The two British band members dated from 2011 to 2015, getting engaged in 2013. Zayn had to deny rumors that he ended things via text, saying at the time, “I love her a lot, and I always will, and I would never end our relationship over four years like that.” He began his relationship with Gigi Hadid shortly afterwards. Perrie never discussed the split in interviews, though the Little Mix song “Shout Out To My Ex” is rumored to be about him.
In a new episode of the podcast We Need to Talk, Perrie was asked about first meeting Zayn while she was on The X Factor, when they were both around the age of 17 and he was in the height of his One Direction fame. “It was pretty easy at first it seemed,” she began, “and then I think it got more difficult, obviously, as it went on.”
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Agreeing that Zayn was her “first true love,” Perrie continued, “We were engaged to be married, so clearly we had feelings for each other. I think at that age, I thought, ‘This is it.’ But when I look back now, I’m like, Oh my god, I was so young.”
Perrie then acknowledged that she’s in a tough spot when it comes to questions about Zayn, noting, “It’s what people [want to hear about]. But then I would talk about it, and people would be like, ‘Shut up. We don’t want to know.’ Even just then, when you were asking about it, it made me feel a bit sick because it’s been installed in me to just not talk about it because I can’t win either way.”
As for what she learned from their relationship and split, she replied, “It wasn’t ideal. Definitely, at the time, I thought everything we experienced in our relationship was normal because it was my first relationship, first love. I was like, Oh, this is how it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to feel a little bit toxic in some ways. This is probably normal, right?“
“And then when I become single, I was almost thinking like, I never ever want to go through that again. I didn’t even want to meet anybody. I don’t think I could bear that pain. Heartbreak is so grim that I remember thinking, I’m done with men forever,” the singer continued.
Crediting the “girls” in Little Mix with getting her through, she added, “I’d never navigated heartbreak, let alone having everyone criticize it in the public eye. I felt embarrassed. I felt weird. I was really sad. And it was just like going through all these emotions and going through it with everyone staring at me, it was mortifying.”
On the plus side, Perrie is currently engaged to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, with whom she shares a child. “When I met Alex, I had so many issues in our relationship at the beginning that I probably didn’t notice at the time,” she recalled. “At the start of the relationship, I would handle things differently with Alex, and he’d come at it with such a level head that it would throw me.”
Perrie further said that Zayn reached out to her once she’d been with Alex for around two years, likely after his split from Gigi in 2018: “I felt a bit uncomfortable about it. I remember sweating and panicking, thinking, I’ve got to tell [Alex] that I’ve spoken to him… He was like, ‘Okay, well, I really appreciate you telling me, thank you for letting me know. That’s fine and hopefully he doesn’t contact you again.'”
Incidentally, Zayn said of the relationship last year, “From 17 to 21, I was in a relationship. I was engaged. I didn’t know anything about anything at that point. I thought I did, because I was 21. I was legally allowed to do everything, but I didn’t know shit.”
You can listen to the full interview here.
