In a new interview, Niecy Nash-Betts has opened up about her love for her wife, the singer Jessica Betts, saying she feels “fully seen” in the relationship and “completely satiated” in a way that has enriched her life.
The Hollywood Reporter recently interviewed Nash-Betts ahead of the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, where she’ll be hosting and receive an award for advancing LGBTQ+ visibility. She’s certainly done just that, whether it’s by bringing her love onscreen, being the first same sex couple ever featured on the cover of Essence Magazine, or through her many adoring posts about Jessica.
“I’m not going to tell you that I’ve never been loved before, but being loved the way that makes you feel completely satiated is a different thing,” Nash-Betts told The Hollywood Reporter. “Being loved in a way where you are completely open and fully seen is a different thing, and it’s in those spaces and places that allows me to thrive in my business and in my professional life.”
She also had some profound words to share about her choice to not label her sexuality, saying that she doesn’t “lean into labels, maybe in a way that traditional norms say you should.”
“I’m Black, I’m a mother and I’m a lover. Those are my labels. The rest of it is yet unfolding,” she said. “The thing that we are created for is the thing we struggle with the most, and that’s love. Letting others tell us what that should be, how that should be or when that should be is a very individual thing.”
The actor said that while she couldn’t have seen herself married to a woman five years ago, meeting her wife was a matter of meeting “the most beautiful soul I have ever met in my life, and I said, ‘Now, wait a minute.’ Things done change.”
“Gender is the least of these. I don’t care about that. I don’t care about the outer wrapping. It doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “It is the heart and the soul of an individual that I feel completely drawn to in a way that I have never felt about anyone. I didn’t live a sexually repressed life.”
Nash-Betts also spoke about her decision to love Jessica in public, despite the possibility of backlash. “Loving Jessica out loud has been as natural as breathing,” she told the magazine. “I would never tell someone, ‘I’m in love with you, but I can’t tell anyone about you. I’m in love with you, but I want to keep it private.’ That’s foolishness to me,” she said.
We eagerly await the relationship advice podcast/reality TV series/major magazine column that the Nash-Betts power couple deserves.
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