JoJo Siwa Says 'Trauma' from Last Girlfriend Has Her Unable to Talk to Anyone New

Despite stepping into this new "bad girl" era with the release of her latest single "Karma" and her transformation into teeny-bopper Gene Simmons, Siwa still can't stop being JoJo Siwa. She's still effervescent pop, exuding a wild enthusiasm that comes off either infectious or cloying.

For host Alex Cooper, she kept smiling and laughing, though it was never fully clear if she was laughing along with Siwa's energetic excitement over every single thing she said, or maybe she was some combination of charmed and amused by the Dance Moms alum.

While she still carries so much of her peppy, underage persona, the 20 year old has stepped into the world of adulthood, bringing her tweeny-bopper fans right along with her. They followed her after she came out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community in 2021, and through the travails of her love life since then.

First up was Kylie Prew, who was with Siwa on and off from February 2021 to June 2022. In late 2021, she was tied to Katie Mills briefly. In September 2022, Siwa went TikTok official with Avery Cyrus, but by December, they were dunzo, too.

Since then, she's been mostly single -- or flying under the radar if she has had romantic trysts -- and is definitely single now. In fact, she describes herself as single but talking to "my ex, per usual."

That ex is Prew, whom Siwa describes as "my good partner, who is my ex, but is my good friend."

It was likely Prew who helped Siwa come out publicly. While Siwa wasn't public with any relationship when she came out, she referred to her as "my girlfriend" while talking about the night she decided she wanted to go public with her true self.

"One night I was on FaceTime with my girlfriend, and I was like, 'I want to post this picture,'" Siwa shared. She said that her ex was fully on board, and that's how her fans were blasted in the face with that image of her wearing a t-shirt with the message "Best. Gay. Cousin. Ever." emblazoned across it.

The post quickly blasted past "90,000 comments," per Siwa, leaving her wondering, "What did I just do?" The immediate response was mostly positive, though. It's been a more rocky road of late as she pivots into her "bad girl" "Karma" era.

Things might have been more serious with Prew than fans even realized, with Siwa saying that she was actually "fully" living with an ex. She again didn't specify names, but she said her girlfriend was 16 and she was "nine months older," so the timeline fits.

Whoever it was, Siwa said, "I don't know how it happened," blaming the fact her girlfriend was living with her and her parents while they were both teenagers at least partly on Covid.

"She came to California and then I was like, don't leave," Siwa recalled. "Two weeks turned into four weeks, turned into eight weeks, turned into nine months. Then, we were a married couple at 17 and 16, we had to break up."

While no one stopped this from happening, Siwa said that everyone can now look back on it and see that it should probably have never been allowed to happen.

According to Siwa, her mom Jessalyn now says, "I should have never allowed my 16-year-old’s partner to live with us. That was not healthy for you. Much less her and her family. Someone should have put their foot down. But no one at the time felt it was right to."

It's a good thing Siwa has her music and career to focus on because she's clearly still working through what she called a "trauma" with her "last relationship." That relationship, she said, happened entirely in the public eye.

"Our getting together was very public. Our official relationship was very public. Our breakup was very public," Siwa said, without specifying any one particular relationship or ex partner.

"There has been a lot that went down that if this microphone wasn’t on, I would tell you what she did, what she told me anonymously," Siwa continued. "But I had to have my security team handle it."

Siwa didn't offer the specifics of what happened, but she alluded to it. "I got a really, really, really f--ked up -- had to have my security team handle -- message," she told Cooper.

After she was told by her security team that their thought was that it's somebody "very, very close" that sent the message, Siwa said she got a "weird gut instinct" that it was her then-girlfriend.

"At first I was like, 'Okay, eh. Whatever,'" Siwa said. But blowing it off didn't work, as she realized, "Wait, that's actually not okay."

"I just realized there's so much that the world doesn't know, including that," said Siwa, adding that she couldn't get into it with any more detail at this time because "it's a whole-ass legal thing behind closed doors."

Now, even with that incident in her rearview mirror, Siwa said that when she tried to date again, she found the "trauma" from this experience impacted her, giving her "mad" trust issues.

"It built a trauma I didn't even know I have," said Siwa. "Until now I'm like, 'Oh that's why you can't talk to a girl, because of that."

While Siwa did not specify which ex she was talking about, she has previously called out a couple of exes, who shot right back. Around the same time of their breakup, Siwa posted a video to her mom's IG Stories where she expressed her frustration, per E! News.

In the video she was asked why she was mad, replying, "Because I got used for views and for clout. I got tricked into being told I was loved and I got f--king played."

