Back in January, Teyana Taylor quietly filed for divorce from former Knicks player and Dancing With the Stars winner, Iman Shumpert. Previously, she remained pretty tight-lipped about their separation and resorted to using only initials in her filing. But court documents obtained by TMZ, now coming to light thanks to Iman using their full names in his response to her filing, are casting a light on some of the things that led to the demise of their marriage.

 

Back in September, Teyana made a post on Instagram, with her and Iman coming off as a united front, even in the midst of their divorce, claiming that infidelity had nothing to do with their split. But the court documents suggest otherwise – and paint him to be a mentally and emotionally abusive partner with jealous, narcissistic and insecure tendencies.

Teyana says that after secretly filing for divorce some time in 2022, she withdrew the application one day later after Iman pushed for them to get back together. Then, she alleges, he became involved in yet another cheating scandal, something Teyana said was embarrassing and humiliating. And as if being cheated on isn’t awful enough, the infidelity seems to be just the tip of the iceberg in the kind of marriage Teyana is now walking away from.

 

Teyana says throughout their union, he displayed jealous and insecure behaviour, often growing annoyed when he would be asked to step aside when photographers were taking her photo. She says she would receive negative, condescending texts from Iman surrounding her life as a public figure and that he would pick fights with her – even on her birthday - and then later apologize.

Despite all the success he experienced in the NBA, landing $40-million contracts, she says he was bitter about her being in the limelight, particularly as his basketball career started slowing down. So much so that she says she "began to intentionally dim her light for her husband to try to have a harmonious and peaceful marriage" as he "became more and more angry" about her stardom.

The court documents reveal a lot of other damning information, like his DUI arrest, a weed possession arrest and him crashing her Rolls Royce and fleeing the scene to avoid a second DUI. But the overall picture that it’s painting is that this is yet another case where a man was wholly unequipped to accept his partner and her success, and as a result of that being a direct threat to his pride and ego, allegedly became a mentally and emotionally abusive partner.

 

We’ve been seeing so much of this behaviour lately. Or perhaps we’ve always seen it and we’re just talking about it more. But in recent weeks and months, men like Darius Jackson, Diddy, Dr. Dre, Russell Simmons, L.A. Reid, New York Mayor Eric Adams and now Iman Shumpert are all being exposed for their toxic and abusive behaviour – in and out of romantic relationships.

In the wee hours of the morning today, Rolling Stone published an article outlining sexual assault accusations against Diddy by a third woman. In an Instagram post shared by Hollywood Unlocked, I was disgusted at the amount of victim blamers in the comment section. But it’s not uncommon. I have seen so many people go out of their way to defend these abusers, to be obtuse and to avoid seeing a very evident pattern here – which is that men, regardless of money, power, or success, can and do become abusive, whether mentally, emotionally, financially or physically, to their partners.

 

In Cassie’s case, specifically, with her allegations against Diddy, one of the biggest questions to come out of it was the question of why now? This was also the question for the Jane Doe who came forward with the most recent accusations against Diddy. And the answer, quite literally, was because there was a deadline, under the Adult Survivors Act. Even when there are logical, explainable answers to these unnecessary questions that are part of the reason survivors are discouraged from coming forward at all, it still doesn’t seem to count for much.

What’s different about Darius and Iman, for example, is that Iman had no reason to feel upstaged by his wife. Not from a financial or success perspective, anyway. He had a legendary career as a basketball player and made more money than Teyana by a landslide. But Teyana says that despite using her connections to get him Hollywood acting gigs, he would turn them down and when she stopped working after giving birth, hoping to appease him, it wasn’t long before he changed his tune and complained about her not making money.

The issue really isn’t just about powerful men being abusers, it’s about the way we are raising and treating men in society that gives them the gall to do this kind of sh-t in the first place, something that power only exacerbates. Because though all of the men I listed happen to be Black, these issues are found across all cultures, all races, and all socioeconomic statuses. Hedley frontman Jacob Hoggard, Danny Masterson, Jimmy Iovine, Justin Sane and of course, Harvey Weinstein, have all faced sexual assault allegations, too. The only thing these men and all the men I listed previously have in common is their anatomy and varying levels of fame.

 

That’s why it’s so crucial that these women continue to come forward, and in Teyana and Keke’s case, leave. Because though neither Teyana or Keke are alleging sexual assault against Iman or Darius, abuse is abuse. And besides the very obvious physical ramifications of it, I mentioned in my article about Cassie and Diddy that one of the biggest prices she paid was her career not going further as she was enduring years of abuse in addition to having her career sabotaged by Diddy and his team. 

To hear that Teyana turned down gigs to appease Iman breaks my heart. And it’s part of the reason I wholeheartedly believe that though it’s not physical, women losing out on opportunities to pursue their passion is one of the invisible consequences of abuse. 

The more women start to hear these accounts from women like Cassie, but also from Keke and Teyana, too, the more they can turn inward and start assessing whether the situations they are in are abusive and something they need to walk away from. Because no one should be dimming their light to appease anyone. And no one should make you feel like you have to.