Britney Spears was completely infatuated with Justin Timberlake during their relationship from 1999 to 2002—so in love that she didn’t want to rock the boat when she knew he was cheating on her, she writes in her new memoir, The Woman in Me, released Tuesday.

“Pretty soon I realized that I was head over heels in love with him—so in love with him it was pathetic,” she writes of Timberlake, whom she met as a child when they were both on The Mickey Mouse Club and reconnected with years later, when both were chart-topping pop stars, he as a member of the boy band ’NSync. She writes that “his band…was what people back then called ‘so pimp,’” while she was riding high on the success of her first album.

“I was so in love with Justin, just smitten,” she writes. “I don’t know if when you’re younger love’s a different thing, but what Justin and I had was special. He wouldn’t even have to say anything or do anything for me to feel close to him.”

The two shared a home in Orlando and would see each other intermittently between their performance commitments. Despite the giddiness and infatuation she describes, Spears writes, “There were a couple of times during our relationship when I knew Justin had cheated on me. Especially because I was so infatuated and so in love, I let it go, even though the tabloids seemed determined to rub my face in it.”

Even when paparazzi had photos of Timberlake in a car with a member of the group All Saints, “I never said anything,” Spears writes. “At the time we’d only been together for a year.”

“There were rumors about him with various dancers and groupies. I let it all go, but clearly, he’d slept around,” she writes. “It was one of those things where you know but you just don’t say anything.”

From the Archive: The Oracle of Brit

What comes next may seem familiar to anyone who has seen Timberlake’s music video for “Cry Me a River”: Spears fooled around with choreographer Wade Robson, who had worked with both singers.

“So I did, too,” she writes of straying. “Not a lot—one time, with Wade Robson. We were out one night and we went to a Spanish bar. We danced and danced. I made out with him that night.”

“I was loyal to Justin for years, only had eyes for him with that one exception, which I admitted to him,” she said. “That night was chalked up to something that will happen when you are as young as we were, and Justin and I moved past it and stayed together. I thought we were going to be together forever. I hoped we would be.”

Before the breakup, she had also gotten an abortion at home in secret after Timberlake told her he didn’t want to be a father. Spears called the abortion “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”

Of course, history has shown that her hope of “forever” didn’t come true. She didn’t see the eventual text message breakup coming, she writes.

“When Justin began making his first solo album, Justified, he started being very standoffish with me. I think that was because he’d decided to use me as ammunition for his record, and so it made it awkward for him to be around me staring at him with all that affection and devotion.”

She saw the breakup message while filming the music video for the “Overprotected” remix by Darkchild, then went back to work. “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 writes. “When I say devastated, I mean I could barely speak for months. Whenever anyone asked me about him, all I could do was cry. I don’t know if I was clinically in shock, but it felt that way.”

She writes that Timberlake’s family had been “the only real, loving family I had.” Elsewhere in the book, she mentions Timberlake’s mother, Lynn Harless, loaning her and her mother money to fly home for Spears’s grandmother’s funeral during the Mickey Mouse Club days. “It was something family would do, and the kids and parents on that show became family.”

“I was shattered,” she writes of her post-breakup state. Meanwhile, Timberlake released a video for “Cry Me a River” with a Britney lookalike skulking around and cheating on him, and played a song called “Don’t Go (Horrible Woman),” which Spears writes “seemed to be about me” for Barbara Walters on 20/20.

She was booed whenever she went out, she said, framed as “a harlot.” At the same time, Timberlake’s album soared.

“The thought of my betraying him gave the album more angst, gave it a purpose: shit-talking an unfaithful woman. The hip-hop world of that era loved a storyline with the theme ‘Fuck you, bitch!’ Getting revenge on women for perceived disrespect was all the rage at the time. Eminem’s violent revenge song ‘Kim’ was huge. The only problem with the narrative was that, in our case, it wasn’t like that,” she writes.

“‘Cry Me a River’ did very well. Everyone felt very sorry for him. And it shamed me.”

“I felt there was no way at the time to tell my side of the story,” Spears continues. “I couldn’t explain, because I knew no one would take my side once Justin had convinced the world of his version.”

“I don’t think Justin realized the power he had in shaming me. I don’t think he understands to this day.”

In 2021, after a documentary about Spears aired and Timberlake was criticized for how he spoke about their sex life, he posted an apology on Instagram acknowledging the misogyny of the music industry and writing, “I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others.”

Though she says now that she “didn’t handle things well” in the aftermath of the abortion and eventual split, Spears writes that the relationship caused ripples through her life.

“Justin framed our time together with me as the bad guy, and I believed it, so ever since then, I’ve felt like I’m under a sort of curse.”

Vanity Fair has reached out to representatives for Spears and Timberlake for comment.