‘I Don’t Fault Him for His Struggles’: Liam Payne’s Ex-Fiancée Maya Henry Breaks Silence

Model Maya Henry’s engagement to Liam Payne — the former One Direction singer who died in October and whose life story is chronicled in Rolling Stone’s new cover story — was tumultuous. They started dating officially in August 2019; he proposed that November, and they broke up in May 2022. Henry has said that the two-and-a-half years they spent together started great but soon turned dark; the relationship left a lasting impact on her.

Henry wrote a fictionalized account of her time with Liam in a novel, Looking Forward, which came out in May 2024. In the book, she describes an abusive relationship between a naive model named Mallory and a singer named Oliver Smith, a former member of a fictional boy band called 5Forward. Oliver takes cocaine, MDMA, and pills, sexts other women, and threatens suicide if Mallory were to leave him. In one scene, he shoves her, breaks a light fixture, and chases her with an axe. She calls his manager, who tells her to leave him, but she doesn’t. After an incident where the pop star snorts coke in front of the girl’s mother and grandmother, she works up the courage to leave him. (A source close to Henry tells Rolling Stone that Henry based all of these scenes on real-life events.)

On Oct. 6, a week and a half before Payne’s death, Henry posted a TikTok alleging that Payne had been harassing her, her family, and her friends from various iCloud accounts. A few days later, Henry’s lawyer sent him a cease-and-desist order, reviewed by Rolling Stone, which demanded that he stop harassing her. The note also alleged that he had been distributing nude photos of Henry, taken during their engagement, without her consent. “This egregious conduct will not be tolerated,” it said. A source close to Henry says that after Payne’s death, she discovered more instances of him allegedly distributing intimate photos of her without her knowledge; she is seeking legal remedies.

Henry has not commented on Payne’s death until now. She submitted a written statement to Rolling Stone for the magazine’s cover story. Here is what she had to say in full.

Editor’s picks

This was someone I loved very much. Initially, it was the drug use and addictions that tore us apart. Anyone who has been with an addict understands how difficult that is. While I loved him deeply, he did things that hurt me in ways I’ll never fully understand, and he continued to hurt me years after we broke up. On drugs, he became someone unrecognizable — so different from his sober self. I kept hoping each incident would be a wake-up call for him to get help, but it never was.

I tried to be there for him. I loved him so much that I convinced myself I could fix things, that if I just held on a little longer, he would change. I put myself in situations that were unsafe and harmful, ignoring every red flag because I didn’t want to give up on him. I let myself believe that love could be stronger than addiction, that if I endured enough, if I sacrificed enough, he would see how much I cared and finally choose a different path. But that’s not how addiction works. No matter how much I tried to save him, I was drowning in the process.

And through it all, I knew there were parts of himself he was struggling with — parts of his identity he wasn’t ready to fully face, even within our relationship. I saw the signs; I felt the distance. In the end, it wasn’t just the betrayals or the addictions that broke us — it was the realization that I had spent years in something that was never what I thought it was. I don’t fault him for his struggles.

I stood by him in his darkest moments, through the chaos, through the pain, through things that broke me in ways I can’t explain. And yet, when it was all over, I was left with nothing but emptiness. The love I gave, the sacrifices I made — they weren’t enough because they never could be. I wasn’t just heartbroken; I felt defrauded, as so many women in my position would. But what I do know is this: It wasn’t about me or anything I did. It was about struggles beyond my control. And in the end, I had to choose myself. I had to walk away, no matter how much it hurt, because staying in his world meant losing myself.

Now after everything, what hurts the most is that even after his death, I’m left with the aftermath of his actions that continue to unfold. As I’ve uncovered the extent of his non-consensual image sharing — images he acquired during our engagement and shared without my knowledge or consent — I’m faced with the complexity of grieving for someone I cared so deeply about despite the pain they have caused me.