Stop judging Zayn – it's right that our view of love evolves

Zayn Malik says he doesn’t think he was ever in love with supermodel Gigi Hadid throughout their six-year relationship and he’s being criticised heavily for shouting about it from the rooftops.

- CHARLOTTE CRIPPS

The former One Direction star, 33 - who dated Hadid, 30, on and off from 2015 to 2021, before their romance came to a messy and toxic end when Malik got into an altercation with Hadid's mother Yolanda - shares a daughter, Khai, now five, with Hadid.

That's why his declaration this week that “maybe it was lust, maybe it was this, maybe it was that. I don't feel like it was love”, on the podcast Call Her Daddy, hosted by Alex Cooper, is being interpreted as the worst possible thing you could ever say about an ex - especially one who is the mother of your child. And the “I was never in love” comment has blindsided Hadid, according to sources in The Sun (Hadid has moved on and is in a relationship with actor Bradley Cooper).

“Imagine Gigi sitting at home hearing that her [twenties] were basically a ‘misunderstanding’ of his feelings. There is being honest with yourself, and then there is being unnecessary,” one person wrote on X/Twitter. Another said: “Zayn Malik said publicly he doesn't know if he was in love with Gigi Hadid,” and “I'm sorry but what?”, while a third person commented, “This is a terrible thing to say publicly about someone you were with for six years.”

Stop giving Zayn a hard time - my idea of true love has changed over the years, too. I'm not saying that it's right to hurt others, but what he is talking about needs to be delved into a bit deeper. It might seem like the greatest insult - and an inappropriate, cruel jibe - but it isn't an off-the-cuff comment. He has previously confessed to having never “truly been in love” on the Zach Sang Show in 2024.