Mariah Carey was married to Tommy Mottola from 1993 to 1997 during which time he controlled her movement and interactions with people.
Some partners are so toxic that we have to find an escape any way we can. When we got married, we imagined that our lives with our partner will be happy and satisfying; instead many of us get trapped with someone who wants to control every living moment of our lives. Forced to find avenues of escape, we might find a way but that may not be the best one.
Mariah Carey was only 23 when she married music producer Tommy Mottola, who was 43, in 1993. By 1997, she had to get out of her first marriage because Mottola wasn't letting her live her life without his permission. In her new memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the 50-year-old songstress has opened her heart about what made her finally decide to leave him.
"It felt like he was cutting off my circulation, keeping me from my friends and what little 'family' I had," wrote Carey about Mottola. She also said that she used to keep a packed bag under her bag if she ever needed to escape at a moment's notice, according to The Daily Star.
The Hero singer told Cosmopolitan that her life with Mottola was like being trapped. "There was a conscious effort to keep me as this all-American, whatever that means, girl. It was very controlled," she recalled. "There was no freedom for me as a human being. It was almost like being a prisoner," she said, adding that he allegedly "monitored [her] — minute by minute, day after day, year after year," as per Us Weekly.
Mottola, for whom it was the second marriage, hasn't responded to the allegations but said he wishes "her and her family only the very best". "I couldn't talk to anyone that wasn't under Tommy's control. I couldn't go out or do anything with anybody. I couldn't move freely in my own house," claimed the We Belong Together singer.
Stifled in her marriage, Carey sought solace outside of it. She found safety with New York Yankees player Derek Jeter. They found common ground in their experiences of being biracial and continued seeing each other without Mottola's knowledge. They met at a dinner in the 1990s when she wanted "to be like Peter Pan and fly the f--k away," she says, as per Us Weekly. They exchanged numbers and started meeting up around New York City.
"Derek was only the second person I had slept with ever (coincidentally, his number was 2 on the Yankees)," she writes. She thought Jeter was her "soulmate" then as she believed he was proof that she "could have something beautiful on the other side of the hell that was [her] marriage." However, they broke up soon and the relationship became "the catalyst [she] needed to get out from under Tommy’s crippling control."
Growing up, she faced domestic violence and wanted to get out of such a situation as an adult. "By the time I was a toddler, I had developed the instincts to sense when violence was coming," she said. She also said that one Christmas when her brother Morgan, their sister, Allison, and their mother, Patricia, allegedly "explode[d] in a torrent of verbal abuse" against her. She is estranged from her siblings.
Four years after her divorce, the Touch My Body singer was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It happened when she suffered a breakdown due to the pressures of her demanding career. The week before she went to rehab, she had slept for only two hours, she revealed.
"I was working so hard and I wasn't about to let everything I'd worked so hard for just to slip away. So, I worked myself into the ground. I was in a very dark place that ended up almost completely destroying my life," she added. In 2001, it was reported that she checked into a New York hospital citing exhaustion, according to Entertainment Weekly.
The songbird is in a much better place in terms of mental health and is ready to tell her side of the story. She has fought her demons and continues to work on herself.
References:
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/mariah-carey-confesses-cheating-controlling-22764404
https://ew.com/article/2001/07/31/mariah-carey-hospitalized-exhaustion/
