It’s not often that Kaia Gerber speaks candidly about both her love life and her career as a young model. But now, she’s happily doing both.

In a recent interviewGerber opened up about how her relationship with Euphoria star Jacob Elordi has helped her grow as a person and in her career as a young model and soon-to-be actress.

Speaking of her relationship with Elordi, that first started back in September 2020, Gerber admitted that he has “opened her eyes” to the “possibilities of love”.

“Being able to be with someone I trust, where we don’t want anything from each other, having a safe, steady relationship like that, has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of love and what it feels like to love without conditions,”

She continued: “Lust is touching other people or wanting them, but love is really seeing someone.”

With her debut acting role in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story on its way, Gerber revealed that dating an actor has also had its career-related perks.

“He’s a great person for me to go to because he’s gone to drama school and has years of experience that I don’t have. So I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m definitely going to be using you as a resource.’”

While Gerber and Elordi are only four years apart, she hinted that their pairing may be the most appropriate she’s had in her life. Forgoing a high school sweetheart to excel her career in the fashion industry, she admitted that her lack of high school experiences saw her gravitate toward dating older people.

“I was doing Fashion Month, but I was so young I had kissed, like, only one person. I had never had a high school sweetheart or anything,” she admitted.

“And so I tended to date older people because those were the people I was around. And I got put in situations where one day I’d wake up and be like, How did I get here? I have no idea what I’m doing, and I need help. And being able to ask for that help was amazing. That’s what real growing up means, not being afraid to ask.”

And while dedicating her youngest years to modelling saw her rise to global fame, the element of her career that she treasures the most is the confidence she gained to speak up and voice her truth.

“I started so young that people weren’t expecting me to have an opinion about things, and I was fine with that, because I didn’t feel comfortable enough in who I was,” she explained.

“But when I got a little older, I started to wait for someone, especially in interviews, to ask me something other than ‘What are three items in your purse?’ I was like, ‘You’re not asking Adam Driver that, right?’ I was waiting to be invited to speak. Eventually I invited myself. And that was a really freeing feeling.”

This story originally appeared on ELLE AUSTRALIA

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