John Legend admits he cheated in relationships before Chrissy Teigen

The singer and husband of Chrissy Teigen has spoken about his “dishonest and selfish” behaviour in a surprisingly candid interview.

Before meeting Chrissy Teigen, John Legend was quite the Lothario.

During an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast, host Dax Shepard remarked, “I have a horrendous history of cheating. F**king deplorable … And there’s all these great cheating songs on your albums, and I was like, ‘I see another fisherman at sea,’” before going on to ask Legend if those songs were based on his own life.

“Yes, I did have a history of (cheating). Definitely in my 20s,” Legend, 41, responded.

“I think what happened for me, you go through a lot of your life in your teens and I was younger than everybody in high school and college, and so I just didn’t get a lot of girls. When I started to get that attention, I loved it.

“I escaped ‘technically cheating’ by keeping my relationship ill-defined, but it was really cheating. I definitely was dishonest and selfish … It was happening before I was famous.”

For Legend, things changed when he met Teigen, 34, whom he married in 2013.

Teigen and Legend at the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills. Picture: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

“At a certain point, you just realise you’re happier being honest. You’re happier being faithful and being in love with one person. At a certain point, I just decided that person was Chrissy. I decided I wasn’t gonna mess with somebody else anymore.”

He continued, “We’ve talked about it before, but we had sex the first night and hit it off. We were both seeing other people at the time. There was kind of a looseness at the very beginning, but we fell in love not long after that.”

When it comes to being a “celebrity couple,” Legend admitted that being in the spotlight is motivation for him to be on his best behaviour.

“I feel like it almost makes it less likely that I would do anything to f**k it up. Chrissy has 12 million Twitter followers. If I were to do anything, it would be career suicide,” he explained. “It would be terrible. It just gives you another reason to not f**k it up.”

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