- 39 minutes ago
The phrase “I was never in love with her” has sparked intense public debate, especially when linked to a celebrity relationship as widely followed as Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid. In the world of entertainment journalism and search-driven media, statements like this become headlines because they challenge the narrative fans have already built. They also raise questions about privacy, memory, emotional truth, and the way celebrity relationships are interpreted by the public. When a well-known artist speaks candidly about a past relationship, the reaction is often immediate, emotional, and deeply divided. Some audiences view the confession as brutally honest, while others see it as unnecessarily painful and disrespectful.
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00:00Zayn Malik has suggested he may never have been in love with Jiggy Hadid,
00:04despite their six-year relationship and daughter together. The comments have sparked fresh
00:09headlines and reportedly caught Jiggy's camp off guard. Let me break down what he said when he said
00:14it and why it's causing such a stir. Zayn Malik sat across from Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy
00:20podcast and said the quiet part out loud when she asked him point-blank if he still stood by a
00:26comment he'd made two years earlier that he wasn't sure he'd ever truly been in love. Zayn responded,
00:32yeah, my understanding of love is always developing. Then he went further than he ever had before and
00:38this time he put a name to it. He didn't dodge, he didn't laugh it off. He sat there and
00:43said,
00:43at that moment in time, I might have thought it was love. But as I got older, I realized maybe
00:48it
00:48wasn't. Maybe it was lust, maybe it was this, maybe it was that. I don't feel like it was love.
00:53That's Zayn Malik talking about Jiggy Hadid, the mother of his daughter, the woman he spent six
00:59years on and off with. That's not a vague statement about relationships in general anymore. This time
01:05Alex Cooper made him say the name. Here's the thing, this wasn't some slip of the tongue.
01:10Alex Cooper had done her homework. She'd gone back to an interview Zayn gave on the Zach Sang show back
01:16in 2024, where he'd already floated the idea, saying he didn't know if he'd actually truly been
01:22in love at that point. Cooper wanted to know if two years had changed his mind. It hadn't. If anything,
01:28he doubled down, and this time he wasn't being vague about who he meant. But Zayn didn't leave
01:33it there, and this is the part that got clipped and reposted everywhere. In the same breath as saying
01:39he never fell in love with her, he pivoted straight into respect. To be fair, just to have this on
01:44the
01:45record, I will always love Jiggy. Because she is the reason my child is on this earth, and I have
01:50the utmost respect for her, he told Cooper. He kept going, adding that he has so much respect for Jiggy
01:56and loves her a crazy amount. But no, he doesn't think he was in love with her at that point.
02:01So you've got two things sitting right next to each other. A man saying he wasn't in love with the
02:06woman he had a child with, and in the same sentence, saying he'll always love her because of that child.
02:12That contradiction is exactly what set the internet on fire the moment the clip dropped.
02:17Now three different corners of the entertainment world jumped on this within hours. Fans on social
02:23media went after Zayn directly, with plenty writing that comments like this had no business being said
02:29out loud, especially about a six-year relationship that produced a kid. Entertainment outlets ran the
02:36story practically in real time, with headlines calling out the timing and the tone, and sources
02:41close to Jiggy's camp, started talking to tabloids almost immediately. With one telling a publication
02:47that Jiggy is way beyond being hurt by anything Zayn says. But that doesn't mean it isn't triggering
02:53for her. Adding that she sees everything and did not appreciate him taking that shot at her.
02:58That's three distinct reactions inside the same 48 hours, the public, the press, and people speaking
03:04for Jiggy herself. And none of them were neutral. What makes this land so hard isn't just the words.
03:11It's who's saying them and about who. This is a man who once wrote publicly that he had an incredibly
03:16meaningful, loving, and fun relationship with Jiggy, and had a huge amount of respect and adoration for
03:22her, as a woman and a friend. Now, five years after their split, he's rewriting that same relationship
03:28as something that might have just been lust. So the question everybody's asking now is simple.
03:33What changed and why now? Let's slow down and actually sit inside that podcast room for a second.
