Jason Mraz Says Going Through a Divorce Helped Him Find ‘New Acceptance’ for His Sexuality

The coming out process is different for everyone — and for singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, part of that process meant reconciling with his past partners.

In a new interview with GLAAD, Mraz spoke about how his journey to accepting his own bisexuality was made even more complicated by his divorce from Christina Carano, which he announced earlier this year. “I had to play out a lot of other scenarios before I arrived here,” he said. “It’s both hard to do those and hard to unravel those, and what I’m basically describing is a divorce, you know? And that’s very hard.”

The 46-year-old singer, who is competing on the current season of Dancing With the Stars with pro dance partner Daniella Karagach, said that experiencing the emotional ebb of his divorce has forced him to come to terms with his own identity. “You carry a lot of shame, guilt. You want to heal as many relationships of the past as possible, and at the same time, step into this new acceptance and new identity or whatever I’m claiming, and that’s also hard.”

Mraz came out publicly as bisexual in a 2018 interview with Billboard, saying that Carano was the one who’d helped him understand his sexual identity. “She calls it ‘two spirit,’ which is what the Native Americans call someone who can love both man and woman,” he said in the interview. “I really like that.”

Elsewhere in his interview with GLAAD, Mraz celebrated the upcoming Taylor Swift Night on DWTS by remembering his performance with her during her Speak Now world tour in 2011, and praising her work as an ally to the LGBTQ community. “It’s beautiful,” he said of Swift’s allyship. “If you want your music to be popular, you’re going to hopefully have it be heard by all ears. Therefore, you’re representing all ears, and you should be inclusive of all ears.”

Check out Jason Mraz’s full interview with GLAAD below: