Pop singer Justin Bieber has so much wisdom for one so young. Bieber, 21, perfectly describes what Love is in a cover article for Complex magazine. He said, “Love is a choice, not a feeling.”

You also fell in love at an early age.
Yes.

What did you learn from it?

“I learned a lot. I moved in with my girlfriend when I was 18. Started my own life with her. It was a marriage kind of thing. Living with a girl, it was just too much at that age. But we were so in love. Nothing else mattered. We were all about each other. But when it’s like that and you get your value from that, people will always disappoint you. Your girl or your dude, they’re always going to disappoint you. Your full identity can’t be in that person. My identity was in her. Her identity was in me. When stuff would happen, I would lose my freakin’ mind, and she would lose her mind, and we would fight so hard because we were so invested in each other. Love is a choice. Love is not a feeling. People have made it seem in movies that it’s this fairy tale. That’s not what love is. You’re not gonna want to love your girl sometimes but you’re gonna choose to love her. That’s something in life that I had to figure out. I can’t lean on people.”

You’ve worked with a lot of artists; now you’re working with Kanye. How is he different?

“It’s his creative input. I’ll play a song, and he’ll be like, “Man this reminds me of like…a blacklight sunset,” or something. He’ll try to paint these pictures for you. It’s not the average way. He doesn’t just come in and say, “This sounds good; this sounds bad.” He’ll be like, “This is this because the world needs this.” He comes from a whole different point of view.”

Do you think you’ll always compare relationships to the one you had with Selena?

“Yeah. You get scarred from certain things. Even like—I’m kind of seeing this girl, right? I’m shy about doing or saying certain things, and then I say it and it’s not even a problem. And I’ll remember when I couldn’t…. You’re just scarred and you don’t do something because in your last relationship they’d freak out, but [the new person is] just like, “What are you talking about?”

On religious freaks being too pushy

“Some people are bad communicators. They find something that works so well for them and they wanna share it, but they don’t know how to share it so they’re kind of pushy. There’s a lot of really weird stuff going on at churches. You ever flicked on a channel and a late-night church show is on? Sometimes it’s like, “You better do this or you gon’ die and you gon’ burn in hell!” And you’re like, I don’t want anything to do with this. I’m the same way. I’m not religious. I, personally, love Jesus and that was my salvation. I want to share what I’m going through and what I’m feeling and I think it shouldn’t be ostracized. I think that everybody should get their chance to share what they’re doing or where their journey is headed, whether they’re straight or gay or what they believe in. We’re in a place now in 2015 where people have gotta be open-minded. I actually feel better and more free now that I know what I can do and what I can’t do. My voice, I’m not gonna let it not be heard anymore. I’m gonna use my voice for a reason. I think that people, as soon as they start hearing me saying I’m a Christian, they’re like, “Whoa Justin, back up, take a step back.” Also, I do not want to shove this down anyone’s throat. I just wanna honestly live like Jesus. Not be Jesus—I could never—I don’t want that to come across weird. He created a pretty awesome template of how to love people and how to be gracious and kind. If you believe it, he died for our sins. Sometimes when I don’t feel like doing something, but I know it’s right, I remember, I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t feel like going to the cross and dying so that we don’t have to feel what we should have to feel. What Jesus did when he came to the cross was basically say, “You don’t have to feel any of that stuff.” We could take out all of our insecurities, we could take away all of the hurt, all the pain, all the fear, all the trauma. That doesn’t need to be there. So all this healing that you’re trying to do, it’s unnecessary. We have the greatest healer of all and his name is Jesus Christ. And he really heals. This is it. It’s time that we all share our voice. Whatever you believe. Share it. I’m at a point where I’m not going to hold this in.”