ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The on-again, off-again engagement between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is off — again.
The 19-year-old daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called off her wedding plans after Mr. Johnston told her he may have fathered a baby with another woman.
Miss Palin did not identify the woman when she gave a teary interview to People magazine to announce the breakup. A pregnant ex-girlfriend of Mr. Johnston has publicly denied he is the father.
Miss Palin said Mr. Johnston told her about the baby on July 14, the day the couple announced their re-engagement. Miss Palin and the 20-year-old Mr. Johnston have a toddler son together, Tripp.
Representatives for Miss Palin and Mr. Johnston did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday. But Mr. Johnston’s attorney, Rex Butler, told The Washington Post he doubts the pair have split permanently.
“These young folk have a lot of pressure on them right now,” he said. “All you have to do is watch that show ’Bridezillas’ — it’s on and off, on and off, depending on the pressures.”
Miss Palin earlier said she didn’t have her mother’s full support over reconnecting with Mr. Johnston. She said both her mother, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, and father, Todd, worried she would get hurt again.
Miss Palin said the “final straw” was when Mr. Johnston told her he was going to Hollywood to see a hunting show, but actually he went there to star in a music video mocking her family.
In the video being shot this month in Los Angeles, Mr. Johnston will play a lover whose romance is thwarted by his girlfriend’s disapproving mother. The project is based on the song “After Love” by singer-songwriter Brittani Senser.
“He’s just obsessed with the limelight, and I got played,” Miss Palin told People.
Mr. Butler told The Washington Post that Miss Palin, “if she’s going to be honest,” doesn’t want Mr. Johnston in Hollywood.
“She wants him to sort of be like Todd Palin in the background while she does the running around,” Mr. Butler said. “Levi, on the other hand, is not ready to settle into that role while he has other options.”
Relations between the Palins and Mr. Johnston and his family have been strained since the couple broke off their first engagement soon after Tripp was born in December 2008. Miss Palin later became a public advocate for abstinence.
The relationship later devolved into a messy tabloid drama as Mr. Johnston posed nude for Playgirl and trashed Mrs. Palin in interviews. The sudden re-engagement marked a rapid turnaround for the couple, who just months ago were fighting over child support and Mr. Johnston’s criticism of her family.
Mrs. Palin told People that she hopes her daughter will “move forward in life with her same forgiving, gracious, optimistic spirit, but from henceforth she’ll know to trust but verify.”
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