Before Nick Cannon announced that he now has a ninth addition to his family after welcoming a child with photographer LaNisha Cole, Abby De La Rosa opened up about her relationship dynamic with the comedian. The international DJ stopped by the Lovers and Friends podcast with Shan Boodram and spoke about their non-traditional family. Abby shares one-year-old twins Zion and Zillion with the actor and is currently pregnant with their third child together.
Nick also has a baby on the way with Brittany Bell, who he shares two kids with. In total, the Wild’n’ Out creator has nine children with six different women. Of the nine, one of his children, a son with model Alyssa Scott, unfortunately, passed away from a brain tumor at just five months old.
Nick, especially his kids’ mothers, have faced public scrutiny for their lifestyle choices, which Abby spoke to in the interview.
“Naturally, yes I could understand everyone’s distaste and disagreeance in the way that I have chosen to live my life,” she said. ”And I find it funny too when everyone’s always coming in and being like he’s playing you. Technically speaking we all know about each other.
“It’s just how much are you choosing to know and I find empowerment in my truth and in my reality and the way I have formulated my life to be.”
Prior to meeting Nick, Abby said that she was in a five-year monogamous relationship but was miserable. However, when she met Nick, he had a freeing spirit which made her feel free within herself. She was aware of his polyamorous lifestyle and also wasn’t looking for a commitment but decided to continue exploring their connection. These days Abby considers Nick to be her primary partner and is monogamous during her pregnancy with her third and his 10th child.
When she found out she was pregnant the first time, Nick currently had four other children but she saw her pregnancy as a blessing since she was told that she couldn’t have kids after having sepsis. Her first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage but Nick wanted to try again and they found out they were having twins.
While she was aware of what she was getting herself into, she wasn’t ready for the backlash it would cause. Abby said she “shut down” and “didn’t know how to maneuver through it.” She admitted that Nick’s “positive” attitude in response to the criticism didn’t help her get through it and so she relied on her family, especially her sister for support.
Abby comes from a two-parent household and said that her parents are still married and at the end of the day her family just wants her to be happy. As far as what people think about her nontraditional way of living, she had this to say.
“I know people are like, how do you find trust in an open relationship?” she asked. “It’s real easy, it’s real easy. You just have to understand to get out of the same old mundane thinking of monogamy and that I have to own a person and be with a person 24/7 and this and find beauty within yourself and the connection that you build with somebody. And I trust the connection that I have with Nick.”
While she’s happy with her lifestyle right now, she believes she will end up in a monogamous relationship in the future.
“I think I see monogamy down the line and this won’t get me there,” she said. “But I love where I’m at at this very moment but it’s not my forever.”
She concluded the interview by addressing those attacking her parenting.
“Me being open in my relationship does not change or take away from the type of mother that I am to my kids and the wholeness that I am to them and the strength that I share with them,” she said.
She added, “And I would just want people to stay the f–k away from my motherhood.”
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Featured image by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak
