The singer split from Thomas Doherty in December 2020 after nearly four years of dating.
Dove Cameron has had a change of heart about openly discussing her love life. ET spoke to the 25-year-old "LazyBaby" singer, and she revealed why she's decided to stay mum about her romantic life moving forward.
"I look back at my previous relationships and how public I was with them, and I think it was because my relationship with the public was different," she told ET, alluding to her December 2020 split from Gossip Girl star Thomas Doherty after nearly four years of dating. "It's not that I felt differently about those people or anything like that, it's just a difference in maturity when you're dating somebody and you're 20. You want everyone to know about your love story... Now I look back and I'm like, 'Why would I have done that?' but it just feels natural when you're that age."
Now, Cameron values her "privacy more in every regard," noting that "there's so much" about her life that she doesn't share publicly.
"It's not out of fear, I never do anything out of fear... It's not even [that] I don't want anyone to be able to comment. I truly don't. I don't notice those things. I don't look for them. I'm not traumatized by people's opinions," she said. "It doesn't feel natural to share. It feels sweeter to keep to myself."
"There might be days when that's not true, and then on those days I'll share," Cameron continued. "I find it to be sort of like I'm nurturing myself when I follow my instincts, and this is where they are right now."
Cameron speculated that her newfound focus on privacy could be due to spending more time with musicians than actors, amid her recently wrapped An Evening With Dove Cameron tour.
"It's a totally different type of human being. Actors are expressers by nature and communicators, songwriters are like synthesizers, so it's a sort of an outward versus an inward," Cameron explained. "All my songwriter friends are observing constantly and then they roll it up and then they repurpose it."
"Just through being in that environment, it's definitely effected me in that way where I actually want to keep much more to myself. I wanna synthesize more and express less," she continued. "It gives me more. I end up sleeping better. It feeds me more. It's like nutrition... If you're constantly giving it all away, you're half empty."
While she's keeping her love life quiet, Cameron is eager to share her music with the world, something she was able to do on tour.
"It's wild to have a body of work that spans over two years and then to just be beginning to perform it now feels sort of surreal," she said. "It's exciting to get to sing it with fans who know all the words, the energy every night, and it's a new experience for me, which at this point in my career, there aren't that many of those, so it's been amazing."
"I feel really lucky that with all the [COVID-19] vaccinations and all of the rules we're following, it's kinda magical and surreal to have everybody be present and in a space together and sharing what feels more intimate," Cameron added. "... [It's been] a very positive feeling to to have everybody in the same place and to be doing it safely."
Following her tour, Cameron has upcoming acting projects -- she has three films in the pipeline as well as the Power Puff Girl series, which is currently in the rewrite process -- and is gearing up to start writing her debut EP. Basically, she said, "I selfishly want to do it all. I've always wanted to do it all." Right now, though, it's touring that has her heart.
"Now doing this [tour], all I'm thinking about is going to the U.K., going to Latin America. Just the experience of seeing the fans and interacting with them has been transformative for me," she explained. "... Disney is such a fan-oriented platform that I think people think I interact with fans all the time, but I am so much more of a straight up actor. I am in my sweats all day, I read scripts, I'm a homebody, I'm internal, I write poetry, I have three friends."
"I'm not on the road doing the whole performer thing really, and I'm also really shy and I get overwhelmed and anxious," Cameron continued. "I think people have this idea of me that really isn't accurate, and so this is kind of my first time being this close to what I didn't even realize I had in the fanbase."
The experience, she told ET, has been both "really overwhelming" and "so moving."
"Now I'm just kinda like, 'Oh, now I want to do this forever,'" she said. "It's time to go to London, it's time to go Edinburgh, it's time to go to Argentina. I want to meet everybody. I wanna do this forever."
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