(EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) attends The Inaugural Diamond Ball presented by Rihanna and The Clara Lionel Foundation at The Vineyard on December 11, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California.
I know I’m not the only one who has questions after Adrienne Houghton—then Bailon announced that she was calling off her engagement to longtime boyfriend Lenny Santiago. Not only had they been together for some time, shortly after she called off the engagement, she was dating her now-husband. But recently during a chat on “The Real,” she explained why she called off the engagement but also the reason why she initially said yes when she knew Lenny wasn’t the man for her.
Adrienne Houghton: I wrote that I wish that love the way it is for me now, existed. But now, hearing you talk, I’m like, I wish I knew, back when I said yes to my first engagement, that the ring wasn’t going to make me feel like what I had gone through made me feel like I won.
When you’ve been in a relationship for a long time—and I’ve spoken about it. I wasn’t paraded on social media. I didn’t get the love, attention or affection that I thought I deserved. Even though by that time, we both knew it was over. I felt like the ring made me feel like the years I put into it, at least I had something to show for it. I got asked and that was enough for me.
Jeannie Mai: You felt like that ring was enough to blanket all the havoc that you had been through?
Adrienne Houghton: Yeah. But at least he wanted to marry me. Do you get what I mean? Some people will ask, ‘Why did you say yes?’ If I’m honest, I had a girlfriend at the time who told me, ‘Just say yes and think about it later.’ I probably should not have taken that advice but I thought I deserve this.
Now looking back, I think that’s so bizarre. How, again, we do make excuses of what’s ok, what’s not ok. At least if I’m getting played, but I got a ring.
I think a lot of people don’t know that I actually went to Paris very intentionally because I knew I was so unhappy and I didn’t know what I was going to do or how I was going to deal what I wanted to move forward in my life doing. I sat in Paris by my damn self. I didn’t want to hear other people’s voices.
I don’t want to hear what my family had to say. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I left the country. I was by myself in a country I had never really spent time in. I didn’t speak the language. I would cry on the train listening to worship music. Like God, just guide me because I knew I had made the wrong decision.
Jeannie Mai: Sometimes you find yourself when you get lost.
You can listen to the ladies talk about all of it in the video below.
