Craig David has opened up about how a heartbreak he went through at the age of 16 led to 25 years of “barriers” to finding love.
The “7 Days” singer said he didn’t know what he had “done wrong” for the relationship to end, but it “set the tone for the next 20 or so years”.
David, 41, said the “two-week whirlwind” romance took place when he was about 15 or 16 years old with a girl “I was so into”.
But it “all went south” and the relationship came to an end, he told the Mirror.
“My heart just closed down, I didn’t know what I had done wrong,” the pop star said. “I’d never [been] that vulnerable again. There were some women in my life who really tried to break down my barriers and get to my heart, but the whole thing was barricaded with steel gates.”
“It pains me to this day,” he added.
However, David said he has “done a lot of relationship work” on himself and is hopeful that he will find love in the future.
“I’ve done the shadow work, which now opens me up for a relationship and for love,” he said. “It makes me smile now because it’s been a long time coming.”
The “Fill Me In” singer, who recently released a memoir titled What’s Your Vibe, previously said he had been “guarded for so long”.
But with his book, he was ready to open up and connect with fans on a deeper level.
“It was super hard to write at times, as it’s always easier to leave all the difficult bits out, but as we all know, any real breakthrough tends to come at the edge of discomfort,” he said in a video posted to Twitter in May.
In April, David revealed that the longest relationship he had ever been in lasted two and a half years, but he did not “feel like I opened my heart” during that romance.
He told The Sun: “I feel like the girl was trying to get me to break down some walls and with a bit of time and separation, you look back and say, ‘Thank you’. Because you taught me so much about how I was moving and what was going on, and I’m a better man for that.”
