Five years after coming out as bisexual in 2018, Jason Mraz is reflecting on the mental anguish he suffered from publicly declaring his identity.
In an interview with GLAAD published on Monday, November 13, the Dancing With the Stars participant said that he “had to play out a lot of other scenarios before I arrived” at a point of acceptance.
For many years, Mraz, 46, publicly identified as heterosexual. He married Sheridan Edley in 2001, and they divorced the following year. Mraz later got engaged to Tristan Prettyman on Christmas Eve 2010; they broke off the engagement six months later.
On October 25, 2015, he married Christina Carano. The duo announced their split in June.
Mraz previously admitted that he was living a double life, having sex with men while he was in relationships with women.
“It’s both hard to do those and hard to unravel those, and what I’m basically describing is a divorce, you know?” Mraz continued. “And that’s very hard. You carry a lot of shame, guilt.”
Mraz revealed in a 2018 interview with Billboard that he was intimate with men while dating Carano. In speaking with GLAAD, he said he was concerned about how publicly revealing his bisexuality would affect the women he dated.
“You want to heal as many relationships of the past as possible and at the same time, step into this new acceptance and new identity or whatever I’m claiming, and that’s also hard,” he added.
Mraz says appearing on season 32 of DWTS has helped him become comfortable with how his personal life has changed.
“All day you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, and that can be hard for anybody, any human, to accept themselves looking in the mirror,” he said. He described the movements on the show as “silly” at times, however, “it eventually becomes confidence, and so it is a journey.”
“Dance is an amazing medium for that transformation and accepting of one’s self,” Mraz added.
Mraz has released eight studio albums, and he said his latest, Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, which dropped in June, was inspired by his bisexual identity.
“I will admit that I probably spent the first close to 20 years of my career just broadcasting as hetero. Saying ‘girl’ in my songs, and a lot of that is growing up on a conservative street,” he told The Advocate in a separate interview in August. “And growing up around homophobia and feeling like I needed to protect some secret.”
Mraz added that now his music more genuinely expresses his true self.
“I was having these curiosities and experiences on the side that were starting to influence who I am and the kind of fun I wanted to have in the world and the kind of person I wanted to be in the world,” he continued, “which is more honest and more loving and more inclusive.”
