Remember that wacky time when we first started figuring out that Jay Z had cheated on Beyonce?
It was all the way back when she released Lemonade — almost two years ago now, can you beieve it?! — and her message wasn"t exactly subtle.
And then last summer, when he released his new album, he confirmed it with lines like "You almost went Eric Benét, let the baddest girl in the world get away," referencing Halle Berry"s first husband.
In November, Jay talked about it all again in an interview, explaining that he believes he was unfaithful because of his tough childhood.
"You have to survive," he said of the way he grew up. "So you go into survival mode, and when you go into survival mode, what happens?"
"You shut down all emotions. So even with women, you gonna shut down emotionally, so you can"t connect."
"In my case, like, it"s deep," he admitted. "And then all the things happen from there: infidelity."
It makes sense, right?
But last night, Jay appeared on the first episode of Van Jones" new show on CNN, and he discussed everything in even more detail.
When asked why he and Beyonce fought so hard to save their marriage after everything that had happened, he answered "That"s my soulmate. It"s the person I love."
"If you haven"t experienced love or don"t understand it or you don"t have the tools to move forward then you are going to have complications. Period."
He said that "You can either address it or you can pretend until it blows up at some point, and for us, we chose to fight for our love, for our family, to give our kids a different outcome, to break that cycle."
"For black men and women, to see a different outcome … it"s not just a celebrity couple. We were never a celebrity couple, we were a couple who just happened to be celebrities. We"re real people."
Next, Jay Z was asked about any advice he might give to someone in a similar position, and he simply said that "The best apology is changed behavior."
"You have to acknowledge the pain and you have to let that person have their say."
"You have to get on the floor, get on the mattress," he continued. "You have to work through it, really be honest."
"It takes a while. It"s hard. It"s difficult to hear, difficult to stay, difficult to listen to that kind of pain — but you have to be strong enough."
"But on the other side," he added, "it"s beautiful."
For what it"s worth, Jay Z and Beyonce certainly seemed to have been able to work through all their problems — those precious little baby twins they had last year are proof of that.
Watch Jay Z get real about his infidelity in the interview below:
