Two days ago we said goodbye to 2023, a year marked by the large number of breakups that made the front pages of the media. 2024, this trend continues and a new breakup has been made public this January 1. AJ McLean, member of the American group Backstreet Boys, and his wife Rochelle DeAnna announced this Monday that they are ending their marriage after 12 years together. The singer, 45, and his now ex-wife, 42, previously shared in March that they had temporarily separated and were hopeful of reconciling in the future. Nine months later, the couple has finally decided to go their separate ways in their respective lives: ”Although we hoped for reconciliation, we have decided to officially end our marriage. “We have made this decision with deep love and respect,” they both wrote, in a joint publication on social networks.
The Backstreet Boys singer married Rochelle DeAnna in December 2011, in Los Angeles, after having met three years earlier in a restaurant where she worked as a waitress. The two have had two daughters together: Ava, who was born in 2012, and Lyric Dean, who came into their lives in 2017. “Our focus now is moving forward in the healthiest way possible with friendship and co-parenting of our girls at the forefront of this next chapter of our lives,” they say. “We appreciate your kindness, respect and privacy at this time,” concludes the statement released through the singer's social networks. where he accumulates almost a million and a half followers.
The announcement has not taken his followers by surprise. What's more, there was little hope for the continuity of their marriage, since in March of last year they already announced their separation, although temporary. “Marriage is difficult, but it is worth it. “We have mutually decided to separate temporarily to work on ourselves and our marriage in hopes of building a stronger future,” they announced in a joint statement. “I came with baggage, she came with baggage, she had a trauma, I had a trauma. He was neither sober nor prepared to be sober. She was dealing with her own shit. It was simply a constant tug of war: she hid her feelings under the rug or I immersed myself in a bottle,” the artist stated about her relationship that same week in March 2023 in the podcast Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans.
A work of growth and improvement that the artist himself wanted to share with his millions of followers. Last May, his group, which collected unprecedented hits in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, such as Everybodyeither As Long as You Love Me, culminated their tour that took them to stages around the world (Madrid and Barcelona included). It was then that McLean made the decision to rehabilitate himself at a center in Arizona (USA) where he spent 10 weeks treating his “past trauma.” A self-care retreat that had nothing to do with his past problems with alcohol, as the singer himself wanted to clarify after 10 weeks in hospital. during an interview with the American magazine Page Six: “I attend my meetings regularly and follow my 12-step program [de Alcohólicos Anónimos]. I have my sponsor. I know I take it very seriously. But I needed to get to the root of the problem.”
His commitment to sobriety was triggered by a very specific episode that shared with People in October 2022. “Literally 10 months ago, I went to see Shania Twain in Las Vegas. Before I even got on the plane, she had already planned the entire night. I knew where I was going to get my drugs. I knew where I was going to get drunk. She knew everything and I thought, 'Okay, it's one night. As long as a certain hour doesn't pass and it doesn't smell like that, I can go and then come home. My wife won't know; everything is going to be great”, she remembered how the night that determined the change of her life began. “It never, never works like that,” she added before continuing with the story: “I never slept. I missed my first two flights home and reeked of alcohol when I arrived. My wife and I had always had an agreement, which was that if I smelled like alcohol, I wasn't allowed to play with my daughters, I couldn't be around my daughters, but what really shocked me was the moment that my youngest daughter, Lyric, told me that night, 'You don't smell like my dad.' And when she told me that, that was it. “I felt disgusting.”
McLean recognized at that time that many things are changing in his life, such as the fact that he has finally realized that he can separate his artist self from his self as a person. “AJ is a job. It's not who I really am. It doesn't define me,” says someone who today prefers to be called Alex when “he's not in Backstreet mode.” “Probably the most important thing I've learned is authenticity, being my true, authentic self,” He also told the magazine at that time People about his transformative journey since deciding to stop drinking two years ago.
Furthermore, the 10 weeks of confinement helped the artist to reconcile his relationship with his father after practically his entire life apart. The singer wanted to share the meeting with his followers: “42 years ago, my parents divorced. For the last 35 years I have blamed myself. I never knew my father except through what the rest of my family told me. My father would appear at one concert or another, but I never wanted to see him or talk to him. Tonight was the first time in 42 years that my father and I sat down as two grown men and had a conversation about life, my life, his life, and life in general.” It seems that the beginning of the year brings another change in his life.
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