you think, 'Oh, that's love,' or fighting or doing all this stuff, 'Oh that's love,' and I believed that for a long time. So I've been super, super single for two years and I want to know what the love will look like next for me."
"I want it to be real and I don't want it to be codependent or messy or lack of communication," she said. "I think you know when you get older, you find people that are actually right for you, that are actually on the same wavelength."
Gomez dated Bieber on and off between 2011 and 2014, then reconciled in late 2017 for several months before they split for good. Gomez, who dated The Weeknd for almost a year before getting back together with Bieber, has learned many lessons from her past romances and said she is not afraid of falling in love again. She added that she was afraid a year ago.
"I just think I would do so many things differently and I think it starts with just being very transparent," she said. "I don't have room to kind of buffer things that I need or that I want and I think girls can sometimes be scared of that because what we're viewed as—crazy or needy or overthinking things and dramatic—and I understand sometimes, but I love being a girl and I love having the emotions I have and falling super deep and then being passionate. It's just about containing it. It's just channeling it in the right areas."
"But I never want to lose the sense of love that I imagine it to be," she said. "I don't want to get jaded or bitter from anything. I believe that it exists and I'm happy waiting for that for however long that takes because we're gonna be like doing this forever. It's just going to keep happening until we're out."
Gomez also talked on the show about her new singles, which will be part of her upcoming album. She said she wrote "Lose You to Love Me" in January and "Look at Her Now" a few months later. She said the music videos for both were filmed earlier this month.
She also said she hoped the "individual" she wrote about hears the songs.
"I think that, yeah. I do," she said. "Being able to say something on your own and being able to turn it into something that actually is beautiful, because for me, my intentions are never evil. They just aren't. I don't even know how to do that. I mean, I can be a bit snappy, but I'm just, I always want to come from a place that's genuine and when I feel like some things haven't been said, then I get to turn that into art."
"But in general, the most important part was that the world got to hear it and hopefully relate to it and know that they're not alone," she said. "Because this feeling that everyone goes through in life is so real and you just get destroyed."