It wasn't quite 10,000 hours, but there was definitely time in between Justin Bieber's romance with ex Selena Gomez and the one he has with now-wife Hailey Bieber.
As fans can recall, in 2018 Justin's personal life was a whirlwind as he spent the first part of the year with his on-again, off-again ex Selena and ended the year engaged to Hailey. Hailey cleared up the timeline during a remote appearance on Ashley Graham's Pretty Big Deal podcast. In the new episode, released on Tuesday, Nov. 17, the fashionista said, "People don't know, too, we had been talking for a while before we got back together."
"Contrary to popular belief," Hailey noted, "he had been single for a while and I had been single and we were kind of just trying to figure life out."
If your recollection is a bit fuzzy, allow us to take you down memory lane. After Justin reunited with Selena in late 2017, the pop stars seemed to hit the breaks on their rekindled relationship by mid-2018.
"They were having a lot of little disagreements recently and one fight in particular blew up and caused them to decide to 'break up.' However, they've been in contact the entire time and their feelings for each other have not changed," a source explained in March 2018. "They will absolutely get back together and they are not over, but they both need some time away from each other." However, by May—following some sightings of Justin out with Baskin Champion—E! News confirmed from sources that Selena had "completely moved on" from the performer and was "not interested in getting back together with him anytime soon."
That same month, then-Hailey Baldwin walked the red carpet with Shawn Mendes at the Met Gala, sparking chatter of a possible romance between the model and the "Señorita" singer. However, the speculation didn't last long. Mere days after, Shawn clarified that they were "really good friends" in an interview with W magazine.
The next month, Hailey's old flame was back in her life as evidenced by her travels and PDA with Justin.
Then, just as fans were getting a handle on who Justin was dating, he proposed to Hailey in the Bahamas in July. Fans know the rest—the couple recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary. As for Selena, she referenced the sequence of events in her hit, "Lose You to Love Me," with the lyrics, "In two months you replaced us like it was easy."
While he and Hailey had known each other since they were teenagers and shared years of history, the model acknowledged their transition from "talking" to husband and wife was a quick one.
"Everything happened really fast, I think everybody knows that," she told Graham. "Everybody was kind of, like, 'Hey, did you get married?'"