Brandy Says Ex-Boyfriend Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men 'Took Advantage' of Her Due to Their Age Gap: 'The Shame Ends Here'

Brandy is opening up for the first time about a relationship she says has haunted her.

via: EW

Brandy is confirming a longtime rumor about her relationship with Boyz II Men singer Wanya Morris.

Decades after speculation first began about the singers' romance after the Moesha star performed as the opening act for Boyz II Men's II World Tour in 1995, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and actress is opening up about a connection in which she claims she was "too young to recognize she was being used" in her recently released memoir, Phases.

Although Wanya Morris has long denied rumors that he and Brandy began a relationship when the singer was a teen star, Brandy writes that her relationship with the Boyz II Men member started when she was 16 and he was 22, a year after they met and Morris became her "mentor."

The singer writes that Morris began to call and check in on her regularly, offering advice as an "anchor" and "confidant" to the up-and-coming star. After she joined the group on tour, however, the pair got closer.

"What had begun as admiration had transformed into something else," Brandy writes. "It seems to me that he weaponized my admiration, shaped my friendship into dependence, my respect into desire. I felt swept up in a current I couldn’t control."

She reveals that their relationship took a turning point after they filmed the music video for their collaboration, "Brokenhearted." She describes an "unspoken energy" between the two that had intensified after their work on the video. "We moved around each other like opposing magnets — as if actively trying to maintain distance even as we kept finding ourselves drawn into each other’s orbit," she writes.

"The attraction was subtle yet undeniable. It lived in the pauses between conversations, and it lingered in the charged atmosphere surrounding us," she adds.

Their relationship quickly formed after that, a whirlwind that Brandy recalls as being overwhelming because of the guilt of hiding it from her family and public, and dealing with the "illicit" nature as a young teen.

"'My girlfriend is sixteen.' I don't remember when he first said it. But those four words started rolling off his tongue whenever we were alone," she writes of Morris. "I couldn't tell if this refrain was meant to soothe his own conscience or temper the questions shimmering in my gaze. Perhaps it was his way of tethering himself to a boundary, even as he quietly edged past it. Or maybe it was simply a reminder to himself, a whisper to keep the illicit nature of our connection in view. Regardless, I was under the impression that we were madly in love — or at least what I believed love to be at sixteen. A grown man's version of love, designed to serve his needs."

Brandy details her first time having sex with Morris as having "lacked the specialness I had painted in my mind, because it wasn't about me at all." What she sees as the usual rites of passage in adolescence were tainted by "the influence of a man who seemed to know exactly how to make me question my own beliefs and boundaries."

"And I hung in this strange balance. I was navigating that time in full view of the world, every move scrutinized, every choice dissected by people who didn't know my heart," she writes. "Part of me wanted to retain some semblance of 'normalcy,' but also I knew full well that what was happening between me and him was wrong. And yet, my attitude was, 'This was special. This was real. People just can't understand.'"

Brandy describes the sexual element of their relationship as Morris "getting what he wanted from someone too young to recognize she was being used," adding that she believed she was "too naive to realize that deep down inside he did not see me as special. I think he saw me as conquerable. As someone whose boundaries could be negotiated away. I was in over my head."

"I was young and inexperienced, and thought that following my heart meant following his lead, that what we shared transcended ordinary rules and limitations," she shares, adding that she had wanted to wait until marriage but "also believed that having sex with him would cement our bond. Would prove I was mature enough for our relationship. Would make him happy. And so, I told myself I was ready. That this was my choice. But the truth is I felt like I had no choice. I felt like saying no meant losing him."

The reality of their relationship wasn't lost on the singer, despite her naivety about their ability to last.

"He and I understood, with diamond- cut clarity that public knowledge of our relationship would ignite scandal, potentially threatening everything we'd both worked for," she writes. "So he and I opted for elaborate fiction: we would pretend patience and claim we were waiting until my eighteenth birthday before pursuing any romantic connection."

Eventually, Brandy says Morris increasingly became critical of her, comparing her to other hit R&B singers, namely Mariah Carey, his "One Sweet Day" duet partner. He was also increasingly hard to track down and she was required to page him prior to calling. Their relationship ended when Morris confessed to multiple infidelities; Brandy claimed she caught him with an assistant.

"The shame ends here. The silence ends here," she adds of coming to terms with the feeling that she was manipulated into and throughout the relationship. "I was not a fast girl with a crush. I was not a dramatic teenager who couldn't handle rejection. I was not an unstable obsessive fan. I was a child. And he was an adult. And it's time the world understood the difference."

"I was sixteen years old, dealing with the infidelity of a grown man who I believe had pursued me, took my innocence, and was now revealing he'd not been faithful. I may have been young, but I was wise enough to know I had been played. And that wasn't love."

Phases is now available to purchase wherever books are sold.