Janet Jackson's marriages are her biggest "disappointment".
Janet Jackson's marriages were disappointing
The 58-year-old singer eloped with James DeBarge in September 1984 but had their union annulled 14 months later before going on to secretly wed Rene Elizondo Jr. in 1991 and then Wissam Al Mana - the father of her seven-year-old son Eissa - in 2012, but she's admitted none of the unions turned out as she'd hoped, particularly her third.
Asked her biggest disappointment, Janet - who split from Wissam just months after their son was born in 2017 - told The Guardian newspaper's Saturday magazine: "Every one of my marriages."
But she then later corrected herself and clarified: "Just the last one".
The 'Together Again' hitmaker has previously spoken about being in controlling relationships and she hopes she will finally be able to "break that pattern" if she finds love again.
She said: “I pray to God. I’m single, so I pray to God that I might have different lenses on these eyes than I did before.
“I know that if someone were to come along … even if I didn’t recognise it, I guarantee you my friends would shake the s*** out of me and say, ‘What are you doing?!’
“But I think I’m seeing it through different lenses now. I think I am breaking that pattern.”
Janet was just nine years old when she made her TV debut, performing a duet with her brother Randy on 'The Carol Burnett Show', and she's determined her own son's childhood will be different.
Asked how their childhoods compare, she said: "Completely different, because I worked and he doesn’t. And that’s it.
“I want him to experience being a child, because you don’t get to do this over. You’re an adult for the rest of your life, so I want him to enjoy each and every minute of being a child.
“Don’t you think you’ve learned from your parents? There are some things you wish your parents had done differently and you say, ‘No, I’m gonna tell [my son] this.’ Because if they had done this with me, it would have been much better for me as a child.
“I hated it as a kid, but I’m thankful for it now. I have to give credit to my parents for keeping me grounded.”
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