How True Love Helped Jennifer Lawrence Believe in Marriage Again

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It’s not as if Jennifer Lawrence gave up on love.

But for a spell in late 2015 she wasn’t feeling super confident that it was in the cards for her. She had ended her five-year romance with fellow actor Nicholas Hoult more than a year earlier and a year-long on-and-off romance with rocker Chris Martin had fizzled as well, leaving the then-25-year-old secure in telling ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that she had stopped envisioning herself as a bride. While she was absolutely sure that she would have kids (“I definitely want to be a mother,”) she was less certain on the husband front. 

“I don’t know if I ever will get married and I’m OK with that,” the already well-decorated actress asserted in a Nightline interview that November. The solid friendships she’d held onto before she skyrocketed to Hollywood’s top tier and the pals she collected since (she had kicked off her enviable BFF bond with Amy Schumer just six months earlier) provided enough companionship. “I don’t feel that I need anything to complete me,” she explained. “I love meeting people—men, women, whatever; I love people coming into your life and bringing something.” 

Then Cooke Maroney arrived and brought with him some hope. Some eight months after the lauded star (since exploding onto the scene with 2010’s Winter’s Bone, she’s collected three Golden Globes and won an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook, her second of four nominations) began quietly dating the 34-year-old art gallery director, they’re engaged, her rep confirms to E! News. 

Which meant the pair, who have grown increasingly comfortable striding hand-in-hand on the streets of New York since their romance went public last summer, had much to celebrate during a recent outing to Soho stalwart Raoul’s. Tucked into a back booth at the timeless French bistro, the 28-year-old’s “giant” new piece of jewelry was hard to miss, a source told Page Six. “They seemed like they were celebrating and people were talking about it,” said the source. “The ring was very noticeable.”

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As is Lawrence’s 180-degree stance on forever-type commitments. To be fair, she was admittedly lost after calling cut on the relationship with Hoult that had consumed her early adult years. She and the British actor, 29, had met in 2010 while filming X-Men: First Class, just as the Kentucky native was on the precipice of becoming an award show darling. They split briefly in 2013, but were brought back together for X-Men: Days of Future Past before calling it quits again in August 2014. 

Suddenly Lawrence was looking at a world that didn’t include her most formative relationship to date. Nor was she set to get covered in the blue body paint required to play X-Men‘s Mystique or don Katniss’ braids, with filming on The Hunger Games franchise wrapped as well. 

“These movies had been my life for so long and they had to come first in everything,” she said. “I was also in a relationship with somebody for five years and that was my life. So my life was this person and these movies and we broke up around the same time that I wrapped those movies. Being 24 was this whole year of, ‘Who am I without these movies? Who am I without this man?'”

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By his own assertion, Lawrence’s relationship with Hoult hadn’t been jarred by her quick ascension to the A-list or Hunger Games fans’ rabid desire to know every piece of her world. “The privacy thing obviously changes but the rest pretty much stays the same,” he told V Magazine months ahead of their final breakup. “It’s like that thing whereby you don’t believe your own hype. Enjoy the good times, but don’t get swept away with it. I think that’s something she’s capable of doing, and that’s what makes her special, but yeah, it is very odd, and I am just kind of a bystander in many ways. It is well deserved for her. I haven’t really seen any change in her.”

The problem, a source told Us Weekly, was he simply wasn’t seeing enough of her. No longer committed to the same film set (he went on to film Dark Places, Mad Max: Fury Road and Kill Your Friends), “They just weren’t together a lot,” said the source, “her life is a whirlwind. They have gotten back together before, it just got to be too hard for now.”

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Listening to him read the reviews aloud was even more grueling. “I finally was just like, ‘It’s not healthy. Neither of us are doing it because if I read it, I start getting defensive.’ Especially because it’s my man.” 

So it made sense that when pal Simpson mentioned she had someone in mind who was industry-adjacent (Maroney’s gallery, Gladstone 64 represents bold-named artists such as Lena Dunham‘s father Carroll Dunham) but decidedly not part of Hollywood, Lawrence was interested.

It’s not as if she was holding any animosity to the previous men she had dated, all as well-known as herself. “I’m friends with all my exes, actually. For the most part, yeah,” she told Maron. “I have a theory. I think it’s because I’m blunt. I don’t think that you can have any sort of bad relationship with anybody if you’re just blunt. Everybody always knows how you feel at all times and there’s no lying, it’s just honesty. Everybody’s a good guy to each other. All my boyfriends have been wonderful. Nick [Hoult] was a great boyfriend.”

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None had left her crushed, really, though each split was admittedly a blow to her confidence. “Every time I go through a breakup, it’s not like my heart isn’t broken. They just never did anything to like, devastate me. They were just good people. Maybe that’s also the secret. I’m attracted to good people.”

But she was ready to find one that could really last. “I have not had sex in a very long time,” she confessed to Stern on his radio show. “I would like to have a relationship, you know—it’s hard out there!”

So with longtime crush Larry David once again not responding to her overtures at pal Schumer’s February 2018 vows, she agreed to a set-up. 

Weeks into her romance with Vermont-bred Maroney, a fixture at high-end art openings in New York City, they went from being careful not to be seen together, to openly in love, going about their relationship much like any Manhattan couple. On any given day, they could be spotted at The Smile, a favorite of Lawrence pal Justin Theroux, Italian restaurant and wine bar Felice 64, taking in a New York Rangers game or simply picking up groceries with trips to two of the world’s most romantic cities—Paris and Rome—thrown in for good measure.  

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By January, according to Us Weekly, the duo were bringing their bags back to a shared apartment. “Things between them are very serious,” an insider told the outlet. “They definitely appear to be in it for the long haul.” 

So it would seem. Now Maroney and Lawrence have the task of putting together nuptials that will leave the star feeling just as emotional as when she watched Schumer wed last year. “It was beautiful,” she raved to ET of the spontaneous ceremony. “It was very sudden, but it was, I was sobbing the whole—his vows were stunning. It’s when two people really love each other and they really mean it, it shows.”

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