Jason Mraz Admits “Shame,” “Guilt” of Divorce Helped Him Realize He’s Bisexual
Disney/Christopher Willard Reading Time: 3 minutes
Folk-pop star Jason Mraz is sharing his unusual journey of self-acceptance as a member of the queer community. The “I’m Yours” singer recently opened up how his ex-wife Christina Carano made him understand his sexuality.
Jason Mraz Explains How His Divorce Made Him Accept His Sexuality
In an interview with GLAAD, Mraz got candid about his coming out journey that led to his divorce. According to the singer, he had to walk towards the inevitable feeling of discomfort to make sense of his situation.
“I had to play out a lot of other scenarios before I arrived here. It’s both hard to do those and hard to unravel those, and what I’m basically describing is a divorce, you know?” he said. “And that’s very hard. You carry a lot of shame, guilt.”
Mraz married Carano in 2015. Three years later though, he came out as bisexual. His coming out was apparently met with some controversy after Mraz revealed that he’s had “experiences with men” when he was married.
At the time, the singer stated that it was Carano who laid it out for him, calling his sexuality “two-spirit.” For those who may not know what this means, “two-spirit” is what Native Americans call someone who is attracted to both men and women.
Mraz was recently named to Out100, Out magazine’s annual compilation of the year’s most influential LGBTQ+ people. Now that he’s coming to terms with his sexuality, he compels himself to heal from his past.
“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 said. “So being on the Out100 is… It’s nice to be acknowledged.”
He Credits Dancing With The Stars for Helping Him Embrace His Queerness
Currently, Mraz is competing on Dancing With The Stars Season 32 along with his partner Daniella Karagach. Mraz recently revealed that his dance-suffused music video for “I Feel Like Dancing” that prompted DWTS producers to offer him the job.
Now that he’s on it, Mraz said he didn’t anticipate the process to be emotional. Nonetheless, the singer is thankful that he’s able to seize the insightful journey. As a matter of fact, he accounts a portion of his self-discovery to the competition show.
“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 explained. “On top of it, then my partner is asking me to move in ways that I’ve never moved before, and my reaction is, ‘I look silly.’ And then you break through that and it’s like, ‘OK, I feel kinda cool.’ And then it eventually becomes confidence, and so it is a journey.”
Similar to his journey to self-acceptance, his creative process in dancing can also get difficult.
“It happens to me all the time. And I have to figure out, like, accept myself, get back in my body, move through life in ways that I’m happy about, and so by the end of the day I feel accomplished and I feel happy to be me,” he said. “Dance is an amazing medium for that transformation and for that accepting of ones’ self.”
