Ethan Slater’s Ex Lilly Jay Opens Up About Their Divorce Amid His Romance With Ariana Grande

Ethan Slater’s ex-wife, Lilly Jay, has opened up about their divorce and how his romance with Ariana Grande has changed her once private life.

While writing an essay for The Cut published on Thursday, December 19, Lilly explained that she valued her private life before her high school sweetheart Ethan’s rise to fame. “Becoming a psychologist solidified my detachment from social media. Professors urged me and my graduate school peers to be wary of the conclusions an understandably curious patient might reach if they were to unearth online artifacts of our real-world lives,” the therapist wrote.

While Lilly preferred to live her life offline, Ethan, 32, “was on a different path, in which social media and exposure were not impediments but rather necessities.”

“We puzzled through this predicament on walks, over pizza, in our apartment and excitedly concocted rules of engagement of how and what he would share about our lives together,” she wrote. “It was a tenuous balance — my profession, which requires privacy, and his, which is measured in applause — but it worked well while life was unfolding according to our plans.”

She went on to note that her personal life became even more public when Ethan was linked to Ariana, 31, while they were still married. “It’s hard to measure an absence, and I can’t say for sure how much my career has been impacted by what’s out there online. But there have been hints along the way, like the job offer that dissolved without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle or the patient who’s scheduled for a first appointment but seemingly vanishes,” Lilly wrote.

“On my darker days, I railed against the unfairness of a public divorce, asking my therapist (we’re all just a Russian nesting doll of therapists supporting therapists), ‘Who would trust a cardiologist who had a heart attack because they never got an EKG?’” she continued. “Of course, I am not owed anything, whether it be a job or the privilege of being any given person’s psychologist. Still, even as someone who spent years researching how people respond to ambiguity, I hate not knowing if the way my story has been told has impacted my opportunity to help others sort through their stories.”

Lilly added that it was an “uncanny” experience to see herself “in a shoddy mosaic of others’ words and impressions” amid the scandal. “I have puzzled alone, for nearly two years, about what to say as someone who is, by personality and profession, equally allergic to being the center of attention and to being erased,” she said.

The essay concluded with Lilly stating that she was “sorry” that she was no longer “invisible,” especially when it comes to the way she interacts with her patients.

“Knowing what you now know, I can say with both personal and professional authority, you are so much stronger than you assume,” she wrote. “Some of what you loved most about your partner was actually your own goodness reflected back to you; it’s yours to keep and carry forward. I’d tell you (and myself) to let go of the worries — our anxious minds are creative but not particularly good guessers about the future.”

Ethan filed for a contested divorce from Lilly on July 26, 2023, after he was romantically linked to Ariana while they worked together on Wicked. Ariana and Ethan’s romance was first revealed on July 20, 2023, which was just days after her split from ex-husband Dalton Gomez was confirmed.

Lilly and Ethan – who welcomed a son in August 2022 – finalized their divorce in September.