Pop icon Britney Spears on Thursday hit back at her ex-husband Kevin Federline’s growing concerns about her behaviour in his forthcoming memoir, saying that she has “had enough” of the “constant gaslighting” and “hurtful” narratives surrounding her relationship with their sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.
In the memoir, set to release later this month, Federline writes in detail about their divorce in 2007 and the subsequent custody battle. He recounts several incidents that raised concerns about Spears’ mental health, including claims that their sons sometimes woke up at night to find her silently standing in the doorway “with a knife in her hand.”
Federline told The New York Times that he and Spears “haven’t spoken in years,” and says much of what he’s written comes from what he’s “learned through the boys.”
Reacting to these claims, Spears took to Instagram to express her agony. “The constant gaslighting from my ex-husband is extremely hurtful and exhausting,” she wrote, adding that she has “always pleaded and screamed” to have a relationship with her sons.
She described feeling “demoralised” by the distance between them, revealing that she’s seen one son only for 45 minutes and the other for four visits in five years.
“Those white lies in that book, they are going straight to the bank and I am the only one who genuinely gets hurt here,” Spears wrote. “I will always love them… I have been trying to live a sacred and private life the past five years. I speak on this because I have had enough and any real woman would do the same.”
A spokesperson for the singer told People that Federline’s memoir is another instance of “profiting off her,” noting that it comes around the end of his child support. Spears’s own memoir, now being adapted into a film, challenges similar claims, with the singer calling the years-long custody battle “traumatising.”