The couple announced their split on Saturday, after seven months of marriage and 10 years together.
Fans were shocked to discover on Saturday that Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth had gone their separate ways.
The news came 10 years after they had started dating, nearly eight months after they tied the knot, and just hours after Cyrus was photographed kissing Brody Jenner's ex, Kaitlynn Carter, in Italy.
"The [ex]-couples are friends -- the four of them have spent time together in Malibu," a source tells ET of how Cyrus and Carter know each other. "Brody and Liam are both into surfing and are friends."
Cyrus, who has been open about her sexuality, couldn't have seemed happier while describing her relationship with Hemsworth just weeks before their split, in the August 2019 issue of Elle magazine. Inside the mag, she called their romance "complex and modern." Here's everything she and Hemsworth have said about their marriage:
They Embraced the 'Unique'
"I think it's very confusing to people that I'm married," Cyrus told Elle last month. "But my relationship is unique. And I don't know that I would ever publicly allow people in there because it's so complex, and modern, and new that I don't think we're in a place where people would get it."
"I mean, do people really think that I'm at home in a f**king apron cooking dinner?" she continued. "I'm in a hetero relationship, but I still am very sexually attracted to women. People become vegetarian for health reasons, but bacon is still f**king good, and I know that. I made a partner decision. This is the person I feel has my back the most. I definitely don't fit into a stereotypical wife role. I don't even like that word."
They Weren't Thinking About Having Kids Just Yet
"We've been doing the same thing to the earth that we do to women. We just take and take and expect it to keep producing," Cyrus told Elle. "And it's exhausted. It can't produce. We're getting handed a piece-of-sh** planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child. Until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I'm not bringing in another person to deal with that."
"We're expected to keep the planet populated," she added about society's expectations of women. "And when that isn't a part of our plan or our purpose, there is so much judgment and anger that they try to make and change laws to force it upon you -- even if you become pregnant in a violent situation. If you don't want children, people feel sorry for you, like you're a cold, heartless b**ch who's not capable of love. Why are we trained that love means putting yourself second and those you love first? If you love yourself, then what? You come first."
In May, Hemsworth told GQ Australia that kids would come "one day."
"Once we don’t have so many dogs. You couldn’t bring a baby into our house right now. But one day, we’ll know when it’s right. But right now? Not for the time being," he shared, joking he hopes to have "10, 15, maybe 20" kids with the singer.
He Tried to Keep Their Relationship 'Private'
Despite their star power, Hemsworth and Cyrus tried to keep their relationship as personal as possible.
"We just try to keep as much of [our relationship] private as we can," the actor told the Today show in February, when speaking about his longtime relationship with Cyrus. "I feel really happy and really fortunate to be with such a great person."
They Connected on a 'Spiritual' Level
Cyrus opened up about her and Hemsworth's marriage in the March issue of Vanity Fair, explaining how her queer identity fit into her heterosexual relationship.
“The reason that people get married sometimes can be old-fashioned, but I think the reason we got married isn’t old-fashioned -- I actually think it’s kind of New Age," she shared. "We’re redefining, to be f**king frank, what it looks like for someone that’s a queer person like myself to be in a hetero relationship. A big part of my pride and my identity is being a queer person."
"What I preach is: People fall in love with people, not gender, not looks, not whatever. What I’m in love with exists on almost a spiritual level," Cyrus continued. "It has nothing to do with sexuality. Relationships and partnerships in a new generation -- I don’t think they have so much to do with sexuality or gender. Sex is actually a small part, and gender is a very small, almost irrelevant part of relationships.”
"Sexuality and gender identity are completely separate from partnership," she wrote. "I wore a dress on my wedding day because I felt like it, I straightened my hair because I felt like it, but that doesn’t make me become some instantly 'polite hetero lady.' (PS: Straight women are badass, too.)"
She Once Thought They Were 'Stronger Together'
Cyrus told Vanity Fair in February that she and Hemsworth worked because they were just better together than apart -- and said that she was "inspired by redefining again what a relationship in this generation looks like."
"Like, who gives a f**k if he’s a guy, if I’m a girl, or if he was a woman? Who gives a f**k?" she said. "We really are stronger together. One is the loneliest number.”
They Were 'Glued' Together By Losing Their Home
The 26-year-old singer shared in her Vanity Fair piece that the devastating Woolsey fire last November prompted her and Hemsworth to marry the following month. She said she wasn't sure if they would have married otherwise.
"What Liam and I went through together changed us. I’m not sure without losing Malibu, we would’ve been ready to take this step or ever even gotten married, who can say?" she expressed. "But the timing felt right and I go with my heart. No one is promised the next day, or the next, so I try to be 'in the now' as much as possible. If I ever find myself thinking too far ahead, I acknowledge that anxiety and bring myself back into my body and out of my head."
“When you experience what we experienced together with someone, it is like glue," she added of the fire, which she called "unsettling." "You’re the only two people in the world who can understand.”
The 'Love' Was Always There
Hemsworth, who co-starred with Cyrus in 2010's The Last Song, revealed to GQ Australia in May that love came fast.
"I was 18 when I met Miley. We really fell in love quickly and had a really strong connection from the beginning and I think in the back of my head I knew it was on the cards, but we weren’t planning to have a wedding anytime soon," he recalled. "Then just going through something this emotional with someone, it brings you closer and we felt like we’d lost a big part of our lives, so we wanted to make a new part of our lives. It was something really good coming out of a horrible situation. It was going to happen eventually, but I think this just sped it up a little bit."
She Wanted to Take His Last Name
Hemsworth shared the news during an appearance on Live With Kelly and Ryan in February, two months after they tied the knot.
"Miley Ray Hemsworth now, actually," he revealed, adding that it was entirely his wife's idea to legally take on the Hemsworth name. "She will still be obviously known as Miley Cyrus, but she took my name, which is great. That was honestly one of the best things about it. I didn't ask her to take my name, but she was like, 'No, of course I'm taking your name.'"
"It's become a little more normal, but the first couple of weeks it was... I mean, it's only been a month and a half," he continued of married life. "But the first couple of weeks was really foreign to me, with 'wife' and 'husband.'"
"I just have her in as 'Wife' in my phone now," he joked.
The Honeymoon Phase Was 'The Best'
The Hunger Games star had the grin of a newlywed while speaking with ET at the 16th Annual G'Day USA Gala in January.
"It's the best. It's the best," Hemsworth gushed of married life. "I feel so lucky to be with someone like her. It's great. Very lucky."
Inside the event, the actor thanked his "beautiful wife" in his acceptance speech. "You are a sweet, sweet angel," he said. "You’re great, you’re great."
And She Considered Him Her 'Survival Partner'
In a Howard Stern Show interview just before they got married, Cyrus said she didn't call Hemsworth her boyfriend or fiance -- instead, he's her "survival partner."
"My partner, I call him my survival partner now," she said, admitting that Hemsworth didn't think the term was "romantic" at first, but "learned that it is."
The former Disney star came up with the term after seeing Hemsworth do everything in his power to rescue their animals during the Malibu Fires.
"That is why you pair up with someone, for survival, and he was so incredible," she raved. "He got all the animals out in his truck. He put two pigs in crates, which, I can tell you, is so hard."
"He got a lot of action for saving the animals," Cyrus quipped. "Yeah, he got a lot of action. We had to make sure he knew I was very, very grateful."
See more on Cyrus and Hemsworth in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
