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When Jessica Simpson married Eric Johnson in July 2014, it seemed like it was for keeps — but, with the couple announcing their split about a decade later on Monday, January 13, we’re remembering the last time the singer endured a public breakup. That would be her on-off relationship with John Mayer,  which ended in 2010, just a few months before she met Johnson. Let’s look back at what went down during the unlikely union — including nine splits in four years.

How it Began

Simpson, now 44, has helpfully told this tale — and many others! — in her highly revealing 2020 autobiography, Open Book. When she first met Mayer, now 47, it was 2005 and she was still married to Nick Lachey. The two, very stylistically different, musicians were introduced at Clive Davis’s pre-Grammy party, with Mayer complimenting Simpson on her hit ballad, “With You”. They became occasional penpals and then, when Simpson divorced Lachey in 2006 after four years of marriage, they began seeing each other in secret.

By early 2007, they were being spotted together on the regular, but it was only when Mayer was interviewed by Ryan Seacrest at the Grammys that year that he seemingly confirmed their relationship… except, true to his quirky style, he did it in Japanese, saying words that roughly translated to “She’s a lovely woman, and I’m glad to be with her.” Oh-kaaaay.

How Long it Lasted

The couple’s first split was widely reported in May 2007, but they were soon back together. In fact, Simpson recalled while promoting her book that they actually broke up another eight times before finally calling it quits in 2010. “We were great at intimacy,” she said in a 2020 Today interview. “We were great at loving each other. That was easy, but the relationship was very complex. And it was always on-again, off-again, on-again off-again. And I went back close to nine times!”

How it Ended

Well, you might know this part already. In a 2010 interview with Playboy that quickly gained infamy, Mayer was a little too revealing about his intoxicating relationship with Simpson, scuppering all chances of them reuniting for a tenth time — thank goodness!

John Mayer's Most Controversial Moments: 'Sexual Napalm' and Beyond

“That girl, for me, is a drug,” he said. “And drugs aren’t good for you if you do lots of them. Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me. Sexually, it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm. Did you ever say, ‘I want to quit my life and just f—ing snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to f— you, I would start selling all my s— just to keep f—ing you’.”

Understandably, the professionally squeaky-clean Simpson wasn’t delighted about being described in such lurid terms (she later said, “I was floored and embarrassed that my grandmother was actually gonna read that”) and she immediately cut the singer-songwriter out of her life. “I erased his number,” she wrote in her memoir. “He made it easy for me to walk away. I didn’t accept his apology. I deleted all his contact information from my phone. I was done with this man in a way I never thought was possible. When he reached out to me, I changed my number and changed my email. Delete.” Boom — there’s that napalm in action!

What They Said About Each Other

Thankfully, some of the couple’s other comments about their relationship were a little more grandmother-friendly.

“He’d walk into a room and pick up his guitar, and you’d swoon,” Simpson told People in 2020, recalling her first impressions of Mayer when they met. “I didn’t really know the man behind the guitar. And that was my mission.”

And in a February 2007 chat with Time Out New York, Mayer said he didn’t care if people thought they were an odd couple. “I’m having the best time of my life,” he said. “So if the names don’t make sense to people, that’s so small to me.”

What They Say Now

Since their relationship was so surprising and, ultimately, controversial, it’s a topic that has come up many times in interviews over the years — as well as getting a full analysis in Open Book.

“He wanted to have all of me or nothing,” Simpson wrote. “Again and again, he told me he was obsessed with me, sexually and emotionally. I would get up to go to the bathroom, and John would ask, ‘Where are you going?’. While I was married, my ex-husband couldn’t be bothered to figure out what city I was in. It felt safe to be desired. I know John would never cheat on me, and that confidence was a new feeling for me.”

Jessica Simpson’s Love Life: Nick Lachey, John Mayer, Eric Johnson and More

Simpson said that Mayer’s intensely sexual comments about her felt like an unexpected betrayal from the man she thought she could depend on to adore her. “He thought that was what I wanted to be called,” she wrote. “A woman and how they are in bed is not something that is ever talked about. It was shocking. He was the most loyal person on the planet, and when I read that he wasn’t, that was it for me.”

While promoting the book, Simpson told E! News that Mayer is forgiven… kind of. “I definitely don’t feel that I am owed a public apology,” she said. “You can’t take it back. And I’m a very forgiving person, but I’m also honest. So, in the memoir, if I’m gonna talk about stuff that caused me pain, I’m going to be honest about it. And that was a time in my life that I was very manipulated and very also in love, or seemingly.”

The older and wiser Simpson also knows now that her friends were never on board with the relationship. “He’d dump me, then come back saying he had discovered he loved me after all,” she wrote. “I always saw it as him mercilessly taking me in from the cold. Every time John returned, I thought it was a continuation of a love story, while my friends saw a guy coming back for sex with some foolish girl.”

Simpson also noted in the book that, during the relationship, she worried that Mayer was too clever for her — a source of sensitivity due to her being caricatured at the time as a “dumb blonde” which, of course, we’ve since learned couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I constantly worried that I wasn’t smart enough for him,” she wrote. “He was so clever and treated conversation like a friendly competition that he had to win.” She even said she used to get friends to proof-read her messages to him, in case he judged any typos. “My anxiety would spike and I would pour another drink,” she said. “It was the start of me relying on alcohol to mask my nerves.”

Jessica Simpson Through the Years: Photos

Ever since that Playboy interview, Mayer has sensibly kept a little quieter about his time with Simpson — but when Open Book was published in 2020, Mayer’s close friend Andy Cohen broached the topic with him. “I’ve heard about it,” said Mayer of the memoir. “I’ve heard some bits. But as Pee Wee Herman says in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure before the movie of his life is about to play out at the end, he’s not watching the movie, and the reason he’s not watching the movie, he says, ‘I don’t have to watch it, Dottie, I lived it.’ And I think that’s prescient here.”

But did Mayer ever officially apologize about the “sexual napalm” comments that devastated Simpson? Well, almost. On stage in Nashville in 2010, he was filled with regret, explaining “In a quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people I loved and the people who loved me” and saying he had been in “a wormhole of selfishness, greediness and arrogance”.

Later, in 2012, in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, he offered a similar explanation. “I had nothing to say,” he said. “I was going through a time in my life where I didn’t really want to share what was going on, but I didn’t want to be boring. When you’re just open, but not honest, then you start free-associating garbage. It doesn’t mean I can go back and scrub it out, but I understand it now.”

Key Relationship Takeaways

This relationship was basically a ticking time-bomb. As Simpson herself said in her book, “He loved me in the way that he could and I loved that love for a very long time. Too long. And I went back and forth with it for a long time. But it did control me.”

Some people even believed Simpson changed her image for Mayer, dying her trademark blonde hair brunette to please him — but she maintains that this wasn’t true. “He didn’t make me go brunette,” she told Allure after their split. “John doesn’t get credit for making me brunette. He’d like to think so, but he doesn’t deserve the credit.”

Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson’s Relationship Timeline

With both stars now seemingly single, we doubt Simpson will be unblocking Mayer’s number any time soon. Because ultimately, as she puts it, “That was Jess in her 20s.”

Now, as a 44-year old mom of three, she knows better — and as for Mayer? He hasn’t behaved quite so recklessly since, so perhaps they both learned something.

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