Since the news broke about Janet Jackson’s split from producer and longtime boyfriend Jermaine Dupri, does she seem happier to you? I can’t help but notice how youthful and content she seems in these pics taken in Milan, Italy yesterday.

I’ve always thought of Janet (and her older sister Rebbie) as the most stable Jacksons. So it seemed odd that she would want to be with a cheating dog like JD who obviously was using her to elevate his own status.

When Janet and JD were together she looked tired, old and wary in her pictures.. She also looked like she had reconciled herself to the fact that he just wasn’t going to do right by her — and she couldn’t do any better. She displayed the same stoic resignation in her longterm relationship with her ex-husband Rene.

Suffering in silence while your man sows his wild oats is a learned behavior that she obviously picked up from her mom, Katherine.

The entire industry knows that it was JD who (along with MTV) helped ruined Janet’s career by orchestrating that disastrous nipple stunt during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004.

But love, like alcohol and drugs, is a very unrelenting addiction. You really can’t see the damage it causes until you kick the habit for good.