Jessica Simpson Speaks!

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Jessica Simpson has spoken out about seeing her ex-husband with another woman and admits that it was very painful in the beginning.

"Oh, it hurt me," Simpson told Elle in its March issue. "Two or three weeks later? Yeah, I'd say it kind of hurt me."

If you think Jessica and Nick are not on speaking terms, think again. She admits that the two still keep in touch. "He's so much a part of my life, how could I not be? Any guy who's going to be with me from this day forward has to understand that."

"I want to tell you everything, but I have to sew my lips together," she says. "It's hurt me in the past."

When the interviewer comments, "I feel that with this new privacy of yours, I'm going to wake up one morning, pick up the paper and read . . . " Simpson interjects: "That I'm married! Maybe."

Asked if she's "totally in love right now," Simpson says, "I didn't say yes."

"I let people in on who I am and how I react to my husband," Simpson says. "That's a big deal. Celebrities don't do that. So I think they brought me down just because I stopped talking and because I have not spoken – and will not speak – about my divorce. And I think people feel like I owe them my reality right now."

However, she does admit that she thought there was hope for her marriage up until a few days before she and Lachey announced their split. So what went wrong? "I watched The Notebook on a plane home to Waco to be with my grandparents," she says. "It's a great love story."

The movie itself, she says, was "not what sealed it. I just figured out the statement. It was about that moment of desperation. I needed to breathe."