03:39Because the way this all unfolded matters just as much as what was said. The episode dropped on a
03:45Wednesday in February, and it wasn't recorded in some sterile LA studio. The interview dropped on
03:51February 11, 2026, and it was recorded in Las Vegas during Zayn's residency there. He'd just
03:58finished a run of shows, he was relaxed. And by the end of the conversation, he even performed his
04:03new single to close things out. This was Zayn in a loose, almost celebratory mood. Not the guarded,
04:10tight-lipped guy who usually keeps his personal life locked behind one-word answers. That context
04:16matters because Alex Cooper is good at getting people comfortable enough to say things they'd normally
04:21keep vague. And that's exactly what happened. She didn't ambush him. She reminded him of something
04:27he'd already said publicly, gave him a clean opening to walk it back, and he didn't take it.
04:32Cooper asked him straight, you said in an interview that you don't know if you've ever truly been in
04:37love, do you still stand by that? And instead of softening it, he agreed and then unpacked why.
04:42His reasoning was almost philosophical. He wasn't saying Jiggy did anything wrong,
04:47or that the relationship was fake. What he was arguing is that love itself is something you can only
04:53judge in hindsight. And that hindsight had changed his verdict on his own past. He explained that his
04:59understanding of love keeps developing. That at the time, he might have believed what he felt was
05:04love. But looking back now, with more years and more experience, he's landed on a different word
05:09for it. Lust or something else, just not love. Now here's where it gets specific in a way that wasn't
05:15true in 2024. Back then on the Zach Sang show, he was speaking in the abstract. He mused about how
05:22you look back at things with new eyes, and wonder whether it was love or just life experience talking.
05:27And he left it open, almost philosophical, never confirming who or what he was even thinking about.
05:33It was easy to read that as a general statement about growing up, not a verdict on any one person.
05:39Alex Cooper closed that loophole. She named the relationship for him. And once Jiggy's name
05:44was actually on the table, Zayn didn't retreat into vagueness again. He leaned into specifics,
05:50walking through the whole six years, from 2015 to the breakup in 2021. And applying that same
05:56maybe it wasn't love, verdict directly onto it. That's the pivot point of this entire story.
06:02In 2024, it was a maybe, floating in the air, attached to nobody. In 2026, it became a direct
06:09statement about one specific, very public relationship. The one that gave him a daughter,
06:14the one that put him on magazine covers for the better part of a decade. The one that ended in
06:19a headline-making legal mess with Jiggy's own mother. And he didn't just say it once and move
06:24past it. Multiple outlets that reviewed the full audio noted he repeated the sentiment more than
06:30once across the conversation, circling back to, I don't feel like it was love, as if he wanted to
06:35make sure it landed. He wasn't hedging. He said it, sat with it, and then immediately qualified it with
06:41the love and respect line about Kai being the reason he'll always love her. That combination,
06:47cold verdict, warm disclaimer, both delivered in the same breath, is what made the clip spread the
06:52way it did. People couldn't decide if it was an olive branch or an insult, so they argued about it
06:57in
06:58real time. And that argument is still going. There's also the detail about what Zayn didn't say.
07:04He never claimed Jiggy didn't love him. He never blamed her for anything about how the relationship
07:09ended. Every version of the quote that circulated stuck strictly to his own feelings,
07:14his own retrospective judgment on himself. That's actually part of why this cut so deep
07:19for people watching. It wasn't a breakup rant. It wasn't him dragging her name through anything.
07:25It was colder than that. It was a man calmly recategorizing six years of his life
07:30as something other than love, while insisting he still respects the woman at the center of it.
07:35And that respect line wasn't just filler. He was precise about why he still loves her,
07:41not because of who she is as a person he chose, but because of the child she gave him. He
07:46put it
07:47plainly, I don't feel like it was love. And to be fair, just to say this on record, I will
07:52always
07:52love Jiggy, because she's the reason my child is, you know, on this earth, and I have the utmost respect
07:58for her. Read that again. The love he's describing now is functional. It's attached to Kai,
08:03not to the relationship itself. That's the distinction that fans picked apart for days.
08:08The difference between loving someone and loving someone because of what they gave you.
