After pregnant Cardi B filed for divorce from Offset, her rep gave E! News insight into the “I Like It” rapper’s decision.
Cardi B and Offset have been on the rocks for a while.
One day before announcing she’s pregnant with her third baby, the “I Like It” rapper filed for divorce from her husband of seven years—a decision that wasn’t made lightly.
“This is not based on one particular incident,” a rep for Cardi B told E! News. “It has been a longtime coming.”
Of course, Cardi—who shares kids Kulture, 5, and Wave, 2, with Offset—has been candid about the challenges they faced as a couple. After all, despite still being legally married, Cardi said in December that she’d been single “for a minute.”
The pair also unfollowed each other on Instagram that same month, with Cardi later sharing a cryptic message about ending relationships.
“You know when you just out grow relationships,” the 31-year-old wrote on her Instagram Story at the time. “I’m tired of protecting people’s feelings…I GOTTA PUT MYSELF FIRST!”
Later, Cardi opened up about the ups-and-downs of her relationship with Offset.
“We have our own bad stuff,” Cardi explained to Rolling Stone in May. “We’re from two different worlds. Sometimes I cannot be—not that I cannot be a wife. It’s just like, my career takes my life. You know what I’m saying? My career comes first, then my kids come second.”
Cardi added, “Sometimes I don’t realize that I’m putting so many things before my relationship.”
But through the ups and downs, Cardi B has also made it clear that her relationship with the Migos member is “all right.”
The “Up” rapper even looked at their divorce in a positive light in her pregnancy announcement Aug. 1.
“With every ending comes a new beginning!” Cardi wrote. “I am so grateful to have shared this season with you, you have brought me more love, more life and most of all renewed my power!”
Keep reading for a look back on Cardi and Offset’s romance.
On Sept. 20, 2017, the couple privately tied the knot at home, just a few months after their relationship first began. “We found someone to marry us, and she did, just the two of us and my cousin,” Cardi revealed to fans months later. “I said I do, with no dress, no makeup and no ring!”
A month after their wedding ceremony, which was unbeknownst to fans at that point, Offset got down on one knee at a sold-out show and poppped the big question with an 8-carat sparkler.
Six months later, Cardi took to the SNL stage to announce she was expecting her first child with Offset.
The couple celebrated their little one on the way with a fairytale baby shower that summer.
“It was a special moment for Offset and Cardi, and you could tell there was a lot of love between them and in the room,” a source previously told E! News. “They are both very excited about the baby coming and are counting down the days.”
Cardi and Offset’s daughter, Kulture Kiari Cephus, was born July 10, 2018, with her joining his kids Jordan, Kody and Kalea from previous relationships. And the “Bodak Yellow” artist said the Migos members chose the newborn’s name.
“My dude named the baby,” Cardi told Ellen DeGeneres at the time. “I really like the name. Imma let him say the name since he named the baby. It’s, like, almost tricky but when it comes out, it’s like, ‘Ahh!’”
It seemed like there was no limit to the pair’s love as they hit the red carpet at the 2018 American Music Awards.
The couple brought the heat to the Jingle Ball stage with a big smooch.
“Thank you husband. He’s so fine,” Cardi told the crowd. “That’s my baby daddy, yo.”
But just days later, Cardi announced they broke up after rumors of Offset’s infidelity spread across the internet.
“I guess we grew out of love, but we’re not together anymore,” she explained on social media. “I don’t know. It might take time to get a divorce and I’m gonna always have a lot of love for him because he is my daughter’s father.”
Shortly after Cardi revealed their split, Offset took to Instagram with an emotional plea that he later featured on his Father of 4 debut studio album.
“We’re going through a lot of things right now, a lot of things in the media,” he said in the video. “I want to apologize to you, Cardi. I embarrassed you. I made you go crazy. I was partaking in activity that I shouldn’t have been partaking in, and I apologize. You know what I’m saying? For breaking your heart, for breaking our promise, for breaking God’s promise and being a selfish, messed-up husband.”
A day later, he crashed her headlining performance at the Rolling Loud Festival in Los Angeles, complete with a cake and 2,000 white and red roses from Venus ET Fleur worth $15,000, displaying the message, “Take Me Back Cardi.”
While Cardi seemed less than pleased with Offset’s grand gesture, a month later she told the press they were “working things out.”
During the 2019 Grammys red carpet, Cardi and Offset not-so-subtly confirmed they were back on with some serious PDA.
And Offset later explained how they were moving forward.
“You gotta go through steps and different things so that we can grow,” he said on The Breakfast Club. “Not on the TV though, real behind-the-scenes, getting to know each other, getting to know who you’re with and appreciate them all the way around. Because that one mistake made me appreciate her.”
