Nick Cannon Admits to Having Insecurities, Identity Crisis During Marriage to Mariah Carey

On podcast ‘The GAUDs Show,’ the ‘Wild ‘n Out’ creator shared that he felt his manhood being tested while married to Mariah Carey from 2008 to 2016.

Nick Cannon doesn’t think that he was able to achieve his personal vision of manhood while married to pop and R&B icon Mariah Carey.

The Wild ‘n Out creator and star was on a recent episode of podcast The GAUDs Show, where a segment went viral, showing Cannon discuss his past marriage to the 5-time Grammy winner. According to the 44-year-old, his breakup with Carey, 55, was caused by personal insecurities and an identity crisis he faced while being wed in his 20s to the “biggest star in the world.”

“I didn’t actually really care what the world thought because the perception, you know, that is what it is. People are going to love you one day, hate you the next day,” Cannon said in the video below. “I could care less about that. … But going to myself with that pressure of, ‘Who am I?'”

“I got married in my 20s, you know what I mean? To the biggest star in the world,” he continued.

Cannon added that while his “trajectory” seemed to be declining, Carey was “already in a different stratosphere.”

“I would lay up at night thinking, like, ‘Is is this who I am? Am I Mariah’s man? Is that what my life is supposed to be?'” Cannon continued. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

The father of 12 said he got “really comfortable” in the marriage in his marriage to the “Touch My Body” artist, joking that “she’s got islands and I’m waking up at noon and people bringing me steaks on a platter.”

As the couple became first-time parents, Cannon felt more challenged, feeling that his masculinity, or the “hierarchy” of “man shit” was at stake.

“I’m carrying a purse, the diaper bag and, you know, I’m standing on the corner like, ‘Wait.’ She’s rocking being the alpha,'” he said. “I believe she needs a dude like that. I’m just not that dude.”

While Cannon said that the former couple “never argued,” but that he felt like a “participant” in Carey’s world although he considers himself a “main character.”

“I was getting mad at myself. It was like muscle atrophy,” Cannon said. “I had a gut, you know, what I mean. I was like it was like, ‘I’m not being the dude that God put me on this Earth to be.'”

Since Cannon was a Nickelodeon alum and mostly recognized for his comedy roles as a teen, the media personality shared that he was “confused” by how to fulfill “sincere manhood” while with Carey.

“I just had to kind of have some self-evaluation, and a lot of it had to do with, like, my health,” he said. “I remember being in the hospital looking like, ‘Man, it was a good run, but I had so much more to do.”

Cannon has spoken multiple times on his split from Carey, even confessing that he’d be open to a reconciliation with her. The former spouses share 13-year-old twins, Moroccan and Monroe.

Carey last dated choreographer Bryan Tanaka from 2016 to 2023.