With the release of his new book, Justin Timberlake is opening up about one hot topic in his life: his marriage to Jessica Biel.
The couple first started dating in 2007, but prior to that, there was a long-winded flirtation between the future power pair that spanned months. “When I met Jess, it was undeniable how beautiful she is,” Timberlake expressed in Hindsight: & All the Things I Can’t See in Front of Me. “We were at a surprise party in Hollywood at a speakeasy kind of bar, a private club, and we were standing around in a group of people.”
“I made some sort of sarcastic comment, really dry,” he continued. “Nobody got it except her. She laughed, and I noticed, all of a sudden, and in the way where you wonder if a person’s like you, if they have a very dry, dark sense of humor, too.”
Timberlake didn’t get her number that night, but he thought about that brief interaction for a while. In fact, he recalled: “I’m kind of really interested in that girl. There was just something about that girl. Kind of interested in that girl. Goddamn it.”
It wasn’t until she attended one of his concerts during his FutureSex/LoveSounds tour that they reconnected and Timberlake finally got her number. At the time, though, both parties were dating. “We were both still seeing other people, keeping ourselves safe from getting hurt, from really putting ourselves out there,” he recalled. “It took a bit for both of us to admit to ourselves that we were really, really into each other.”
As Timberlake wrapped that global experience, the two ended up talking on the phone for several weeks. “When I came back from my tour, we spent a month together. After that, I said, ‘I really want to be exclusive,’” he wrote. “And somehow, she said, ‘So do I.’”
In 2012, the pair married in Puglia, Italy. A year later, he released his smash title, “Mirrors,” the inspiration of the song unknown–until now. (It was previously believed that the tune was for his grandparents.)
“I wrote the song ‘Mirrors’ for my wife. We were living together at the time,” he recalled. “We weren’t engaged yet. In fact, it was years before I proposed… She’s become a huge influence in my life, and I have such admiration for her. She’s a very good writer. She’s a poet. She’s a tremendous actor. She’s funny.”
Their love story has inspired Timberlake to be a better husband and now, a father. “She changed me. She changed my life,” he wrote. “All of that is in ‘Mirrors.’ Not the details. But the way it felt to have my life be touched by her.”
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