The celebrities we hold in high regard often have dark pasts that we may never imagine. While they may be at the top of their games as celebrities, as human beings, they struggle with the same things that we do.
Revealing one such vulnerable experience, Keke Palmer is opening up about a past relationship she now realizes was far from appropriate. Reflecting on her teenage years, the ‘True Jackson, VP‘ star revealed that at just 15, she dated a 20-year-old, a decision she now regrets. Here’s everything she revealed about this relationship.
Keke Palmer Opens Up About Her Problematic First Relationship With An Elder Guy
Keke Palmer was speaking to PEOPLE when she detailed her experience getting into a relationship while being underage with a 20-year-old man. “Obviously I shouldn’t have been 15 dating no 20-year-old,” Palmer said during the interview on Wednesday, acknowledging the problematic nature of the romance.
“In my head, it was like, ‘I got a full-time job… Can’t nobody understand me but a grown man,'” she said. When this happened, Palmer was juggling fame with Nickelodeon and the difficulties of being a teenager, which made her feel older than she was.
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“I was trying to balance between being really young, but also feeling quite mature,” she said. “If I thought it was inappropriate, then I wouldn’t have done it,” she added.
Now 31, Palmer realizes that the teenage brain simply wasn’t ready to deal with the complexity of the relationship. “I couldn’t mentally understand things that would have made that relationship appropriate,” she said. Now, in hindsight, she can see how her ex “knew there was a lot of stuff that there’s no damn way for [her] to understand at damn 15.”
Keke Palmer Talks About The Power Dynamics Of Dating While Being Underage
Keke Palmer also agreed that the power dynamic in the relationship had been damaging. “The power dynamic put me in a place that harmed me in ways I couldn’t have known,” she said. “I didn’t have the language or the strength to accept that who he met was a child, not the woman I wanted to become.”
It took Palmer until her late 20s to experience what she now recognizes as “genuine love.” While she doesn’t deny caring for her former partner, she pointed out, “It wasn’t until I’d felt what it was like for someone to love me back and to actually give me respect, that I’ve realized that relationship was wrong.”
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Palmer has had some interesting love life turns of late. She shares a one-year-old son, Leo, with Darius Jackson, though their relationship hit rocky waters last year during a custody battle, where both accused each other of verbal and physical abuse. It seems the couple has since smoothed things over despite the public spat.
