NFL football star Cam Newton has finally opened up about his decision not to marry his children’s mother.
The athlete spoke about his decision during an interview with Brittany Renner, an Instagram fitness model, and influencer, on his YouTube series “Funky Friday.”
Renner asked Newton about his relationship with Shakia Proctor, the mother of four of his biological children, and probed for the reason he never married her.
“That’s a great question…The thing is that person that I was while we were having children together, I couldn’t be the best husband,” the 32-year-old said. “I wasn’t prepared to be a husband then.”
According to The Sun, Newton, and Proctor, a former exotic dancer, started a romantic relationship in 2013. The couple share children Sebastian Newton, Sovereign-Dior Cambella, Camidas Swain Newton, and Cashmere Saint Newton. Proctor has an older daughter that Newton has publicly claimed as his, though he is not her biological father.
In 2019, the relationship between Newton and Proctor became rocky after the player was allegedly involved with an Instagram model named LaReina Shaw, and fathered a child with the woman.
Newton and Proctor allegedly called it quits after a custody battle over their children.
In the interview with Renner, he continued saying, “We were both young … But at the same time, the person that she was when I met her, it wasn’t the person she was when I left her.”
He added, “When I met Kia, and I say this protecting her, she wasn’t the one to be like, ‘I want to be married.’ I was more so the person; my parents been together for 36 years. I know what marriage looks like: the ups, the downs, the trials, the tribulations. I seen Kia really evolving into a woman where her standards were, ‘I ain’t just no baby mama,’ and when she kept putting pressure on me I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is what I really want,’ ” he said.
Despite her growing, he contends that he was not. His occupation provided too many opportunities for him to not be faithful to her.
“I was on Temptation Island. A football player, young, ‘no’ is not even in my vocabulary,” he said. “I just found myself in this downward spiral. Did she deserve better? I would humbly say, yes, she did,” he admitted.
“I was falling deeper into my own selfishness and realizing I gotta be better,” he continued.
“ ‘I hope you have the patience,’ which she did. And she was around me through a lot of success, a lot of downfalls and I respect her for that to this day, but it never led to the ultimate, which was a ring.”
Though no longer in a romantic relationship with either woman, all three are working best to get along and are raise the children that they share.
As he did with Proctor, Newton acknowledges Shaw’s older child from another relationship as his child also, posting on Father’s Day of 2020, “I’m a proud father of seven. A DADDY isn’t defined as the man who makes the child (NOT in all instances.) But rather a MAN who extends his hands and time to help with the child’s raising and his heart to LOVE the child through anything!!”
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