Miley Cyrus' Dating History: Patrick Schwarzenegger, Nick Jonas & More
Miley Cyrus has packed a lot of life into her 32 years.
She's spent some of it single, her comfort being on her own admittedly hard-fought.
Following her 2015 breakup with Patrick Schwarzenegger—which still triggered a massive wave of nostalgia when the exes crossed paths at the Met Gala on May 5—she told TIME she was "finally OK with being alone."
Yet Miley doesn't mind companionship either, and dating both men and women has given her a lot of opportunities over the years for love. And having experienced all sorts of relationships of varying lengths and levels of seriousness—including an on-and-off romance with Liam Hemsworth that spanned a decade—she can better appreciate where she is now.
“I guess, for me, when my house burned down, a lot of my relationships also burned down," Miley told fans May 6 at a Spotify-hosted preview of her new album, Something Beautiful, referring to the 2018 fire that hastened her brief marriage to Liam, "and that again just led me to such magic and to have so much gratitude.”
Miley noted that she wished she could tell her younger self "to appreciate those darker times because, like I said, they are only leading you into the light."
And when there's light, the flowers bloom.
For several years now, the Grammy winner has been sharing something beautiful with musician Maxx Morando, calling the 26-year-old Liily drummer "very similar" to herself.
"We just don't take life too seriously," she told Harper's Bazaar last fall. But while she described herself as "specifically unspecific" and "very inconsistent," she does have a pattern of working "with the people that I love. And Maxx just inspires me so much."
Having experienced so many highs and lows in love, Miley is consistent about wanting to be in situations that make her happy. And she figured out a long time ago that staying true to herself is key.
Here is a look at the dating history that brought Miley to this place and time:
Not long after Miley Cyrus achieved Hannah Montana stardom at 13, she found young love with fellow Disney Channel star Nick Jonas. (She specified in her 2009 autobiography Miles to Go that June 11, 2006, was “the day I met my first love” at a charity event.)
They never went public—not least because the teens were too young for driver’s licenses—but it was the real deal, according to Miley.
"We became boyfriend and girlfriend the day we met," she told Seventeen in 2008. "He was on a quest to meet me, and he was like, 'I think you're beautiful and I really like you.' And I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I like you so much.'"
“Nick and I loved each other,” she continued. “We still do, but we were in love with each other. For two years he was basically my 24/7. But it was really hard to keep it from people. We were arguing a lot, and it really wasn’t fun.”
When they broke up at the end of 2007, Miley added, “At first I bawled for a month straight. I was so sad. I just went into this weird funk. And I dyed my hair black.”
At the time she ruled out neither marrying Nick nor never dating again. “Since [the breakup], I’ve realized that I’ve met so many great guys, but I like being the girl nobody can have,” she told the magazine. “No one can touch me, no one’s mine. I’m myself. I think it’s sexy to do your own thing.”
But it’s also fun to date, and Miley moved on with model-actor Justin Gaston in 2008 after he appeared on the Billy Ray Cyrus-hosted Nashville Star and Miley’s dad introduced them on the Hannah Montana set.
Asked about their four-year age gap—Justin was 20 to her 16—she told Glamour in 2009, “I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong, and I'm ready for people to accept it.”
Her fans were happy for her, she added. “And I haven't been that happy in a few years…working so hard, moving to L.A. from Nashville, going through a bad breakup. I'm finally happy again, and I think that is reflected in my music and my work. So honestly, I don't feel like there's anything to hide. And I love him so much I don't really care.”
Miley called Justin her “best friend,” but after about nine months of dating they split up as she prepared to spend two months in Savannah, Ga., filming The Last Song.
The Last Song turned out to be only the beginning for Miley and Liam Hemsworth.
By the end of the 2009 shoot, the costars were also kissing goodbye off-camera, and they made their red carpet debut as a couple at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on March 25, 2010.
“I'm not really a big lovey person,” Miley told People at the time. “I'm not, like, mushy. Liam was the first person that made me want to be in a real relationship."
The Australian actor proposed in May 2012 but their engagement ended in September 2013, not long after Miley’s MTV Video Music Awards performance signaled that perhaps she really couldn’t be tamed.
Or at least that she couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop just doing her own thing.
"I don't ever want to have to need someone again where you feel like without them you can't be yourself,” she told ABC News’ Barbara Walters in December 2013. Maybe she’d want to get married eventually, but, she explained, “I got engaged at 19. And I definitely wouldn't change being engaged. It was so fun wearing a fat rock for a few years. But now I just feel like I can actually be happy.”
She and Liam stayed friends, though, Miley telling Elle U.K. in September 2015, that they were “still so close and we love each other.”
