Personal relationships of Michael Jackson

The personal relationships of Michael Jackson have been the subject of public and media attention for several decades. He was introduced to the topic of sexual activity at the age of nine while a member of the Jackson 5. He and his brothers would perform at strip clubs, sharing the bill with female strippers and drag queens, and the sexual adventures of his brothers with groupies further affected Jackson's early life. The entertainer said his first real girlfriend was the child actress Tatum O'Neal,^[1] when he was a teenager in the 1970s; he called her "my first love – after Diana Ross."^[2] The pair eventually "cooled off" and Jackson entered into a romance with model Brooke Shields in 1981. Although the relationship was platonic, Shields said there were times he had asked her to marry him, but as he grew older he started to change physically and became more asexual towards her.^[3]

Having first been introduced to Lisa Marie Presley by her father's backup singer, Myrna Smith, in 1974, Jackson reconnected with Lisa Marie in November 1992.^[4] Shortly after becoming involved with her, in 1993, Jackson was subjected to his first set of child sexual abuse accusations, followed by similar allegations in 2005. Presley supported Jackson as he became dependent on pain medication, and eventually helped convince him to enter drug rehabilitation. In a telephone call, he proposed marriage to Presley. She agreed, and the two wed on May 26, 1994, at a private ceremony in the Dominican Republic. Married life for the couple was difficult, and the union ended in divorce in August 1996. Presley and Jackson continued to date, on and off, for four more years after their divorce.

Throughout his marriage with Presley, Jackson maintained a friendship with Debbie Rowe. She was the assistant of the pop singer's dermatologist and had been treating his appearance-changing disease vitiligo since the mid-1980s, and while he was separated from but still married to Presley. Rowe suffered a miscarriage and lost their baby in March 1996. Following the ordeal and the finalization of his first divorce, Jackson wed the pregnant Rowe on November 15, 1996, in Sydney, Australia. From the marriage, two of Jackson's three children were produced: son Michael Joseph "Prince" Jackson, Jr. (born February 13, 1997) and daughter Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson (born April 3, 1998). Jackson and Rowe divorced in April 2000, with Rowe giving full custody rights of the children to Jackson. His third and final child, son Prince Michael Jackson II, was born to an unnamed surrogate mother on February 21, 2002.

In July 2009, it was revealed Jackson's will named Diana Ross as the next-in-line guardian for his children, after his mother, Katherine.^[5] In September 2009, Rabbi and author Shmuley Boteach released a book titled The Michael Jackson tapes, based on taped conversations he had with Jackson in 2001.^[6] It included Jackson's thoughts on personal relationships in general and specific ones. His romantic feelings for two famous friends were widely cited in the media; when asked if he got jealous when his long-time friend Elizabeth Taylor dated other men, he replied, "Yes and no. I know that if we ever did anything romantically, the press would be so mean and nasty and call us the Odd Couple. It would turn into a circus and that's the pain of it all."^[7][8] It is speculated that Jackson might have dated nine women throughout his career, apart from Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, including former model Tatiana Thumbtzen and the actress Elizabeth Taylor, per various media outlets.^[9]

In 1993, Jackson was accused of sexually abusing the child of a family friend. The lawsuit was settled out of civil court; Jackson was not indicted due to lack of evidence. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further child sexual abuse allegations and several other charges. The FBI found no evidence of criminal conduct on Jackson's behalf in either case.