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Kenny Lattimore wives

Source: David Livingston/Getty Images; Leon Bennett/Getty Images; Paras Griffi / Getty

Last fall, it was revealed that R&B crooner Kenny Lattimore, 49, was engaged to marry TV personality Faith Jenkins, aka Judge Faith, 42.

While appearing on Fox Soul’s The Tammi Mac Show, Lattimore opened up about his excitement over the engagement, how they were connected by mutual friends, and how he it had been about 10 years since he was in a serious relationship because he was focused on raising his son and taking care of himself. If you’ll recall, he married singer Chante Moore in 2011 and they announced their divorce in 2011. With that in mind, Mac asked the “For You” singer what he felt he would do differently in his upcoming second marriage that he learned from the struggles of his first. For one, he replied that he learned to do the work necessary to make sure he and Jenkins were on the same page way before they were engaged, and secondly, he learned that he needed to not be scared to be upfront and honest.

“When I started out my relationship in my last marriage, I think I wanted everything to be perfect almost too much,” he said. “I kind of walked on eggshells in the beginning and I just wanted her to be happy. In a similar manner that I want Faith to be happy, but the difference was, I don’t think I was always up front and honest. Maybe the fear was, if I really say what I’m thinking now, this is going to be over. And what I learned was no, bring the truth. Bring the truth and authenticity at every single stage.

“In addition to that, I needed to make sure while we were dating that I brought that truth,” he added. “We went to pre-engagement counseling. When you get engaged, you know what you want to do. You know, I want to be with this person. It’s a lot of pressure if you’re already engaged and you’re in pre-marital counseling. Who’s going to back out of that? But if you answer some of those hard questions before you even get to engagement — we went to a really great pastor and we started going through the process. He recommended some books for us to read and we would have these meetings and check-ins. You gotta ask questions like, how do you feel about kids again at this age? How do you feel about where you’re going to live in terms of city? How do you deal with family and involving family into your life? It’s so many little things that we take for granted and we think, ‘Oh, it’s going to work itself out because love’s going to conquer everything and it just doesn’t. But preparation does.”

It also helped a lot that he also did some work on himself before he even thought about looking for love again. He told Mac that set him up to be in the best space for his soon-to-be wife.

“I had to deal with Kenny,” he said. Who are you? Are you okay with you? Do you even like who you are in this space?”

“It was like the last bit of healing that I needed to be confirmed in my life before I could even go into another relationship,” he added. “I always wanted to make sure that if I was going into a new relationship I was bringing happiness, I’m bringing wholeness, I’m bringing the things my relationship’s gonna need.”

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