Britney Spears Says Kevin Federline Chose His Career Over Family

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Britney Spears has stayed pretty quiet when it comes to Kevin Federline — until now. In her new memoir The Woman In Me, the singer details how her relationship with her ex-husband came to an end, explaining how he distanced himself once he began focusing more on fame than family.

The two first met in early 2004, over a year after her breakup from Justin Timberlake, and connected quickly while on her Onyx Hotel Tour, on which he was a dancer. They got engaged after three months of dating and held a surprise wedding in September 2004.

However, Spears revealed that they actually didn’t get married legally until a couple of weeks later, as their lawyers needed more time for the prenup.

Spears and Federline share two children — 18-year-old son Sean Preston and 17-year-old son Jayden James. However, just two months after their youngest was born in 2006, she filed for divorce. But as she explains in the book, their relationship started deteriorating long before then.

The First Red Flag

After detailing how they first met, Spears revealed she “had no idea” that Federline’s ex-girlfriend was eight months pregnant with their second baby, or that he already even had a toddler, when they started dating.

“I was living in a bubble, and I didn’t have a lot of good, close friends to confide in and get advice from,” she writes.

“I had no idea until after we’d been together for a while and someone told me, ‘You know he has a new baby, right?’ I didn’t believe it, but when I asked, he told me it was true. He told me he saw them once a month.”

His Brush With Fame

After marrying Spears, Federline had access to everything that her fame had to offer and decided to make a name for himself by working on a rap album and landing endorsement deals. But she said his newfound fame quickly went to his head.

“Kevin was just so enthralled with the fame and the power,” Spears writes. “Again and again in my life I’ve seen fame and money ruin people, and I saw it happen with Kevin in slow motion. In my experience, when most people—especially men—get that type of attention, it’s all over. They love it too much. And it’s not good for them.”

Eventually, Spears would find herself at home alone with their kids, and her attempts to visit him in the studio were often rejected, even when she traveled to New York and Las Vegas to see him. “When I found him, he had his head shaved,” she writes.

“He was getting ready to shoot the cover for his album. He was in the studio all the time. He really thought he was a rapper now. Bless his heart—because he did take it so seriously.”

The Super Bowl Turning Point

Eventually, Spears said their relationship got to the point where she could no longer recognize the man she married. “Kevin was doing a lot of press, and you would’ve thought he’d just hit a grand slam in the World Series,” she writes.

“I didn’t know who he was anymore.”

The turning point was seemingly when Federline did a Super Bowl commercial for Nationwide in 2007, and even the fact that the ad “made fun of himself” didn’t deter him from pursuing it. “After he got that offer, I basically never saw him,” she writes.

“It was like he was too good to even talk to me. He told everyone else that being a father was everything to him—the best thing in his life. You wouldn’t know it. Because the sad truth was, he was away a lot.”