Bunnie Xo stood by her decision to revisit husband Jelly Roll‘s affair in her memoir just months before he filed for divorce.
Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic, which was released in February, addressed how the pair got back together after getting married in 2016. They moved into a home in Las Vegas, but Jelly Roll, 41, moved back to Nashville without telling Bunnie, 46. Despite the fact that he “was talking to his ex” behind Bunnie’s back, she made the trip back to Nashville to try to save her marriage.
“Betrayal is always hard to get over. I don’t think anybody can just snap out of it,” Bunnie exclusively told Us Weekly before the book’s release. “It is a process. You’re literally grieving and you’re heartbroken, but you’re still in love with this person.”
While she had no trouble mentioning Jelly Roll’s past infidelity, Bunnie didn’t want that to be the whole story. “Even though the affair is a part of the book, it’s not our story,” she said. “It’s literally what catapulted us into who we are today.”
Bunnie explained how she hoped that section of her book would be received.
“Readers need to definitely consume it, chew on it and think about it. But they also [should] see what we’ve made from that entire situation,” she continued. “It completely changed who we are as humans and how we looked at love. We didn’t know how to love each other properly. We both were raised in opposite households but weren’t taught how to love correctly.”
She added: “I think a lot of that gets brushed over when people are like, ‘Oh, he had an affair.’ And it’s just like, ‘Well, no, actually. As a child, he wasn’t taught how to love properly and I wasn’t taught how to love or receive love.’”
Bunnie pointed out how there are “many factors that go into play” in the situation.
“We’re definitely more than the affair. And his daughter, Bailee, is my kid. She’s literally mine. I may not have birthed her, but that’s my child,” she said about Jelly Roll’s daughter with an ex, who he has full custody of. “She definitely played a huge factor and I didn’t want to raise her in another broken home. I just feel like she deserved so much more than the cards that she was dealt in the beginning. Granted, I’m never saying stay for the children because that’s not what I’m saying at all. But definitely whether her father and I stayed together was always going to try to be in her life to help guide her in some sort of way.”
Jelly Roll — who filed for divorce from Bunnie on May 18 after nearly 10 years of marriage — has also addressed the affair in the past.
“One of the worst moments of my adulthood was when I had an affair on my wife,” the singer admitted during an October 2025 episode of the “Human School” podcast. “Because it was the first time that I was like, ‘I really can’t get this right at all. I know I’m in love with this woman.’ It just really, really, really blew me back.”
Jelly Roll confessed that he put in “a lot of work to repair” their connection, which led to them being “stronger than we could have ever been,” saying, “I wish our story would’ve went in the way that it never had an affair. I’m proud of who we are today. I truly am.”
