Breakups are hard under the best of circumstances, and they’re probably even more difficult when they take place in the public eye.
Throw in a cheating scandal and the whole thing becomes roughly 1,000 times messier.
So it might be a while before Liam Payne is able to win fans back over to his side after getting caught messing around on his fiancee in very public fashion!
The former One Direction star was engaged to Maya Henry, but that’s no longer the case after a photo of Liam getting quite friendly with another woman made the rounds on social media this week.
Reps for Payne have confirmed that he and Henry "have split up" following the widespread circulation of a photo (below) that appears to show Liam embracing a woman who is definitely not Maya.
Payne has yet to address the situation publicly.
Reached for a response, a rep for the singer offered a simple "no comment."
Maya was much more verbose in her response, confirming that the pic does indeed show Liam enjoying the company of a side-piece.
"I love all of the fans so much but please stop sending me these pictures of my fiancé wrapped around another woman," Maya wrote in a comment that has since been deleted.
"This is not me and it’s hard enough knowing this has happened without seeing it. Enough now."
Page Six has identified Liam’s mystery woman as Aliana Mawla, an Instagram model with over 300,000 followers.
The outlet notes that Mawla appears to be friends with Kanye West "muse" Chaney Jones.
It’s unclear if Liam and Aliana are currently dating, or if their fling was a limited time-only type of situation.
Whatever the case, it seems obvious that the situation has caught Maya off guard.
Liam defenders have pointed out that he and Maya have broken up several times over the course of the past year, and it’s possible that they were on one of their many breaks when Liam hooked up with Aliana.
“Liam and Maya are no longer together and split up for good over a month ago,” a source close to the situation tells Page Six.
“Maya’s comments referring to Liam as her fiance are untrue and very misleading.”
But if there was a breakup, it happened very recently, as Payne confirmed in late March that he and Henry were still engaged
“She’s still my fiancee,” Liam explained while standing alongside Maya at an event at the time.
“We’re still here together, and we’re very, very happy at the moment. Probably the happiest we’ve been," Payne gushed about Maya.
“I think we went through a lot in COVID. I feel like we’ve come out the other side of it a bit stronger.”
We suppose it’s possible that in the weeks since, Liam and Maya broke up for reasons unrelated to his infidelity, but that seems sort of unlikely.
Payne has one child with singer Cheryl Cole, whom he dated for several years.
The couple went their separate ways in 2018, and Liam began dating Maya a few months later.
So what’s the deal now?
Is Liam back on the market? Is he dating Aliana?
We don’t know for sure, but it seems that his love life could go in many directions!