Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber’s love triangle with Justin Bieber has been a reoccurring discourse, with people choosing between Jelena or Jailey, and even making conspiracy theories about these relationships. However, as this has been a prolonged issue, it can get confusing or hard to follow the on-going drama.  

It started in the 2010’s as Selena and Justin Bieber dated on and off from 2010 to 2018. Fans so-called Selena Justin’s first love. Justin and Hailey dated for six months in 2016 before reuniting in 2018, a month after Justin’s breakup with Selena. Justin and Hailey got engaged in July 2018, two months after reuniting, and had their courthouse marriage in September 2018, just four months after getting back together.  

Hailey and Justin met in 2009, through her dad Stephen Baldwin. At the time, Justin was dating Selena. Hailey and Justin met again in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2016 during one of Justin’s breaks from Selena that rumors of a budding romance between Justin and Hailey began to circulate. The couple was confirmed through a photo of Justin locking lips with Hailey in 2016. The couple would break up shortly after and Justin went back to Selena. After he broke up with Selena for the final time, he reunited with Hailey and he proposed to her in the Bahamas in 2018.  

However, in September 2022 the rumors became more internationally spread- that Justin was cheating on Selena with Hailey, that Hailey stole Justin from Selena, or even that Hailey manipulated Justin into liking her using dark psychology and making herself more like Selena. However, Hailey turned the rumors down in the podcast “Call her Daddy.” 

Hailey Bieber was then accused of shading Selena Gomez after she was body-shamed in a since-deleted TikTok video in January 2023, where Hailey and her friends, Kendall Jenner and Justine Skye lip-synced to the same song. However, Hailey was fast to deny her directing those mixed-signals to Selena. 

However, the silent attacks towards Gomez continued- in February 2023, Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner were accused of shading Selena Gomez’s eyebrows. Earlier that month, Selena posted a TikTok video of her bushy eyebrows, telling her followers, “I accidentally laminated my eyebrows too much.” After Selena’s TikTok video, Kylie posted a photo on her Instagram Story of her own eyebrows with the caption, “This was an accident?” She followed the photo with a screenshot of a FaceTime call between her and Hailey of them showing closeups of their eyebrows. However, the three celebrities were quick to also cancel the suspected interconnection, and that fans were making an elephant out of a fly.  

Fans then began seeing similarities between Selena and Hailey, and making inferences that Hailey Bieber was copying Selena Gomez amid their drama in February 2023- with a similar cooking show, a tattoo behind her ear, and similar outfits both of them have been seen wearing both in events and in the city. Fans have also been making observations on how unhappy Justin looks with Hailey in comparison to when he was dating Selena. 

However, when things got out of hand, on March 24, 2023 Selena Gomez defended Hailey Bieber amid death threats following their rumored drama. Many more fans feel compassion for Selena, as she has been diagnosed with lupus and is struggling with mental health, aside form the fact of losing her first love of seven years who got engaged with another woman two months after their break up. 

To read more about Hailey and Selena’s  encounters: https://www.glamour.com/story/selena-gomez-and-hailey-bieber-a-complete-timeline-of-their-tiktok-drama