At the time she admittedly felt “a lot older” than 22. “I don’t want people to ever think I’m better or smarter than anyone else who is 22, but all my friends are in their 30s and I grew up on a TV show where everyone was an adult,” she explained. “I think that’s why I swooped into the relationship with Liam—it was nice to be around someone my age.”
Miley started dating USC student and fellow entertainment family scion Patrick Schwarzenegger in 2014, which gave the “Party in the USA” singer an opportunity to be around people her age and have a taste of the college experience (or at least the football games).
But while the White Lotus actor is engaged to Abby Champion now, he wasn’t ready to settle down then: Photos of him looking cozy with another girl on his spring break trip to Cabo precipitated his breakup with Miley in 2015, though he denied anything untoward occurred.
“Omg. It's one of my best friends girlfriend,” Patrick tweeted at the time. “Would NEVER do anything against my GF."
Miley has talked candidly about her fluid sexuality, so it wasn’t that big of a surprise when she had a fling with model Stella Maxwell in 2015.
"I'm 22, I'm going on dates, but I change my style every two weeks, let alone who I'm with," Miley told Elle UK that September. "Stella's awesome, but as soon as you hang out with someone, you get labeled as in a relationship. And I'm like, you can't just assume that everyone I'm sitting at dinner with is a date."
Miley was also more focused than ever on her relationship with herself.
“There are times in my life where I’ve had boyfriends or girlfriends,” she told TIME in May 2015. “And there are times where I just love being with myself and don’t want to give part of myself away to someone else…I think that’s a new freedom for women, especially. I don’t know that my mother would have been able to be 22 and secure in being alone. But my future doesn’t rely on having a partner.”
Chemistry never their issue, Miley and Liam rekindled their romance at the end of 2015 and soon enough their engagement was back on as well.
But Miley made it clear she wasn’t in a rush to the altar, telling The Sun on Sunday in September 2017, “I'm just riding this out. In some relationships, you lose yourself by being with someone else. Actually, it made me find myself more. I have no idea what the next three years will bring, but if it's possible to get even happier, I'll take it."
One truly never knows what the future holds.
Miley and Liam married on Dec. 23, 2018, the bittersweet celebration coming less than two months after they lost their Malibu home in the Woolsey fire, which destroyed more than 1,600 structures in the area.
“I think it’s very confusing to people that I’m married,” Miley told Elle months later. “But my relationship is unique. And I don’t know that I would ever publicly allow people in there because it’s so complex, and modern, and new that I don’t think we’re in a place where people would get it…I definitely don’t fit into a stereotypical wife role. I don’t even like that word.”
She also may have been in a “hetero relationship,” she noted, but was still “very sexually attracted to women.”
That interview was published on July 11, 2019. News of their split surfaced a month later and Liam filed for divorce.
“So Glastonbury was in June, which was when the decision had been made that me and Liam's commitment to be married just really came from—a place of love first, because we've been together for 10 years—but also from a place of trauma and just trying to rebuild as quickly as we could,” Miley said on her "Used To Be Young" TikTok series in September 2023. The day she performed—June 30, 2019—"was the day that I had decided that it was no longer going to work in my life to be in that relationship."
Miley went on a PDA-packed Italian vacation with Brody Jenner’s ex-partner Kaitlynn Carter in August 2019 in the wake of the news that she was single again.
Overall, Miley only spent a couple of months with the Hills: New Beginnings alum, but the pair—who’ve never spoken of their much-photographed time together—remained friends.
By the end of 2019, Miley had connected with Cody Simpson and they dated for almost a year.
"We keep each other in a good place," the Australian singer said on The Kyle and Jackie O Show in October 2019, referencing their shared commitment to sobriety. "That's what's really healthy about it and I think that's the first time I've had that in a relationship. We're very, very much on the same page."
Cody told the Sydney Morning Herald the following April, “Being with Miley is a wonderful thing in my life. She is creative and inspiring, fiercely independent and encourages me to be my own person, too.”
Their romance fizzled in August 2020, but not because anyone came in with a wrecking ball.
"We went from being good friends, to just having a lot of the same friends, to being together for a while," Cody reflected on Australia’s 60 Minutes in May 2021. "Everything ended fairly amicably, and it was just one of those phases, I guess. You go through [it] and you learn a lot from it."
It’s kind of impossible to go on a blind date with Miley, but it was blind for her when a friend set her up with drummer Maxx Morando in the summer of 2021.
“I thought, 'The worst that can happen is I leave,’” she recalled to British Vogue in May 2023.
They were first spotted together in November 2021 at the Gucci “Love Parade” runway show in L.A. and have been together ever since.
“He’s very similar to me,” Miley told Harper’s Bazaar toward the end of 2024. “We just don’t take life too seriously.”
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