08:13By the time the episode had been out for 24 hours, clips of just those two lines,
08:18the I don't feel like it was love, and the I will always love Jiggy, had been cut,
08:23captioned, and reposted across every entertainment account tracking celebrity news. And that set up
08:28everything that came next. The questions about why now, what actually happened between them,
08:33and how Jiggy's side was going to respond. To understand why this landed the way it did,
08:39you have to go back to where it actually started. Because Zane and Jiggy won some overnight tabloid
08:45pairing. This was six years of on and off history, and it started at, of all places, a Victoria's
08:50secret party. They met and started dating in late 2015. Jiggy and Zane reportedly met at a Victoria's
08:57secret party in 2015. At the time, Zane had just left one direction, and Jiggy was on her way to
09:04becoming one of the most recognizable faces in fashion. Together, they became something close
09:09to a template for the modern celebrity couple. Magazine covers, met galas, joint red carpets,
09:15the whole machine. And in the early years, by every account of the time, this looked like the real
09:20thing. Jiggy herself described what made it different from anything she'd had before, saying
09:25for the first time, we are both in a relationship where we have very similar interests outside of
09:30work. And that is really important. We cook a lot together and do art together, and we're each
09:35other's best friends. She talked about how they could talk about anything and learn from each
09:40other. That's not the language of two people drifting through something casual. That's someone
09:45who believed she'd found a partner. Zane, for his part, used to talk about wanting nothing to do with
09:51the power couple label people slapped on him. He said he was with her because he liked her, and he
09:56hoped
09:56she felt the same. And that when they were home together, they weren't performing anything, just cooking
10:01food, watching TV, having a laugh like any other couple. He even hinted back then that marriage
10:08might eventually be in the cards, joking that she didn't handle his finances yet, but they'd get to
10:13that eventually. But on and off is doing a lot of work in that six-year description. The relationship
10:19wasn't a straight line. They broke up and reconciled more than once, including a very public split in
10:25March of 2018 that lasted only a few months before they were back together by June. Each breakup got its
10:31own cycle of headlines, and each reconciliation got its own round of paparazzi photos. And the public
10:37treated their relationship almost like a running storyline, checking in every few months to see
10:42where things stood. Then came 2020, and the relationship hit its highest point. Their daughter
10:48Kai was born that September, right in the middle of a pandemic, that had already turned both of their
10:54lives upside down. Suddenly this wasn't just a couple anymore, they were parents, raising a newborn while
11:00the entire world was shut inside. Zayn has talked since about how that period changed him, being in
11:06his twenties with a kid, saying he was with Jiggy from 21 to 27, and didn't really take the time
11:13most
11:13people take to figure out who they are as an individual, before that kind of responsibility
11:18landed on him. And then just over a year after Kai arrived, everything fell apart. Not quietly,
11:25not with a soft joint statement fading into the background, but with an ugly, public legal mess
11:30that would follow Zayn for years. That's the part of the story we need to sit with next. Because it's
11:36impossible to separate what he said on that podcast from what happened the night this relationship
11:41actually ended. The breakup itself wasn't announced with warmth, it came out of a night that turned into
11:46a criminal case. Late in September, police were called to the Pennsylvania home Zayn, and Jiggy shared
11:53with their one-year-old daughter. According to court documents, later obtained by TMZ, Zayn was at
11:59Jiggy and Zayn's Pennsylvania home, on SEP 29, and got into a nuclear argument. Jiggy wasn't even in the
12:05house at the time, she was out of town. But her mother, Yolanda Haddad, was there. And that argument
12:11between Zayn and Yolanda, is what turned this from a private family blow-up, into a criminal matter.
12:17The details that came out through the court filings were brutal. He allegedly called Yolanda,
12:22a Fing Dutch slut, ordered her to stay away from my Fing daughter, and said something about,
12:27the Fing sperm that came out of my Fing sea. The documents went on to allege, he shoved
12:32her Yolanda into a dresser, causing mental anguish and physical pain. Zayn has consistently denied,
12:38that any physical contact happened. One of the four harassment charges filed against him,
12:43actually involved Jiggy directly, even though she was in Paris at the time. According to court docs,
12:49he screamed at her, strap on some Fing balls and defend your partner against your F-asterisk-ing
12:54mother in my house. With sources telling TMZ Jiggy was on a phone call during the incident.
