Mel B was 'anti-relationship' after her 'abusive' marriage to Stephen Belafonte
Mel B has spoken about finding love again and re-building her trust after the alleged abuse she faced at the hands of her ex-husband Stephen Belafonte during their 10-year marriage.
Mel B was against having a relationship again until she fell in love with her fiance Rory McPhee.
The Spice Girl had ruled out finding love again after her ex-husband, Stephen Belafonte, allegedly abused her physically and emotionally during their 10-year marriage – which ended acrimoniously in divorce in 2017 – until the 36-year-old hairstylist, a childhood friend, showed her that true love is possible.
Speaking on the ‘Mad, Sad and Bad with Paloma Faith’ podcast, she said: “My partner I've known since I was young, and he knew my dad really, really well. So it's nice to be with somebody that's from my neck of the woods.
“He knew my dad before he died and it feels like home.
“ I never wanted that feeling, because I didn't think it would ever exist again, because I thought I was in love, and look what happened to me for 10 years.
“So I wasn't planning on any of that. If anything, I was very anti a relationship. That's the last thing [on my mind].”
The 49-year-old singer – who has Phoenix, 25, with first husband Jimmy Gulzar, Angel, 17, from her relationship with Hollywood actor Eddie Murphy, and Madison, 13, with Stephen – added that her “priority” is mending her “broken relationships” with her mum, sister and children and herself.
She said: “I'm trying to repair myself and repair all these broken relationships with my mum and my sister and make sure my kids are OK. That's my priority, and it still is my priority, it's just he was always there.”
Mel also shared how she was constantly second guessing herself during her marriage to producer Stephen, 49, who has denied all the abuse allegations she made against him, and that she felt like she was “going mad”.
She told fellow singer Paloma, 43: “I was in a very abusive 10-year marriage and there's lots of coercive control and manipulation. I would think, ‘I know where I've put my diamond earrings, I know that they're there at the side of the bed’, but he would move them then blame me, and then it would be, you're irresponsible. Oh look, I found them in the fridge and I'd question myself, maybe I did put them in the fridge. A lot of that went on and I literally felt like I was going mad and I would double check myself … almost like you were living in a fantasy world where I know that that wasn't there before and I know where my coffee mug is. It was really mind boggling.”
As a result, the ‘Viva Forever’ hitmaker – who was awarded an MBE in 2022 for her services to charities and supporting vulnerable women - has had to rebuild her trust in her “own instincts” after being left with “so much self-doubt”.
She continued: “When I left that 10-year relationship, I had to really learn how to trust my own instincts because there's so much self-doubt because for 10 years you've been made to feel whatever you thought was completely the opposite. Abusers, they find you. They find you when you're either at your most vulnerable or when you’re at your happiest.
“It's a challenge to them to see how they can get you and how they can then start to manipulate and it doesn’t happen all at once. They love bomb you, they show up like they're your knight in shining armor and then slowly over time they show their true colors.”
Mel – who revealed her engagement to Rory in 2022 – is now living in pure bliss surrounded by her loved ones and her beloved animals at her £2 million-Yorkshire Dales farmhouse, where she often spends hours on end sitting in “silence and stillness” with her chickens and goats, after ditching Los Angeles.
She said: “I go up to the field and I spend all day with my chickens and my goats, and I've got this little shed that I've got a Union Jack and leopard print on [a nod to her Spice Girls days]. And I just sit there and I stare at my animals and be by myself, and I love it.
“ There's always been a bit of that in me, because I like the silence and the stillness. Because when I'm out and about, I'm like this, so you can't be like this all the time … I'll just pretend I've lost my phone. I'll go and sit with the animals for hours.”
Listen to the full episode now via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
