Singer Britney Spears poses at the premiere of The Smurfs 2 at the Regency Village theatre in Los Angeles, California July 28, 2013.MARIO ANZUONI/Reuters
Two broken marriages, a cancelled engagement, a restraining order and the tragic loss of Justin Timberlake may have made Britney Spears a little leery of men, but there is still one she can rely on: her conservator dad.
Jamie Spears, who has been guardian of the pop star's assets for six years, apparently bought the video that caught the star's boyfriend on tape making out with another woman.
It seems Spears has called it quits, even tweeting "Ahhhh the single life!" on Thursday, supposedly after learning about the betrayal from her father.
Spears and David Lucado, a bartender who also works at a law firm, were together for 18 months before Jamie Spears purchased the unreleased video to protect his daughter from public embarrassment.
The Oops!... I Did It Again singer, whose previous erratic headshaving and baseball-bat wielding behaviour was once cause for concern, has been doing much better these days, even securing a Las Vegas residency.
Yet while her career is on the up, her romantic relationships have been a string of Toxic disappointments. Some fans still lament the end of the pop power couple that was Britney and fellow Mickey Mouse Club alumnus Justin Timberlake –but Spears has moved on, several times, since she dated the Cry Me a River singer.
The diva was married to ex-husband Jason Alexander, a childhood friend from her Louisiana hometown, for less than three days in 2004. The duo arrived at A Little White Wedding Chapel in a green limousine for a shotgun Las Vegas ceremony, bit the union was annulled just 55 hours later.
After that hot moment of marriage, Spears selected for her next husband a man who has since appeared on Celebrity Fit Club, a weight-loss reality show for so-called celebrities. Kevin Federline was engaged to Spears just half a year after her first divorce and the marriage lasted three years before ending in 2007. K-Fed's rapping career never really took off – he released his first and only album in 2006 – but he has been a committed father: He was granted sole custody of their two sons.
Britney's next partner was perhaps the most unlikely choice, especially since she had recently released Pieces of Me, a song that laments the demands of fame and exclaims, "get in line with the paparazzi." The princess of pop dated British paparazzo Adnan Ghalib for less than a year before breaking up in 2008. Spears filed a restraining order against Ghalib, who was later charged with felony assault for a 2009 hit and run.
Most recently, ex-fiancé and former agent Jason Trawick and Britney split in 2013 because he didn't want to have any kids.
Timberlake married former Seventh Heaven-star Jessica Biel two years ago in an Italian wedding, and by most accounts they are very happy.