13:00There was also a security guard on the property that night, and the documents allege Zayn tried
13:05to fight him too, yelling for him to get out of the house. A month later, Zayn addressed it publicly,
13:11and the language he chose was careful. He posted a statement saying he was a private person,
13:16who wanted to create a safe and private space for my daughter to grow up in. A place where private
13:21family matters aren't thrown on the world stage for all to poke and pick apart. He'd also told TMZ
13:28directly that he adamantly denied striking Yolanda and hoped she'd reconsider what he called false
13:33allegations. By late October, he entered his plea. Malik entered a plea to four summary counts of
13:40harassment. A plea meaning he refused to admit guilt, but accepted the punishment. And a judge sentenced
13:45him to 90 days of probation on each count, or nearly a year total. On top of that, he had
13:51to complete
13:51an anger management class, be screened for a domestic violence program, and was ordered to
13:57have no contact with Yolanda Haddad or the security guard. That's the backdrop that was sitting underneath
14:02every headline about the couple's split. Multiple sources confirmed to press outlets that Haddad and
14:09Malik had broken up not long after. And while the official split announcement was framed as amicable,
14:14the timing lined up directly with the fallout from that night. For years after, Zayn mostly stayed quiet
14:20about it. When he finally addressed it publicly for the first time years later, on this same podcast
14:25franchise, he explained his silence not as guilt, but as a choice about where he wanted to spend his
14:31energy. He said his most valuable resource in life, his time. And getting into a back and forth in a
14:37toxic environment, just to justify himself to strangers online, wasn't worth it. He said he knew what
14:43happened, and the people actually involved knew too, and that was enough for him. He specifically
14:48didn't want his daughter growing up, and one day reading some ugly public fight her father had
14:53waged online about her mother's family. That instinct to protect Kai from the noise, keep the drama
14:59offline, is the same instinct that makes his most recent comments so jarring by comparison. Because this
15:05time he didn't stay vague, he put a label on the whole relationship on a podcast with a name
15:10attached, knowing it would be clipped and shared everywhere within the hour. The guy who once said
15:15he didn't want a public narrative his daughter might read one day, just handed the internet a brand new
15:20one. And that contradiction, private about the ugly stuff, blunt about the emotional stuff, sets up
15:26exactly what happened once Jiggy's side started responding. Jiggy Hatted has said nothing publicly,
15:33not a statement, not a post, not an interview clarifying her side. And that silence has become its own
15:39headline. Sources close to her started talking to tabloids almost as soon as the clip went viral.
15:45And the picture they paint is someone who's moved past hurt, but not past irritation.
15:50One source described her state bluntly, an infuriated Jiggy Hatted is trying to ignore her
15:55ex Zayn Malik's admission that he was never in love with her, as she focuses on her future with
16:00Bradley Cooper. With the supermodel telling pals the Oscar winner is twice the man the volatile former
16:06boy bander will ever be. Another source painted the same picture with a different word, triggering.
16:12Jiggy is way beyond being hurt by anything Zayn says, but that doesn't mean it isn't triggering for
16:17her. A source said adding, she sees everything and did not appreciate him taking that shot at her.
16:23That's the core tension in how her camp is framing this, not devastated, not blindsided into tears,
16:28but annoyed that he took what felt like a jab. At something she clearly took seriously at the time.
16:33And the reason she's not clapping back publicly isn't mystery, it's strategy, according to people
16:39around her. She wouldn't think of doing an interview announcing that she never loved Malik
16:44either. They have a child together, and she thinks it's disrespectful. Sources close to her have
16:49repeatedly stressed that a public fight isn't something she wants any part of. She's not interested
16:54in getting in a big public fight with him, one source said. Adding, she has her daughter to think
16:59go. She wants to keep things as cordial as possible for Kai's sake. So instead of words,
17:04she used actions, and the timing of those actions did the talking for her. On the very day call,
17:10her daddy posted a teaser clip of the interview on Instagram. Jiggy was photographed sharing a kiss
17:15with Bradley Cooper on the streets of New York City. Sources framed it almost like a deliberate message.
