Lena Waithe and Wife Alana Mayo Broke Up, We’re Back to Love Being a Lie

To quote the great Ferris Bueller, “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

2019 lulled us into the feeling of warm, sweet, heart-eyed celesbian romance (Kristen Stewart got a new girlfriend; Roxane Gay got engaged; soccer stars Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger had the gay wedding of the century!!). But 2020 is a new year and thus we are faced with the harsh truth of our reality: Love is a Lie.

Just two short months after publicly announcing their marriage to gays everywhere on The Ellen Show, Lena Waithe and her fellow Hollywood producer wife Alana Mayo have announced they are separated.

The couple originally broke news of their engagement back in 2017 on Thanksgiving, a wink to the famous “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None that catapulted Waithe’s career into another stratosphere. They were together for three years total.

Following the hallowed tradition of straight celebrities before them, the couple shared a joint statement from their reps: “After careful thought and consideration, we have decided to part ways. We have nothing but support for one another and ask that you respect our privacy during this time.”

Word spread overnight while we were sleeping soundly, with many insiders speculating that Lena’s infidelity may have been at the root of their split (we, your trusted experts, have no confirmation of that intel, but I am duty-bound by internet gossip law to report it, that’s the deal I made with the devil to keep my hair so soft).

The real question I have is who will gain custody of their dog’s Instagram account!! I’ve grown very found of Simone Mayo-Waithe! Will no one think of the kids??

And now please gather together in a circle, join hands, burn the herb of your choice, and repeat the Autostraddle motto after me: Love is a lie. It’s a lie. It’s a damn, damn lie.

Joking aside, we wish Alana and Lena peace – and for Alana, some much deserved privacy – in the next steps of their journey.

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen Phillips is Autostraddle's former editor in chief. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company, eventually becoming the EIC from 2021-2024. A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other.  During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. And there were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. To reach out, you can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram, or her website.

Carmen has written 716 articles for us.

16 Comments

  4. Love isn’t a lie because You win my heart when you open with a quote from the great Ferris Bueller

  5. Aw Come On, People! What in the friggity fk are us mortals supposed to do now! Black gay love gone…*In best trembling Florida Evans w/ shaking fists* Damn! Damn! DAMN!

  6. unfortunately my bitter and gnarled heart did feel a guilty spark of satisfaction at this further confirmation of the fact that love is, in fact, a lie

  8. Is love a lie when the complications of fame probably cause celebrities’ breakups? It can be hard for a relationship to survive when one person’s career/fame explodes over a couple of years, and maybe that goes to her head, encouraging her to cheat. The rest of us don’t have that problem in our relationships because we aren’t flying so close to the sun.

  10. Okay seriously what is in the water these days? Almost every single couple I’ve admired in my person life or on the celeb level has broken up in the last year or so. Tho I already knew love is a lie based on my own disastrous love life hah.

  11. Okay on the one hand, RIP love, on the other, they experienced most of the whole marriage before announcing it had happened, a thing which, given fame and the internet coinciding, I think more celeb couples should try? Ya know, to maximize their enjoyment of it as human beings experiencing it, and ours as witnesses who wanna love it without ruining it with the general publics awful attention

  12. Hm, shortly after getting married, she was asked what was the greatest day in her life, and pointedly didn’t answer “wedding day” or “day I met my wife”, so…

  14. Breaking up isn’t always a bad thing! There needs to be as much (maybe more, actually) support for breaking up as there is for getting together.

    People making the relationship decisions that are right for them is something to celebrate.

    People feeling free and strong and brave enough to leave relationships that aren’t giving them life is something to celebrate.

Comments are closed.