Rihanna [photos] is opening up to Oprah Winfrey about her relationship with Chris Brown in an interview to air on this Sunday's 'Next Chapter'.
The singer tears up over her ex-boyfriend during the extended interview as she reveals she was more concerned with what would happen to Brown than herself. He eventually pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to five years probation and one year of domestic violence counseling for the incident.
"It became a circus and I felt protective. It was a weird, confusing space to be in, because as angry as I was, as angry and hurt and betrayed, I just felt like he made that mistake because he needed help ... and who's going to help him?"
"Nobody's gonna say he needs help. Everybody's gonna say he's a monster without looking at the source. And I was more concerned about him," she says. "Everything I knew switched in a night."
"And I couldn't control that, so I had to deal with that, and that's not easy for me to understand or interpret and it's not easy to interpret on camera, not with the world watching."
"So it was hard for me to even pay attention to my mind and figuring things out because now it became a circus and I felt protective. I felt like the only person they hate right now is him."
“I think he was the love of my life," she told the host. "He was the first love and I see that he loved me the same way. We were very young and very spontaneous. We ran free. We ran wild. We were falling in love going in at a really rapid pace and we forgot about ourselves as individuals.”
"We're very, very close friends," she said. "We built a trust again and that's it. We love each other and we probably always will. And that's not anything that we're gonna try to change. It's not something you can shut off if you've ever been in love."
