THE TRUTH ABOUT JUSTIN

Britney Spears finally reveals what really happened in her toxic romance with Justin Timberlake

It was the first time Britney Spears went to a really dark place. In March 2002, she was on a music video set when her boyfriend of three years, Justin Timberlake — whom she was “so in love with, it was pathetic” — broke up with her via text message, she writes in her shocking new memoir,

The Woman in Me. “I was devastated. I could barely speak for months. I don’t know if I was clinically in shock, but it felt that way…. Ever since then, I’ve felt like I’m under a sort of curse.”

Her life tragically spiraled. “In the news media, I was described as a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy. The truth: I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood,” writes Britney, dropping a major bombshell about her mental state: She was “still reeling” from having terminated a pregnancy two years earlier, and “didn’t handle things well.” In short order over the next five years, she drunkenly wed her childhood sweetheart in Las Vegas, got divorced, tied the knot with her backup dancer Kevin Federline, gave birth to two sons, then endured another divorce and the loss of custody, all while the paparazzi snapped away. By early 2008, her father, Jamie, stepped in to take control of her life, locking her into an infamous conservatorship from which it would take her 13 years to be freed. “Looking back, it all started with how Justin treated her,” says a source. “He destroyed Britney.”