Lena Waithe is looking back at her brief marriage to ex Alana Mayo.
“It was me feeling like, even though I’m not as happy as I should be, I think this is what I’m supposed to be doing,” Waithe, 42, said of her marriage to Mayo, 42, during the Monday, June 1, episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast. “And I just didn’t have the language or understanding of that.”
Waithe and Mayo dated for three years before they got engaged in 2017. The pair got married in 2019 but ultimately announced their separation two months later.
“After careful thought and consideration, we have decided to part ways,” the exes said in a joint statement from their reps in January 2020. “We have nothing but support for one another and ask that you respect our privacy during this time.”
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Mayo filed for divorce from Waithe in November 2020. The split was finalized in May 2021.
Reflecting on what went wrong in her relationship, Waithe admitted that she neglected her own happiness when she decided to marry Mayo.
“My happiness didn’t feel like it was important,” she said on Monday. “I think what was most important was that I honor this relationship.”
Waithe emphasized that she is “grateful” for her marriage to Mayo, in part because it “changed my life,” going on to praise Mayo as an “amazing human.” She noted that the pair simply “wanted different things.”
“One of the things is like, I actually realized I didn’t want to have children. And that’s a pretty big life change. And so, at that time … I just kept putting it off,” the Chi creator explained. “And so, that wasn’t me lying. It was me still trying to understand what I wanted and who I wanted to be. And I think that’s why, for me, it’s really important having this perspective stepping back.”
Waithe said she wasn’t “clear” with Mayo about what she wanted in life.
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“All I knew was, ‘I want to be with this person. I want to have this house. I want to have this dog. I want to have this mural.’ But then I didn’t ask myself, ‘But where do you want to be in five years, really?’” she continued.
Waithe also admitted that she didn’t end her relationship with Mayo “in a way that was noble, that was honest, that was kind.”
“It was done in a way that felt like a car crash. And that’s because I just sort of like, was driving the car too fast, not knowing the gear, and just sort of going,” she explained. “And that doesn’t remove accountability for my behavior. … I wish I could have landed the plane better, you know what I mean? But I think ultimately … it’s about giving yourself grace and kind of looking back at it and [going], ‘Oh, you could have handled that much better.’”
Waithe concluded that she has “no ill will” toward Mayo after their split and is happy that her ex is happy.
“And that to me is how you know you really love somebody, is that when you want them to be happy and happier without you,” she said. “‘Cause I don’t know if that happiness would have ensued if I would have stayed there. To me, removing myself, I think was actually the right thing to do because I wouldn’t have been able to deliver the life that I think she would have wanted.”
Four years after her split from Mayo, Waithe moved on with Cynthia Erivo in 2024. Meanwhile, Mayo has kept her personal life out of the spotlight.
