Over a year after Ethan Slater and Lilly Jay finalized their divorce, and the Wicked star went on to date Ariana Grande, the therapist shared insight into her coparenting relationship with the actor.
Ethan Slater’s ex Lilly Jay is ready to debrief.
After her divorce from the Wicked star, and his subsequent relationship with Ariana Grande, the therapist—who shares a 2-year-old son with Slater—gave insight into where the former couple currently stands.
“Slowly but surely, I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high-school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child,” Jay wrote in a personal essay for The Cut, published Dec. 19. “While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided.”
Still, the former actress admitted that she is still somewhat struggling with the aftermath of the couple’s public divorce.
“Days with my son are sunny,” she added. “Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker.”
Jay spent 10 years with Slater, four of them as husband and wife before they finalized their divorce in September 2023. And while she expressed the difficulties of losing a long-term partner, she noted that their public divorce has also impacted her career as a therapist.
“I can’t say for sure how much my career has been impacted by what’s out there online,” she wrote. “But there have been hints along the way, like the job offer that dissolved without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle or the patient who’s scheduled for a first appointment but seemingly vanishes.”
The Maryland native’s essay comes after over a year of silence on her end—and less than a month after Wicked, starring both Slater and Grande, premiered.
Earlier this year, however, Grande and Slater individually addressed the controversy surrounding their relationship, and the end of Slater’s marriage to Jay—as well as the end of Grande’s marriage to Dalton Gomez.
“That was definitely a tough ride,” Grande reflected of the negative press cycle surrounding her relationship with Slater, and going on to defend him in a September interview with Vanity Fair. “There couldn’t be a less accurate depiction of a human being than the one that the tabloids spread about him. No one on this earth tries harder or spreads themselves thinner to be there for the people that he loves and cares about.”
Slater, for his part, called 2023 an “amazing” year despite the difficulties each party experienced.
“I think there was something that was really difficult about things in your private life being commented on and looked at by the public,” he told GQ in October. “And then getting things wrong about the people you love. Just to address that part of it feels really hard.”
Keep reading to revisit more recent celebrity breakups…
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Linda listed “irreconcilable differences” in court documents obtained by E! News, with her estranged husband later sharing that infidelity was "not the reason" they split.
"Neglect can create suspicion, certainly," he told TMZ in September. "If you're gone as much as I am, she has every right to suspect."
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