“There’s a lot of things I need to work on.”
Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin Bieber are letting fans see their relationship in an intimate way with their new Facebook Watch series, The Biebers on Watch, which debuted May 4. The 12-episode series was shot completely on GoPro cameras fixed around their Toronto mansion—meaning no film crews and a lot of honest conversation.
In the premiere episode, the couple, who have been married since September 2018, took a casual boat ride on the lake Justin Bieber used to fish on as a kid. They specifically opened up about their two-year breakup in 2016. Per People, Bieber spoke with Baldwin about their reconciliation after “so much hurt and so much pain.”
“I think that one thing that’s really important is that from the time you and I ended and were not on good terms, I was on my own, essentially,” Baldwin said. “I didn’t just throw myself into a relationship, throw myself into something else to try to…distract myself and forget.
“I didn’t search for somebody to take your place and take another relationship or fill a void in that way. I really let myself feel the emotions I was feeling. It feels like grieving, it is grieving actually,” she continued. “You feel like you lose someone you really, really love and care about. I just remember I cared about you so much that I was like, ‘It doesn’t even matter to me if he’s in my life, in like, a romantic way. I just care about him so much that I want us to be in each other’s lives and that be okay.’”
Ultimately, Baldwin concluded that their time apart—from their breakup in 2016 to their reconciliation during the summer of 2018—was “the best thing” for them as a couple. Bieber and Baldwin got engaged in July 2018 and married in secret a year later. They chose not to move in together until after the wedding.
“I felt like I found my footing in my career and on my own and as a young adult,” Baldwin said. “I did a lot of work by myself and on my own before we got together. By the time we got back together, I felt like I experienced enough. I met a lot of different people, I hung out with different people. I had experienced other people where I was like, I’m cool if I never speak to another human again, another guy again. It didn’t matter to me. I felt like I knew what I wanted.”
Bieber added that forgiveness was key for the couple to move forward. “There was a lot of forgiveness that you needed to have towards me. And vice versa,” the singer said. “We both had made mistakes, and I think when we understand how much God’s forgiven us and given us grace, it gives us the ability to give each other grace.”
Baldwin agreed. “Forgiveness is the biggest thing,” she said. “You take a person with all of their mistakes, all of their faults, all of their decisions.”
Still, Bieber admits that their relationship isn’t perfect. “There’s a lot of things I need to work on. Forgiveness things, jealousy things, insecurities that I didn’t even realize I had until I chose to spend my life with you,” he said. “[I] realized there were blind spots in my life that I didn’t realize I had. That was really hard, to work through those things, but I think when you choose to work through those things, I feel like now that I’ve worked through that stuff, you and I are closer than ever.”
You can watch the full conversation, below.