JoJo Siwa Boyfriend Chris Hughes Wasn’t Supposed To Happen

JoJo Siwa has spent years being very clear about one thing: she’s attracted to women, not men. So when she found herself falling for her now JoJo Siwa boyfriend, Chris Hughes, she says it genuinely caught her off guard — and she’s been refreshingly open about working through what that actually means for how she understands her own sexuality.

How The JoJo Siwa Boyfriend Story Actually Started

Siwa and Hughes met as contestants on Celebrity Big Brother UK, back in April 2025. At the time, Siwa was in a relationship with Kath Ebbs, who uses they/them pronouns, and the two split not long after the show wrapped. Siwa and Hughes initially insisted their bond was purely platonic — Hughes even told ITV’s This Morning it was more of a “soulmate friendship” than anything romantic. That changed just weeks later. On June 2, 2025, Siwa confirmed to The Guardian that things had shifted: “I’m absolutely head over heels for him.” Hughes, a former Love Island UK star, had also publicly defended Siwa from homophobic comments made by a fellow housemate during their time on the show — a small detail, but one that gives some early context for how their friendship got close enough to turn into something more.

She Never Thought She’d Be Attracted To A Man

Speaking on the Wildmen podcast on September 8, Siwa laid out just how unexpected this whole shift has felt. “I’ve always been grossed out by dudes,” she told hosts Dylan Sprouse and Brendan Columbus, explaining that even though she could recognize conventionally attractive men as attractive in an abstract sense, she’d never once felt an actual spark. Hughes, she said, was someone she initially saw as just another friend, until she realized the idea of him being a romantic partner didn’t gross her out the way she expected it to.

“Once I realized that I wasn’t grossed out by the thought of him being a boy, I was like, ‘Whoa,'” she said. “It was weird because I’d never thought that before.” She’s been honest that people can dig up old interviews where she swore she’d never end up with a man, and she doesn’t try to pretend those past comments didn’t happen. She simply says Chris turned out to be the exception nobody, including her, saw coming.

What Pansexual And Queer Actually Mean

Siwa cycled through a few different labels while figuring this out in public — something she addressed head-on during the podcast. “I put the label pansexual on it. Then it was confusing,” she explained, before eventually landing on queer as the word that fits best for her right now. For anyone unfamiliar with the terminology, GLAAD’s glossary of LGBTQ terms describes pansexual as attraction to people regardless of gender, while queer tends to work as a broader umbrella term, covering a range of sexual orientations and gender identities that don’t fit neatly into narrower labels. Siwa’s own explanation lines up with that pretty closely: she says she now sees herself under “the umbrella term of queer or pansexual, because yeah, I fell in love with a boy.”

The Breakup That Came Right Before It

It’s worth noting the timing here, since it adds useful context to the story. Siwa and Ebbs had been together since November 2024, and their split happened right around the same period Siwa’s friendship with Hughes was deepening on Celebrity Big Brother. Ebbs has previously said publicly that Siwa broke up with them at the show’s after-party, which Siwa confirmed at the time. Looking back at their full relationship timeline, the shift from friendship to relationship with Hughes happened gradually over about six weeks rather than overnight, which fits with how genuinely unexpected Siwa says the whole thing felt to her.

Where They Stand Now

More than a year on, Siwa and Hughes are still together, having marked their one-year anniversary with a heartfelt post celebrating what she called the greatest gift she’d ever received. Siwa has also spoken to The Guardian about the bigger picture here, reflecting that there’s real beauty in the process of discovering yourself, regardless of what label ends up fitting. Whatever term she eventually settles on for good, the JoJo Siwa boyfriend story has turned into a fairly public, fairly honest example of someone updating their own understanding of their sexuality in real time, without pretending the earlier version of that story never existed. For fans who’ve followed her journey from Dance Moms through her earlier coming-out moment and now this, the JoJo Siwa boyfriend chapter looks less like a contradiction and more like the next honest step in a story she’s never tried to hide.