During an appearance on the latest episode of the Man Enough podcast, Shawn Mendes opened up about getting into a huge argument with Camila Cabello, whom he has been dating since mid-2019.
After speaking about topics that included masculinity and recognizing your own privilege, Mendes reflected on one particular dispute he got into with Cabello after he was asked what his biggest fear is.
“So my girlfriend has this joke where she thinks I have this legitimate thing where I cannot lie, like I’m incapable of lying,” said Mendes at the 25:30 point of the episode above.
“It’s kind of become funny but also kind of weird for me, because I know I can lie. But also, I do tell the truth to an extreme amount. … I told her the other day, I said something, I raised my voice at her, and she was like, 'I don't like when you raise your voice, why’d you raise your voice?'” he shared. “And I got so defensive. I was like, 'I didn’t—I wasn’t like raising my voice at you.' And I did raise my voice at her. And then I felt her shrink, and I felt me grow, and I was like, 'Oh god, this is the worst.' This is like, I’m so terrified of being evil, I’m so scared to be bad. I don’t wanna be bad.”
Mendes continued, “Maybe there even is bad inside of me, and I have to just accept that that exists. And that other part of me, he's just gotta be here and we've just gotta work together until eventually he gets worked [and] all of the trauma and all of the kinks get rubbed out of him and he's okay. But I can't avoid the fact that there's a little bit of darkness inside of me. And letting that darkness kind of be present is a horrible feeling."
Shortly after Mendes explained himself to Cabello, he said she comforted him. “Then it took me like 20 minutes of us separately reading our books to be able to come back to her and be like, ‘God, that was a whole thing and I’m really sorry,'" he said.
Watch the full episode of the podcast above.
