For months rumored have emerged about the marital issues between songstress Keyshia Cole and husband Daniel Gibson.
While Gibson has stayed quiet on the details of their problems, Cole admitted during a number of interviews, earlier in the year, that infidelity had played a part in the demise of the couple’s relationship.
For the first time, Gibson opens up to Rolling Out magazine about those issues and why he thinks he’s to blame for their marriage deteriorating.
One of the first things that people want to know is, what went wrong between you and Keyshia Cole?
I think that life happened. In certain situations, you are a match made in heaven. But at the same time, nothing is perfect — and nobody is perfect. Then in some situations, you aren’t going to be as perfect as some people expect you to be. What happened with me and her was that our relationship was out there for everyone to see. So whenever we were going through our problems, it became public and everyone saw the ups and downs. With us, I think it was just a matter of us growing apart over time. I can’t say that there was one thing that broke us up, but what I can say as a man; when you are in a relationship, and you say those vows, I take full responsibility for everything that didn’t go right.
It’s admirable for you to step up and take responsibility. As it relates to there not being one event that led to your separation, that’s not really how it’s portrayed. You are viewed as the bad guy, and it is believed to be 100 percent your fault as to why this marriage didn’t work. Is it completely your fault?
I take that responsibility — I do.
But you’re giving me the easy answer right now.
I’m giving you the real answer because I feel like you’re never supposed to allow your marriage to fall apart. Whether it’s the blogs saying I cheated, or if I don’t like your attitude, at the end of the day, when you’re married to somebody, and you say “I do,” it says for better or for worse, and regardless of what comes in your relationship, you’re supposed to work through it. For example, even if you wanted to say that I cheated, you’re still supposed to figure out a way to make that work. So I’m not backing down from anything that people have to say about me, and I’m not taking the easy way out. But I am taking full responsibility for that not being my wife.
Did you cheat?
No.
No? Well there are songs out by her that say something totally different.
Well, let me put it like this. I won’t say that I didn’t cheat, but I will say that I cheated my wife out of a friend in a lot of situations where I was supposed to hold her down and I didn’t. I cheated my wife out of a lot of different things. I feel like when we got together, I thought I was a man, and I thought I had it all figured out but I didn’t. I think I was like 23 when we met, and so a lot of mistakes that you shouldn’t make as a man in a relationship with your wife, I made. So you can go down the line — I probably made every mistake. The difference between me then and me now is that back then, I probably would have tried to sit here and make an excuse like, “oh it was because of her attitude, and it made me go out and cheat on her.” No, that’s a sucker move — that’s for a coward to say. So I‘m sitting here telling you that regardless of what she did, I married her. I loved her. And none of that other stuff should have happened. We’re supposed to still be together doing it right.
It has been reported that you were out cheating with strippers and doing a host of other things. How do you address those very specific accusations?
As far as the whole stripper thing goes, of course I went to the strip club and had a picture taken of me with a stripper. But what I’ve been trying to figure out when I hear people gossiping and talking is, since when do two pictures constitute a relationship? It only happens that way when the media tries to paint a picture that this is what happened to our relationship. And what I will say about my wife is that she’s really into the social media world. So when stories like this start floating around, and she feels the need to get involved with it, it makes it seem more true than it really is. But that didn’t really have anything to do with us being separated, because when you think about it, we were actually already separated before all of that came out.
I see …
And that’s why I say it’s way deeper than a superficial story that I cheated. It’s way deeper. What it really boils down to was, I just wasn’t a good friend to her, and I wasn’t a good person for her at the end of the day.
I understand where you’re coming from, but what I don’t understand is why you’re taking the fall for something if you didn’t do it. If I was accused of cheating, and I didn’t, I would be proclaiming my innocence from the mountaintops. But you remained quiet, and I never understood that.
Me being the way that I am, and the way that I was raised, I personally felt like love should be private, so I really didn’t want to agree to us doing the show at the beginning. Because I really felt like, when you open up that door, you allow people to be able to hate, or form whatever assumptions they want to about you because you’re putting your life out there. But I felt like it should be private. And, you know, she sings and she sings from that hurt place. I respect what she does, and she has to do that, but as far as I go, I couldn’t care less what somebody has to say about me as a man. The people that know me are the people that matter. And those people know what I’m about and what I stand for. So feel free to call me a stripper-chasing coward who let his family down. But those that know me know what I’m really about and that is never going to change.
Although the couple is separated, they have managed to co-parent their four year old son, DJ, together quite well — something Cole has admitted to in her own interviews. She has even credited Daniel to being a good father.
We wish the couple all the best.
head over to Rolling Out for the full interview and photo spread.
