Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo have come a long way, from overcoming infidelity in their relationship to figuring out which boundaries work best for them — all of which the latter delves into in her new memoir, Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic.
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In excerpts shared by E! News on Tuesday (Feb. 17) — the same day the book was published — Bunnie went into detail about finding out her husband had a 10-month affair and clarified her past comments suggesting she and the country star are in an “open” relationship. Years ago, she suspected that Jelly had started talking to one of his exes — “not a baby mama,” she clarified — behind her back, after which the woman in question confirmed everything in a conversation with Bunnie.
“She told me about how he got a house for them to live in and he wanted her to stay at home and take care of [his daughter] Bailee,” Bunnie wrote. “And out of everything, that’s what made me sick. It wasn’t about him f–king this broad — it was about emotionally cheating and then wanting her to play mommy to a little girl I’d fallen in love with.”
Now, Jelly and Bunnie are stronger than ever, sharing custody of Bailee and helping raise the Grammy winner’s son, Noah. They couple is also working to welcome twins via IVF and a surrogate, another thing the Dumb Blonde host opened up about in Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic.
But first, the pair had a lot of healing to do. “I’m not going to pretend that we just went back to normal,” Bunnie wrote. “It would take years for me to put the affair aside. It would take years to actually feel like this man loved me — that I wasn’t disposable.”
The influencer isn’t the only one who’s spoken about the rough patch in her marriage to Jelly, whom she wed in 2016. While guesting on the Human School podcast in October, the singer said that his affair was “one of the worst moments of my adulthood.”
Bunnie has said that she’s also experienced disloyalty in her past relationships. That’s why she initially allowed for more openness in her sex life with Jelly. But despite saying on her podcast years ago that “we allow each other to be who we want to be … If I want to sleep with another guy, I can go sleep with another guy,” the author stressed in her book that they are not in an “open” relationship.
“I thought my openness and willingness to have third parties would save me from all the other cheating I’d experienced in my life,” Bunnie explained. “If a girl wanted to come home with us, we more than likely wouldn’t turn her down.”
“J has always told me that I can sleep with other men if I want to,” she continued. “We both live by the motto that we aren’t each other’s possessions and consider our relationship to be free, not open.”
Even so, Bunnie’s choice to not be strictly monogamous in the bedroom with Jelly didn’t stop him from having his affair. Afterward, Jelly has said that he had to confront what was wrong with him emotionally that led to him breaking his wife’s trust — and so did Bunnie.
In a recent interview with Howard Stern about her memoir, Bunnie explained, “When we went through that entire situation, I had to look inside myself also and be like, ‘Why am I attracting these men? Because this seems to be a huge pattern in my life.’”
“Not that I’m making excuses for him, but most of the time when men cheat, women wanna point the finger,” she continued. “I didn’t wanna do that. I was like, ‘I really love this man’ … I just knew that something was so special in my husband and I knew that he would become the man that he is today. He just needed somebody to love him.”
Watch Bunnie speak about the affair on Howard Stern below.
