Carly Pearce recently confessed she knew marrying fellow country star Michael Ray was a mistake—right from the start.
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The “Truck on Fire” singer spilled the sweet tea on Jelly Roll’s wife, Bunnie XO’s podcast Dumb Blonde, admitting her relationship with Ray was more sparks than substance. While she says they tied the knot with good intentions, Pearce confessed they were living more in fantasy than reality.
“I thought he was so cute,” she gushed about the relationship and quickie marriage. “I’d heard he’s the nicest guy in the world. I invited him to my [Billboard Country Airplay] No. 1 party for ‘Every Little Thing.’”
However, the country star couple was simply too busy enjoying each other’s bodies to realize it wasn’t working in other departments.
“Looking back on it, it was a hot and heavy lust,” Pearce admitted, possibly to the chagrin of future lovers. “It wasn’t love. It was just passionate.”
“I got married to go the distance. When I married him, it was for the right reasons,” Pearce continued.
“I think that when you travel like this, I thought I was doing the right thing by waiting to get married till I was 29,” she added. “But we didn’t have real conversations, and we didn’t really know about each other. We were kind of living this life that wasn’t really reality, now looking back on it. So, I just think we didn’t really know each other.”
“I knew the night I got married that I shouldn’t have,” she confessed.
How COVID-19 Helped Carly Pearce Realize Her Marriage “Wasn’t What [She] Signed Up For”
However, 2020’s pandemic helped the country star get a bit of perspective.
“I think the best thing that ever happened to me was COVID because it allowed me to deal with that in private,” she recalled. “The isolation sped up the process of realizing Ray wasn’t her ‘forever person.”
“I think that I probably would have stayed in it longer if I could have avoided it and not had to. … I was embarrassed when it happened … and I had shame around that and was heartbroken,” the “Should’ve Known Better” singer added.
It seems bedroom antics simply weren’t enough. In 2020, Pearce initiated divorce proceedings after just eight months of marriage to the country singer.
“It wasn’t what I signed up for,” she continued. “It just wasn’t the marriage that I know I deserved. I knew that very quickly.”
“And I think in the first — we were only married for eight months. Plenty happened to where it was very clear to me this was not, this just wasn’t a marriage,” Pearce explained.
Carly Pearce Credits Her Brief Marriage to the Country Star for Discovering Her “Self-Worth”
Pearce and Bunnie XO also briefly addressed the rumors surrounding Ray’s alleged infidelity during his marriage to the singer.
“People have all their opinions, and, at first, that was so hard for me because I was like, ‘That’s not true, that’s not true, that’s not true. What he’s saying isn’t true.’ But, at the end of the day, like my friends who walked that with me, they know,” she told Bunnie XO. “My parents know and God knows, and that is enough. It’s enough.”
Now post-divorce, Pearce says she’s happier than ever—turns out, breaking up was the glow-up. She even credits her former lover with teaching her about herself.
“I am in the happiest season of my life,” she insisted. “I’m — actually, if I ever saw him, if he ever watches this, thank you, because you taught me more about myself. You taught me how strong I am. You put me through things that have made me better now. And I don’t wish him evil. I don’t wish anything on him. I’m so glad that I’m not in that anymore.”
“I think I was really shown just how much I care about me,” Pearce claimed. “You know, like, I actually really have a lot of self-worth, and that showed me that.”