Britney Spears claimed that she was unaware that ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib was married when she began dating the paparazzo.
According to a source, in her memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears, 41, shared that she had “no clue” she was Ghalib’s “mistress” when the pair began their romance in late 2007.
Despite being unaware of his relationship status — she found out about his spouse after Spears and Ghalib called it quits in 2008 — Spears and Ghalib had “a lot of fun” during their “incredibly hot” relationship. While Spears was seeing the photographer, she was in the midst of her divorce from Kevin Federline. Spears and Federline, 45, were also navigating their new relationship as coparents to their sons Sean Preston and Jayden.
As her boys spent time with their dad, Spears struggled with “depression” and “longed for attention” — which she writes Ghalib gave her in a “lustful relationship,” per the insider.
Spears and Ghalib split the same year that her dad, Jamie Spears, filed to put her in a conservatorship.
“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself,” Britney writes of the conservatorship in a passage published by People. “The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
In 2009, Jamie filed for a restraining order against Ghalib, Britney’s former associate Sam Lufti and lawyer Jon Eardley and accused the trio of trying to meddle with the conservatorship. The restraining order was granted for three years.
Following her romance with Ghalib, Britney moved on with former manager Jason Trawick. The twosome got engaged in 2011 but called off their nuptials two years later. Britney wouldn’t walk down the aisle until 2022 when she and Sam Ashgari wed after dating for nearly 6 years. However, Ashgari, 28, filed for divorce from Britney, citing irreconcilable differences in August after one year of marriage.
The Woman in Me hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24.
