Lupita Nyong’o has been opening up about her recent break-up.
The Black Panther actress confirmed her relationship with Selema Masekela in a now-deleted video of the pair captioned, “We just click! @selema #thisismylove #nuffsaid, back in December 2022.
In October of last year, Lupita announced that she and her boyfriend had gone their separate ways, without naming Selema at the time, but revealed that her relationship was ‘devastatingly extinguished by deception’.
Now, in a candid insight into the ‘pain and heartbreak’ she suffered at the time of their split, Lupita has explained why she chose to share her relationship with the public and why she announced her break-up on social media.
While speaking to NET-A-PORTER, the 40-year-old admitted, “In my mind, when I shared my relationship status with the world, it was because I felt sure about it”.
Opening up about the split, she went on to say, “I was living in a lot of pain and heartbreak. I looked at the environment of my social media and thought, I don’t want to be a part of this illusion that everything is always coming up roses. Surely there is a lesson for me to learn in this, and I just want to be real about it”.
“I knew how it could be interpreted; I knew it would have a life of its own. But then I started to see the comments and people were being so loving and supportive”.
Nyong’o added, “The ones that moved me the most were other people sharing their pain and their heartbreak”.
Since the 12 Years a Slave star had never been public with her relationships except for when she was with Selema, Lupita revealed that she won’t be sharing her relationships online again.
She explained, “That was very, very sage of me. I’m going back to those days, by the way”.
Lupita then said, “I think what I’ve learned is, I’ve got to just face this thing that I’m going through. I can’t run away from it. And so I am not looking for its opposite right now.”
In October 2023, when Lupita announced her break-up, she revealed, “At this moment, it is necessary for me to share a personal truth and publicly dissociate myself from someone I can no longer trust…”.
“I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception. I am tempted to run into the shadows and hide, only to return to the light when I have regained my strength enough for me to say, ‘Whatever, my life is better this way’”.
The Us actress continued, “But I am reminded that the magnitude of the pain I am feeling is equal to the measure of my capacity for love. And so, I am choosing to face the pain, cultivating the courage to meet my life exactly as it is, and trusting that this too shall pass”.
“The promise, they say, is that a tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. I hope it’s true… I share this to keep it [100], and hoping that the knowledge of my experience might be useful to someone else out there experiencing the grip of heartbreak who is poised to try and escape from the pain and miss out on the wisdom that comes from it. #Breakup”.
