Liam Payne Has Ended His Engagement to Maya Henry

It's been less than a year since One Direction member Liam Payne announced he was off the market; the 26-year-old pop star proposed to his girlfriend, Maya Henry, after dating for two years. But all good things must come to an end.

Liam and Maya have officially called off their engagement and ended their relationship. In an interview, he said that he isn't good at relationships and he wants to work on himself.

Maya Henry is a Texas-native model who has a million followers on Instagram. She's currently repped by Select Model Management and has done work for Dolce & Gabbana, Alta Moda, and Sartoria. She made headlines back in 2016 when her dad spent $6 million on her quinceañera.

The huge party included performances by Nick Jonas and Pitbull (not One Direction, although that would have been cute!). Maya's father, Thomas J. Henry, owns a huge personal injury law firm that is “one of the biggest plaintiff’s firms in Texas,” according to his website.

Maya has been on the cover of Harper's Bazaar Vietnam, Grazia, Vogue Ukraine, Elle Romania, and others. If you check out her Instagram, the model regularly updates her feed with tons of modeling photos and snaps from an occasional trip to Whataburger (which is based in San Antonio, Texas).

Liam and Maya got engaged in August of 2020, but according to Page Six, they started dating in August 2018 after Liam and Cheryle Cole broke up. (Liam and Cheryle share a son named Bear.)

Before their engagement, there was some speculation that Liam and Maya had split in February 2020, but a source told the Daily Mail that the couple “[has] been taking time off social media lately and enjoying each other’s company away from the spotlight." But now, it looks like things are really over for the pair.

Maya and Liam first met at a 1D meet-and-greet back when she was just 15 years old. Liam has always had his heart on his sleeve about romance, once saying, "I've found someone who's genuinely my best friend, she's just so relaxed about everything and someone who's completely got your back with everything is just the wildest thing," to MTV News. He said that he'd been hurt before. 

"Honestly with love, I think you don't really understand it until it gives you that sting, it took a long time for me. Something really hurt me and it kind of made me appreciate love and people a lot more, for the longest time, living such an exposed life made dating really hard," he said.

On a June 2021 episode of Steven Bartlett's The Diary of a CEO podcast, Liam confirmed he was single. "I am, indeed," he said. "I feel like more than anything at this point, I'm more disappointed in myself that I keep on hurting people." Liam continued, admitting that he's bad at relationships and that he wants to work on himself before getting into another one.

"That annoys me. I've just not been very good at relationships," Liam said. "And I know what my pattern of things is with relationships, I feel at this point. I'm just not very good at them so I just need to work on myself before I put myself on to somebody else. And I feel like that's where I got to in my last relationship. I just wasn't giving a very good version of me anymore, that I didn't appreciate and I didn't like being."