4 Signs Ariana Grande & Dalton Gomez's Marriage Was Destined For Failure

Pop star Ariana Grande is known for her incredible vocal range as well as her high-profile relationships — who could forget her very public relationship with Pete Davidson? — and she's now officially saying "thank u, next" to her husband Dalton Gomez. Grande and Gomez got married in May 2021. They dated for less than a year before Gomez popped the question in December 2020 and gave Grande an unusual, and deeply sentimental, engagement ring.

But the couple didn't turn out to be destined for a happy ending. In a seeming sign of things to come, Grande was seen without her engagement and wedding rings while attending a match at Wimbledon over the summer of 2023, and on September 18, they both filed for divorce.

The divorce paperwork had February 20, 2023, as the date of the split and "irreconcilable differences" as the reason, per TMZ. The February 2023 date for the end of their marriage seems at odds with an Instagram story of Grande's that she posted for their anniversary — it was a picture of the two of them and "I love him so" written on it, according to People. Whatever happened on February 20 specifically, we may never know, but there were some signs that their marriage was destined for failure.

Ariana Grande and Dalton Gomez started dating in early 2020, just before the world went into COVID lockdown. The two of them spent the lockdown together with Grande moving with Gomez to Los Angeles in June 2020, and the couple was able to be alone and get to know each other without the distractions of other people and obligations, per People. It likely fast-forwarded their relationship and amplified how they felt towards each other since they were each other's main/only source of in-person interaction during the lockdowns. They didn't get a chance to really know each other when it came to the obligations of everyday life and work before they got married.

Returning to everyday life post Covid — or as everyday as life gets when you're a famous pop star or married to one — would have required a big adjustment within their relationship, one that many have found impossible to overcome. Grande and Gomez wouldn't be the only couple who struggled with coming out of their COVID bubble into the real world. "These relationships were formed under stress and during a time when there was more incentive to couple up quickly," clinical psychologist and relationship expert Jessica Griffin told BBC. "As the world is opening back up, relationship experts are hearing more and more that couples are finding the transition back to normal a little bumpier than expected."

Dalton Gomez is a luxury real estate agent, and selling multi-million dollar properties involves plenty of facetime with clients. So he needs to be in Los Angeles to be able to work. Ariana Grande, on the other hand, is a musician and actor, and her career requires her, at least part of the time, to travel, whether it's to go out on tour or to film on location. Her time spent in London in late 2022 to film the movie version of "Wicked" — she's playing Glinda in the two installments — may have sealed the deal for the end of their marriage as the first true taste as to the reality of what a long-distance marriage would look like.

The two had reportedly been having trouble before Grande went to London, but what can be hard to work out when you're in the same place could become impossible to overcome when you're far apart. Those with different jobs can, of course, make a relationship work, but when one person has to travel for their work while the other has to stay close to home for theirs, that's quite a challenge. 

Grande's career success also means she has a legion of devoted fans and paparazzi interested in her every move, and Gomez's job is totally under the radar. Because of that difference, Gomez wasn't used to or perhaps wasn't prepared for or comfortable with the amount of attention that Grande got.

In no way do we want to fault Ariana Grande in looking for and finding love, but her relationship history seems to show her as a serial monogamist, so her marriage ending after just a couple of years isn't a huge surprise. Grande doesn't seem to spend much time single between relationships, and she seems to fall in love quickly and her relationships move fast. It's hard to blame her — there's an excitement and thrill when you start a new relationship. She also seems to fall out of love with a similar speed.

Take a look at her very public relationship with Pete Davidson. They started dating in May 2018, the same month that she and Mac Miller ended their two-year relationship. By June 2018, the two were engaged and getting tattoos in honor of each other. Four months later, however, and they had broken up. Grande falling for Dalton Gomez and getting engaged within a year is about ten times as long as it took for her and Davidson to get engaged. So in some ways, they were taking it slow.

Grande has already moved on romantically, months before the divorce papers were filed. After separating from Gomez, Grande started dating Ethan Slater. They met on the set of "Wicked," and they're reportedly now living together in New York, according to the Daily Mail.

In the song "Off the Table" from her album "Positions," Ariana Grande seems to be singing about the death of Mac Miller — he died in 2018 of an accidental overdose — and wondering if she's ready to love someone again. And if you look at the lyrics, you could see that Grande could be acknowledging that even though she might want to be with someone new, she isn't actually ready to be in a relationship: "Might not be quite yet healed or ready / Should I be goin' too steady?" The song came out in October 2020, less than two months before she and Dalton Gomez got engaged.

That idea of needing more time to heal matches up with some of what she's shared online. In an Instagram post from the set of "Wicked," she wrote about how much she was loving her work on the movie and playing Glinda, and tellingly, Grande said while she was on set, she was: "transforming and healing parts of me that i never knew needed it. or maybe did." While she doesn't mention her love life, and we can't pretend to know exactly what she's going through or referring to, the idea of needing to heal something within herself is clear. It could be, that without even knowing it, she'd looked for healing and acceptance from her marriage. When instead, she could turn inward and find acceptance and love within herself.