When Ariana Grande wed luxury real estate agent Dalton Gomez in a top-secret ceremony in May 2021, the room “was so happy and so full of love.”
But maybe Grande and everyone else shouldn’t have been so quick to believe that she and Gomez would really live happily ever after — and not just because of her history of cycling through romances that don’t last.
The durability of Grande and Gomez’s romance probably was questionable all along because it blossomed during the COVID-19 pandemic when they were alone together for an extended amount of time during lockdown. News has now come that Grande, 30, and Gomez, 27, have been separated since the beginning of the year and are headed towards divorce, TMZ, Us Weeky and other outlets have reported.
Ariana Grande and Dalton Gomez are no longer together. 💔 pic.twitter.com/U0gMlkuudT
— E! News (@enews) July 17, 2023
Many couples who met during the pandemic and enjoyed all that intense time together also found that their relationships were fleeting, once COVID restrictions lifted and they were able to venture back into real life, reports said. Many relationships started out “with a frantic holding on” that was accelerated by the extra free time the quarantine created and the stressful new reality of a global pandemic, both The Guardian and The Atlantic reported.
“Faced with an unprecedented loss of control, many clung to romance to feel grounded,” The Guardian reported, while also saying that falling in love became a coping mechanism for some people: “And the trajectory of those relationships followed the trajectory of all coping mechanisms: they worked until they didn’t.”
The Atlantic also theorized that these pandemic relationships were missing a key ingredient: “Knowledge of how one’s partner interacted with the outside world —and, by extension, of how a relationship would fare when stay-at-home orders eased.”
Of course, it’s impossible to say what exactly led Grande and Gomez to part ways — unless she opens up about the relationship’s demise in a tell-all interview or writes a song about it. But the relationship unfolded in typical lockdown fashion, with the couple reportedly forming a pandemic social bubble that would have, by necessity, excluded the physical presence of most everyone else. One or both partners also might have been forced to take a hiatus from work for some period of time.
As People reported, Grande “spent her time out of the spotlight falling in love. She started to get serious with Gomez while in quarantine.”
The pair met in January 2020 after Grande hired Gomez to help her find a house just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Us Weekly reported.
“When she saw him, she immediately thought he was cute and very good-looking, and she asked her team to set up an in-person meeting with him,” a source told Us Weekly. “Ariana fell very hard for Dalton shortly after they met.”
The pop star and her real estate boyfriend agent initially spent time together at her home in New York when the pandemic descended on the United States in March 2020. That’s when “she realized he is very special,” a source told People. When Gomez returned to Los Angeles, where his real estate business is based, she followed.
“It was getting tricky for them to see each other, so she decided to take her chance,” the source told People. “She purchased a house in the Hollywood Hills in June and never looked back. They (were) incredibly happy.”
“Ariana is beyond excited,” another source told Us Weekly in December 2020. “She has really enjoyed getting to know and falling in love with Dalton out of the spotlight, something she didn’t get to do in her past relationships. They are so in love and committed to spend the rest of their lives together.”
In April 2020, another insider told Us Weekly that Grande and Gomez were “beyond obsessed with each other” and spend “almost all their time” together.
“He loves to dote on her (and) he just makes her really happy,” the source added. “All of Ariana’s friends and family love him for her.”
Grande was previously engaged to “Saturday Night Live” comedian Pete Davidson from June 2018 to October 2018 after a whirlwind romance. She also famously dated Big Sean from 2014 to 2015 and rapper Mac Miller from 2016 to May 2018 (he died of a drug overdose in September 2018). Her past partners didn’t meet “her needs in the same way Dalton does,” a source told Us Weekly.
Grande announced in December 2020 that she and Gomez were engaged. That’s around the time that 300,000 coronavirus deaths were recorded in the United States but that several vaccines had come online and were beginning to be distributed nationwide, eventually leading to lockdowns being lifted.
“Forever n then some,” Grande captioned her engagement announcement via Instagram, sharing a series of photos of her cuddling with the real estate agent.
When Grande and Gomez wed in May 2021, they kept their ceremony small and intimate, tying the knot at her home in Montencito. Grande’s rep said at the time: “The room was so happy and full of love. The couple and both families couldn’t be happier.”
Ariana Grande and her husband Dalton Gomez have separated and are heading toward divorce, TMZ reports. pic.twitter.com/kFmXFAxojB
— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 17, 2023
As lockdown restrictions were lifted, Grande and Gomez presumably got back to their old lives, with Grande performing again, releasing music and making movies. She had a small role in the Adam McKay’s disaster comedy, “Don’t Look Up,” and signed on to play Glinda in the upcoming two-part film adaptation of the musical “Wicked.”
TMZ and Us Weekly reported that the couple had been having problems for quite some time “that they couldn’t resolve” before Grande left for the U.K. in December to begin filming “Wicked.”
“Things had been going really well for Ariana and Dalton since they got married,” a source told Us Weekly. “But unfortunately, they hit a rough patch a few months ago and haven’t been able to recover.”
Since Grande has been working on “Wicked,” she and Gomez essentially have been living apart, TMZ said.
They tried a reconciliation but it failed, which could explain why she was photographed at the Wimbledon men’s final match Sunday — not wearing a wedding ring. TMZ also reported that they still talk on the phone regularly and remain friends but the marriage is “kaput.”