As I am sure we are all well aware, the singer Ne-Yo has three girlfriends: Arielle Hill, Cristina, and Moneii (last names unknown). He used to have four, but one of them has departed the polycule in the past few months, which of course you already knew. But maybe you are less familiar with the inner workings of Ne-Yo’s relationship with three different women, who all get to enjoy shopping sprees at the Skims store and who frequently appear as his plus-three at events. Well, for the uninitiated, Ne-Yo explained the setup during his appearance on Sherri Shepherd’s talk show on Thursday. When Shepherd admitted to the singer that she didn’t understand how it all worked, he was more than happy to lay things out.
“So after my very public, very ugly divorce, I made the decision that I was never going to tell another lie to a woman ever again in life,” Ne-Yo explained. Back in 2022, the singer’s ex-wife, Crystal Renay, filed for divorce, claiming that he had fathered a child with another woman in 2021 (he has since fessed up to this and had another child with the same woman in 2023). “I own the thing that I did in that marriage to mess it up. I own it completely,” Ne-Yo continued, “And I decided I didn’t want to be the reason that anybody ever felt like that ever again.” The solution, it turns out, was polyamory.
The “So Sick” singer explained that he has been with one of his girlfriends longer than the others, and he brought her the pitch of bringing in more women. “I basically went to her and said, ‘Listen, you know I rock with you. You know I love you, but I have to be honest with you. It’s not just you,’” he said. “‘I would love for you to meet these other women, and if we can figure out a way to do something together, cool. If not, that’s cool, too.’” All right, so it does sort of sound like he was cheating in a monogamous relationship and then persuaded his girlfriend to become poly, but maybe the rest of his answer is more clarifying.
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“Everybody chose to stick around,” Ne-Yo said, receiving the tiniest smattering of applause I’ve ever heard. “The main understanding is I’m not in three relationships. I’m in one relationship with three people.”
Understandably, Shepherd wanted to know if the women are also allowed to date multiple men. This is where things got iffy. “No,” Ne-Yo responded, a bit too quickly for my liking. “I’ve made no request of exclusivity of any of these women … I didn’t ask for them to be with me. They said they want to be with me, okay? They gave me their exclusivity, meaning, if you gave it to me, it’s mine.” Hmmm.
Shepherd was still confused after all of this, and frankly I am too. Perhaps Ne-Yo should pick up a copy of Polysecure before talking about how his girlfriends’ “exclusivity” is “his.” Or maybe they could all read it together. Book club!