At the time, Cyrus quickly insisted that Siwa wasn't referring to her, telling the outlet, "From my perspective, me and JoJo left on great terms and are still friends. The relationship was very real, and I have nothing but love for JoJo and her family. I'm still very hurt that JoJo broke up with me. And I'm saddened and confused by the situation."

In March 2023, Katie Mills posted a response to a TikTok of Siwa's complaining about "love bombing and "clout chasing," turning the tables on her ex. In it, she asked, "How can you tell someone you love them and ghost them the next day, and then post all over the internet that we're clout chasers and love bombers?"

Calling out the power of Siwa's platform, Mills continued, "You sent me and Avery through hell for months and gave us no explanation why. You know we aren't love bombers and or clout chasers. There's been enough damage. Please leave us alone." Siwa has not responded to this video.

While she's focusing on her career, Siwa isn't shutting the door on romance, insisting she "loves love." She described her ideal type as someone taller, older and giving off masculine energy. She also doesn't care if they work in entertainment, but "I would prefer not another artist."

She also needs someone who gets her career and can accept both sides of her, said sides being JoJo and Joelle, her real name and who she is "when I'm at home, when I'm in my sweats."

"They both are present at all times. Sometimes we look like one, but we are the other. And sometimes we look like the other and we are the one," Siwa explained. And yet, she said that past partners have struggle with her dichotomy.

"Partners in the past have forgotten that I am still this human and almost will s—t on this human a bit," with Siwa saying one partner even told her, "I like the other version of you better" or "I like that only I get this version of you."

She also said that she has to be "on" all the time because of her career, meaning partners will have to understand that yes, she's going to take that call, "because my work was here before you and it'll be here after you."

As so much of her career to this point happened while she was a child, Siwa amassed a lot of her fortune before she turned 18 and had full access to it. She shared with Cooper that her mom recently thanked her for not leaving the family "high and dry."

"My parents thought when I turned 18, I was gonna get my Coogan account money, take all of my money and have it all be mine," she said. Siwa explained that child stars see 15 percent of their earnings put into a Coogan account that's not accessible until they're 18.

Apparently, despite her assurances to the contrary, Siwa said that her taking the money and running has "always been a fear of theirs," simply because other child stars have done it to their families. "I would never do that to my family," Siwa insisted.

"Today my mom was like, 'I just want to say thank you for never basically kicking us to the curb," Siwa shared. "Thank you for buying us this new house. Thank you for letting us remodel it. Thank you for keeping us in your bubble.'"

Siwa shared with Cooper that even as they were recording the podcast, it was moving day for her parents, who were heading into their own home after living all those years with Siwa -- and occasionally a teen girlfriend.

In a way, Siwa is treating her parents with the same dignity and respect they showed her. "They all had access to everything," she said of her earnings. "They all had a chance to take it and run, essentially. No one did."

Now, adult JoJo Siwa is hoping to add to her fortune with a whole new direction, though with the same dogged determination and relentless energy. The first step on that path is her new single, "Karma," even though she initially rejected the song's message, she also liked it.

According to Siwa, she first came across the track when she was fresh off her Dream tour and out of her Nickelodeon contract. In other words, her kid-friendly, high-ponytail days were still very much with her.

She said she loved the song, but with it's opening line, "I'm a bad girl," she balked. "I was like, 'Aw f--k, it's a good song, but I can't say that. I can't say I'm a bad girl. I'm not. I'm not," Siwa said of her 18-year-old self.

Nevertheless, she loved the song enough to lay it down and play around with it. "So we did the song and then I was like, this feels wrong," Siwa said. "So then I did, 'She was a bad girl,' about someone else, putting the blame on someone else. Then I did, 'You were a bad girl,' put the blame on another human."

"Then, we heard all the versions and nothing hit quite like me being the bad guy," she conceded. "So I was like, 'Okay, we'll leave it at that. We'll find it in a few years from now." That was March 2022, more than two years ago.

Then, the song circled back when she came up with her video concept for "Karma." She said she was immediately obsessed with the artistic vision and the song all over again. "There is no changing my mind. There's also no changing my mind that now, this song comes first," she said. "'Cause if I want my moment, this is my 180, this is my moment."

At this point, Cooper pivoted to the reaction to Siwa's new direction and look, which hit a crescendo when she wore her music video look, and KISS-esque makeup, to The 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards.

"Talk to me about the hate?" Cooper asked, but Siwa seems to take it mostly in stride. "I am giving the world art and they might not like it, they might hate it, but they're enjoying it," she said, "and it's become a bit of a guilty pleasure for everyone."

You can indulge in the guilt by checking out the "Karma" video below, and check out JoJo Siwa's full appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper above.