Celebrity

Miley Cyrus Reveals Her "Non-Negotiable" In Dating Post-Liam Hemsworth

"You better know what you want..."

by Sabienna Bowman
Miley Cyrus has a non-negotiable dating rule after her divorce from Liam Hemsworth
Mike Coppola/FilmMagic/Getty Images

She may be single and ready to mingle following her split from Cody Simpson, but before this pop star dates someone, she has some rules. Miley Cyrus revealed the non-negotiable relationship rule she instituted after her divorce from Liam Hemsworth during an interview with Joe Rogan on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Moving forward, it is imperative that whoever she dates "knows what they want" out of life, she said. Having had the experience of being in a relationship where her partner's desires weren't clear, she's now prepared to make her expectations known right from the start.

While she didn't reference Hemsworth by name in the interview, Cyrus did openly comment on her divorce and her "first love." She told Rogan, "I think [because of the divorce] now a non-negotiable in my relationship or dating, you better know what you want because I’m just not interested in taking another 10 years like I did with my first love figuring that out."

The singer also shared that she's not interested in staying in a relationship if it's not working, and she's not worried about being labeled as "cold" just because she not's afraid to end a relationship as soon as she's not feeling it anymore. "When it’s over, it’s over," she said. "What’s painful isn’t the relationship, it’s then when it’s done, you holding on for that extra however long you try to make it work." Cyrus admitted that she learned that lesson firsthand during her marriage to Hemsworth. Even though she knew their relationship was over, she said letting him go wasn't easy, because the familiarity of being with him was "like a pacifier."

Ultimately, the comfort she derived from being with Hemsworth wasn't worth continuing to stay in a marriage that was no longer working. "It was that thing I just needed not because we were in love anymore but because the comfort and because my brain said, 'oh, this feels better. This is comforting,'" she told Rogan. "But actually, knowing that I was giving in to an addiction made me feel way worse."

Ending a marriage is never easy, but for Cyrus the process of getting a divorce wasn't nearly as hard as having it play out in the public eye. Shortly after she and Hemsworth announced their split, it was revealed that the singer was dating blogger Kaitlynn Carter, leading to the creation of a narrative where Cyrus was accused of being responsible for her marriage ending. According to the singer, aside from the pain of her breakup, seeing people conflate her relationship with Carter and the end of her marriage was the most frustrating part of the situation.

"What really sucked about it wasn't the fact that me and someone that I loved realized that we don't love each other the way that we used to anymore. That’s okay. I can accept that," she said. "I can't accept the villainizing." Cyrus went on to explain that she was shocked the public didn't understand that there was a "gap of time that they didn't see that could possibly be what led to this."

Despite all of the pain and frustration that she's experienced since her divorce, the 30-year-old knows that splitting from Hemsworth was the right decision for her. She's also learning from her past mistakes and not lingering in relationships that aren't working. As a result she's single for the first time since 2015, and she's relishing this "pivotal moment."