Jessica Simpson: My dad ‘betrayed’ my mum before divorce

Jessica Simpson has opened up about the devastating secret that destroyed her family, and how the truth was eventually discovered.

Jessica Simpson says in her new memoir that her father and ex-manager, Joe Simpson, “betrayed” his marriage to her mother, Tina Simpson.

Cheating rumours swirled around Joe and Tina’s 2012 divorce, and while Jessica doesn’t divulge specifics, she does write in Open Book, “In August (2012), my mother discovered that my father had betrayed their marriage, just as she and I thought things were turning around for them.”

MORE: Simpson claims she turned down lead role in The Notebook

Jessica and Joe Simpson at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards. Picture: AP Photo/Matt Sayles

The pop star continues, “She had just told me what a nice time they had together on their anniversary, and she thought maybe they had turned a corner. I thought so, too. When she confronted him, my dad began calling me, and I would not pick up.”

Joe, 61, then showed up at her house in “full denial mode,” Jessica says.

“After all those times he’d flirted with the idea of rescuing himself, he couldn’t do it. ‘I’m not with anybody else,’ he said. ‘I love your mother,’” Jessica, 39, writes.

Tina and Joe finalised their divorce in April 2013 after 34 years of marriage.

“Dad moved on quickly,” Jessica writes. “And maybe he’d planned it so long that he had a running start ahead of my mother.”

Three days before Jessica’s 2014 wedding to Eric Johnson, she says Joe asked if he could bring his friend Jonathan, “a young model he often shot for his new photography business.”

“I reminded myself that I needed to accept my father for who he was as he worked it out in real-time,” she says.

When asked about her father’s sexuality following the release of her tell-all, Jessica told the Los Angeles Times, “That’s not something we talk about. That’s not my story to tell.”

The singer claims her father asked to bring a man to her wedding to Eric Johnson. Picture: AP Photo/Starpix, Amanda Schwab

Page Six has reached out to Joe for comment.

The singer also writes about firing Joe as her manager, saying it was “one of the hardest things” she’s ever done.

“The worst part was that I had (to) do it five times because he would not accept it,” she says. “Too often I was circling back to people, only to find that Dad had made some move without telling me. People agreed to bad terms, thinking that was what I had demanded when, really, I had no idea. It left a lot of hurt feelings I didn’t know existed, and I knew I had to make the move to go forward with ownership of my own career.”

Open Book also delves into Jessica’s addiction issues and eventual 2017 sobriety, the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, and her past relationships with ex-husband Nick Lachey and ex-boyfriends John Mayer and Tony Romo.

This article originally appeared in the NY Post and was reproduced with permission.