17:21It makes sense she's let her actions do the talking, one source said. She sent a message to Zayn
17:27and everyone that she's moved on and is very happy with her new man, who also happens to be a
17:32huge
17:33movie star. She's more than pleased with the way things turned out. That relationship with Cooper
17:38has been building steadily since they were first linked in late 2023. Since then they've been
17:43photographed on multiple dates, theater nights, lunch outings, all with the same relaxed, settled
17:49energy that stands in contrast to the chaos of her history with Zayn. On one of those outings,
17:55right after clips from Zayn's interview started circulating, Jiggy and Bradley were spotted at
18:00a Broadway show. With Jiggy later saying Bradley had brought something back into her life she'd
18:05missed. A small, quiet detail that read very differently against the backdrop of what her
18:10ex had just said about her on a podcast with millions of listeners. There's also an interesting
18:15layer to this that predates the never-in-love comment entirely. Back when Bradley and Jiggy were
18:20first getting serious, sources claimed Zayn wasn't exactly thrilled about it. Not out of jealousy over
18:26Jiggy specifically, but reportedly because he didn't want anything to jeopardize his standing as Kai's
18:32father. A source told a magazine at the time that Zayn had been trying to reform his image and didn't
18:37want to lose parental rights. Which is part of why he'd been so careful never to publicly contest
18:43Yolanda's version of events from that 2021 incident. He'd said as much himself, explaining that he knew
18:49what happened and didn't need to fight it out online. So when you line all of it up, the years
18:54of Zayn staying quiet about the ugliest chapter of the relationship. Followed by him being completely
19:00unguarded about the emotional verdict on the whole six years. It paints a picture of a man who's
19:05decided which parts of this story he's willing to control the narrative on. The legal mess he stayed
19:10silent about for protection. The love question he answered without blinking. Jiggy meanwhile has built
19:16her entire public response around not responding at all. No statement, no quote, no interview
19:22rebuttal, just a new relationship that keeps showing up in the right places at the right times.
19:28Saying more than any press release could. So where does all of this actually sit? Months after the
19:33clip first went viral. Zayn is not slowing down. Alongside the podcast run, he's been busy relaunching
19:39his solo career. His new album dropped that spring, and he headed out on an arena tour across the UK
19:45and North America soon after. On the same podcast, before the jiggy conversation even happened,
19:51he'd already told Cooper he's not chasing another public relationship. He said flatly that he's had
19:56that experience before, and it just doesn't work for him. No offense to anyone he'd dated publicly
20:02in the past. He described himself as a private person who doesn't need approval or attention.
20:08Someone whose relationship should stay between him and the other person, not played out for an
20:12audience. That's a striking thing to say in the same conversation where he just handed an audience
20:18of millions his verdict on a six-year, very public relationship. But it tracks with everything else
20:23he said about this chapter of his life. He's framed being single as freeing, telling Cooper he runs on
20:29his own clock, answers to himself, and can sleep whenever he wants without needing to check in with
20:35anyone. He even joked about trying online dating after the split and getting kicked off apps because
20:40people assumed his profile was a catfish using his own photos. Jigga's life, meanwhile, looks steady
20:46in a completely different way. She and Bradley have kept building their relationship quietly but visibly,
20:52dates, public affection, and reports that things between them keep getting more serious. And through
20:58all of it, the co-parenting arrangement with Zane has apparently held. Reports from her camp describe the
21:04two of them planning custody schedules months ahead of time, prioritizing consistency for Kai over anything
21:11else, which lines up with what both of them have said publicly about wanting to keep their daughter shielded
21:16from whatever noise swirls around either of their love lives. Kai herself is the throughline in every single
21:23part of this story. She's the reason Zane says he still loves Jiggy, even after saying he was never in
21:29love with her.
21:29She's the reason he stayed quiet about the ugliest parts of the breakup for years. She's the reason
21:35Jiggy won't fire back publicly, no matter how many sources describe her as triggered or infuriated
21:41behind closed doors. Every decision either of them has made in the years since that podcast episode
21:46dropped seems to run through the same filter. What does this look like when Kai is old enough to search
21:52her own parents' names? And that's really what makes this story stick, with people longer than a typical
21:57celebrity soundbite. It's not really about whether Zane loved Jiggy or not. Nobody outside that
22:03relationship gets to adjudicate that. It's about watching two people who spent six years building a
22:08very public life together now navigate the aftermath with completely opposite instincts. One of them
22:14decided total honesty, even blunt honesty, was the way through. The other decided silence and steadiness
22:21was the better path. Neither of them has been proven wrong yet. What's left is a five-year-old girl
22:26with two famous parents, who no longer share a relationship, but still share every major decision
22:32about her life. A mother who's rebuilt something new and stable with a man, 20 years her ex's senior.
22:38And a father who just told the world, in the middle of a comeback tour, that the biggest relationship of
22:43his life might have never been love at all. While insisting, in the very same breath, that he'll never
22:48stop loving the woman who gave him his daughter. That's not a contradiction he's trying to resolve,
22:53it's just where he's landed. And for now, that's exactly where the story sits.