Miguel recently opened up about the end of his 17-year relationship with ex-wife Nazanin Mandi.
In a new interview with Shannon Sharpe for the Club Shay Shay podcast, the singer explained that the breakup forced him to confront the fact that he “wasn’t whole.”
“I know where I went wrong though, I wasn’t whole though,” he said near the 14-minute mark in the video linked above. “I’m not saying that I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I got all the answers now,’ but even being able to say and admit that I’m not whole … it completely changes the way that I approach things, you know?”
The 40-year-old continued, “I wasn’t in the headspace to be with anyone and I didn’t know how to communicate that.” He said that while their connection was real and meaningful, “I didn’t set it up properly, you know? I didn’t just build the trust as just a friendship to protect that later on … the way that I could have.”
Miguel described realizing, only in hindsight, that he should have told Mandi he wasn’t ready.
“If I was to do it again, I would have really said, ‘Hey, I’m actually not ready right now! But when you meet someone and you’re like, man, I really need something special here, I can see where everything happened.”
Despite the pain of letting go, Miguel said he and Mandi still share “a tremendous amount of love” and are “working very hard to not make it about what it was,” acknowledging that many people were attached to the “vision” and “aesthetic” of their relationship.
The singer said his song “Always Time” from his new album CAOS helped him process the end of his marriage.
“It allowed me to kind of look at myself and go, ‘You know, I made a lot of mistakes, man. I’m not perfect! I’m a much more aware person now. And I hate that I had to learn it the hard way, but we must continue,” he said.
Miguel and Mandi were in a relationship for a decade before becoming engaged in 2016 and marrying in November 2018. They revealed their initial separation in September 2021 but later reconciled in February 2022.
However, Mandi filed for divorce in October 2022. Two years later, Miguel welcomed a son named Angelito with former Vogue China editor Margaret Zhang.
