Selena Gomez Gave Benny Blanco an Out. He Said “Screw It.”

Benny Blanco is sharing new details about the early period of his relationship with Selena Gomez, including a conversation the two had before she confirmed the relationship publicly in December 2023.

Blanco discussed the timeline in a new interview with Spanish newspaper El País’s Icon magazine, published July 13, ahead of the release of his upcoming Spanish-language album, Hermoso.

“We kept our relationship private for a long time, about eight or nine months,” Blanco said in the interview, which was conducted in Spanish.

He recalled that before Gomez went public, she gave him a direct opening to step back. “She asked me, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? I understand if you want us to just be friends,'”

Blanco said. He responded, “You know what? Screw it,” adding, “We’re lucky because we both have friends and family we’ve known since before all this, and we’re surrounded by a good group of people we love.”

Blanco also addressed why the conversation came up in the first place, pointing to the scrutiny that comes with Gomez’s level of fame.

I don’t like to expose my life, he told El País. Famous people are under constant scrutiny: if you say one thing, it’s wrong, and if you say another, it’s also wrong.

He said he’d prefer more privacy overall but acknowledged he belongs to “that transitional generation where social media didn’t exist when I was a child.

Which is part of why he occasionally shares photos of his wife or food he’s tried, while largely reserving his public posts for music promotion.

Gomez and Blanco began dating in the summer of 2023, and speculation about the relationship picked up publicly that December, when Gomez commented on a fan account’s Instagram post calling Blanco “my absolute everything.”

The two didn’t make a joint red carpet appearance until the 2025 Emmys, more than a year later. They married in Santa Barbara on September 27, 2025, with guests including Taylor Swift, Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Paul Rudd.

In the same interview, Blanco described how his own visibility changed once he and Gomez began dating, tying it to his career milestones as a solo artist.

“It was between 2018 and 2019,” he said, referring to the release of his song “Eastside.” “I started to get a little bit famous. And from there, things got really intense… That same month I started dating Selena.

Then it was like what I was going through got a rocket boost.” He added that Gomez’s own experience with long-term fame gave them a shared frame of reference:

“She’s been dealing with this her whole life, so it’s something we have to face together.”

Much of the early coverage of Gomez and Blanco’s relationship focused on the public timeline of their romance, engagement, and wedding.

This interview adds a different layer to that timeline, Blanco’s own account of the private conversation that preceded their public confirmation, rather than new information about the relationship’s chronology itself.

What’s confirmed comes directly from Blanco’s own comments to El País: the couple kept their relationship out of the public eye for roughly eight to nine months by his account.

Gomez offered him an explicit option to step back before going public, and he chose to continue the relationship regardless of the attention it would bring.

Whether that reflects a specific philosophy about fame, protectiveness, or simply two people navigating the timing of a public rollout is left open by the interview itself, and isn’t something either party has stated directly beyond what’s quoted above.

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