Ariana Grande didn’t bother to let the speculation about her marriage go on for very long. After appearing at Wimbledon without her wedding ring, questions about the status of her relationship got pretty loud. Instead of releasing an official statement, multiple sources confirmed with multiple outlets yesterday that she and Dalton Gomez are indeed separated and will soon divorce. And TMZ had the most detail.
Ari and Dalton started dating at the beginning of 2020. And then it was COVID. So they quarantined together when there was basically nothing to do – it was a love bubble and they were cocooned in there right up to their wedding in the spring of 2021.
But then restrictions lifted and Ariana’s celebrity reality came into their lives. It’s one thing to love when you’re inside, but it’s a whole other thing to love on the outside. That’s the thing about love: it makes you naïve. It fools you into believing that “love will conquer all”. But love is often not enough. There is no doubt they love each other, but it’s also about compatibility. And this can be what happens when a star falls in love with a normie.
Which, I know, is the fantasy, right? For all of us normies, we know this rom-com formula. Offscreen though, the cuteness might wear off when there are fans and paparazzi and security concerns – even for someone like Dalton who is a real estate agent based in LA. Being in the Hollywood vicinity didn’t necessarily mean that he could easily get with Hollywood life. And that seems to be what broke them apart.
Many popstars before Ariana and many after Ariana will try their shot at normie love. There are certainly success stories. Dolly Parton is a success story. But Dolly has said that she spends a lot of time away from Carl Dean. We rarely ever see Carl Dean. Carl Dean wants no part of Dolly’s fame – and she really does maintain an alternate existence that doesn’t involve him at all. That takes work, it takes patience, it requires both people to be totally OK with the arrangement. It is rare. Carl Dean is also rare in another way, and this he shares with Dalton. Carl Dean is a not a famedigger, and it doesn’t seem like Dalton is either.
This is another challenge for popstars, especially now, who fall in love with a normie. Because there’s always the risk that the normie is thirsty. So basically the popstar is the Goldilocks in this scenario looking for a normie that isn’t too thirsty but also a normie that isn’t too UN-thirsty (like Dalton). I guess the lesson here is that normies like that are hard to find.
Attached - more shots of Ari and Jonathan Bailey together at Wimbledon.
