Why did Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake break up?

Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake broke up due to differences. Britney recounted how Justin broke up with her over text in her memoir. “After seeing the message as I sat in my trailer in between takes,” she writes of being on the set of her “Overprotected” music video, “I had to go back out and dance.”

“For as much as Justin hurt me, there was a huge foundation of love and when he left me, I was devastated,” she adds, “When I say devastated, I mean I could barely speak for months. Whenever anyone asked me about him, all I could I do is cry. I don’t know if I was clinically in shock, but it felt that way.”

Justin also hand-delivered a letter to her when she moved back home to Louisiana. “I barely left the house,” she notes of her time in Kentwood, “I was that messed up. I lay in my bed and stared at the ceiling. He brought me a long letter he’d written and framed,” she wrote. “I still have it under my bed. And at the end it said—it makes me want to cry to think about it—‘I can’t breathe without you.’ Those are the last words in it.”

In an interview with Barbara Walters after the breakup, Justin said of the breakup, “We’re not perfect. I don’t judge anybody. It’s just young love. It’s just young love. It was a very intense relationship, that’s for sure.”Meanwhile, Diane Sawyer grilled Britney in a scathing interview in 2003. Britney, who was 22 at the time, was asked invasive questions about her “big breakup” from Justin. “You broke his heart. You did something that caused him so much pain, so much suffering. What did you do?” Diane asked during the interview. Britney responded, “I was upset for a while. We both are really young and it was kind of waiting to happen. I will always love him … he is such a great person,” she replied.When asked if she “betrayed” him as depicted in the “Cry Me A River,” Britney responded, “I’m not technically saying he’s wrong, but I’m not technically saying he’s right either.”Justin also revealed in Vanity Fair in 2011 that they hadn’t spoken in “nine or ten years.” “We were two birds of the feather — small-town kids, doing the same thing,” he told the magazine. “But then you become adults and the way you were as kids doesn’t make any sense. I won’t speak on her, but at least for me, I was a totally different person. I just don’t think we were normal; there was nothing normal about our existence.”In the wake of the documentary Framing Britney Spears, Justin made a lengthy apology post on Instagram to both Britney Spears and Janet Jackson, the latter whom he headlined with for the Super Bowl in 2003. “I’ve seen the messages, tags, comments, and concerns and I want to respond,” Timberlake said. “I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right. I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism. I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”He continued, “Everyone involved deserves better and most importantly, because this is a larger conversation that I wholeheartedly want to be part of and grow from.” The 39-year-old father of two young boys then wrote that the music industry is “flawed,” and that it sets men, “especially white men,” up for success.“It’s designed this way. As a man in a privileged position I have to be vocal about this,” he continued. “Because of my ignorance, I didn’t recognize it for all that it was while it was happening in my own life but I do not what to ever benefit from others being pulled down again.”