14 DAY TRIAL // Rihanna and Chris Brown don’t stay in touch anymore, but despite all the drama that transpired between the two of them, she still has nothing but love for him. The singer is on the cover of the November 2015 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, and discusses her famous ex in the accompanying interview.
She also says that the 2009 assault was a very difficult moment for her to overcome, and admits that the 2012 reconciliation was not a good idea in retrospect. Still, she will always love him.
Rihanna wanted to “protect” Chris Brown
In 2009, as they were driving home from the Grammys, Chris Brown and then-girlfriend Rihanna got into a very violent argument over a text he had received on his phone. The verbal spat turned physical, and he slammed her head on the dashboard, punched and bit her, and even threatened to push her out of the speeding car.
Details of the beating were made public within hours of the incident, and the media reacted by siding with Rihanna and asking for Brown to be shut out of the entertainment industry as punishment. Rihanna remained oddly silent.
After the restraining order in Brown’s name was lifted, the world got an explanation for that: she was seeing him in secret. They continued to hook up on and off through 2012, when they went public again.
That was just her (misguided) idea of protecting him, Rihanna tells Vanity Fair now.
“I was very protective of him. I felt that people didn’t understand him. Even after. I don’t hate him. I will care about him until the day I die,” she says.
A “guardian angel”
Aside from wanting to protect him against the backlash, the 2012 reconciliation was also about giving him a second chance to prove that he had changed, the Barbadian beauty continues.
She thought she could be Chris’ “guardian angel” and fix whatever was wrong in him by showing him that she was there for him, for support and unconditional love.
Obviously, thinking this way was a mistake, because to him, it meant she’d come back to him, so he had no other reason to change too much. “Sometimes you just have to walk away,” Rihanna muses.
After breaking up with Rihanna for good, Chris got into a more serious relationship with Karrueche Tran, whom he had also dated while on breaks with Rihanna. That relationship also turned sour and imploded in a very public way, and Karrueche eventually left him for good when she found out he had fathered a child with another woman, while technically with her.