When Da’Naia Jackson and Derrick Jaxn first met on the campus of Tuskegee University, it had been three weeks since she suffered a traumatic violation. Someone familiar to the then 19-year-old had sexually assaulted her. Rather than heal, Da’Naia says she slid into a romance with the now “relationship coach.”
“I went straight into a relationship, even though it wasn’t like immediately we started dating, but I met him, and there was interest there. I went straight into that without even acknowledging, dealing with the rape, I pretended like it never even happened and got myself into a relationship unhealed.”
While speaking with Laterras Whitfield on his Dear Future Wifey podcast, Da’Naia detailed her estranged marriage’s start and looming end. This is her first-ever and exclusive interview since Derrick first announced their divorce two weeks before Christmas 2022.
Derrick was charming and funny, with a prominent presence when they met in a shared class. His opening line to Da’Naia was, “Are you a model?” Meanwhile, Jackson sat there with “crazy braids that were not upkept” and “pimples all over [her] face.”
Their friendship and romance unfolded like “one of those classic fairytale” stories. She describes it as the “ugly duckling, smart girl in the corner” falling for the charismatic, popular guy.
But what came later between the two was far from a romance movie. In fact, by the end of it, Da’Naia claims Derrick admitted he had sex with nearly 100 women.
In an exclusive clip provided to The Shade Room, the estranged wife explained how she discovered this information. This part of Da’Naia’s conversation with host Laterras takes place in part two of the full interview, set to be released tomorrow (May 25).
“Part of the recovery process when we were in the program for infidelity nad all that is discovery. In discovery, it’s like we’ve trickled out a lot of information now it’s time to go to level zero, ground zero, they call it,” Jackson said. “So, he made a list of women, everything that he could recollect, and there was nearly a 100 women on there.”
However, Da’Naia never determined if Derrick’s list included lifetime partners or if he slept with all those women during their boyfriend-girlfriend stage, engagement, and marriage.
“In my mind, to me, [dating since 19] is a lifetime. So I’m thinking at least since we have met,” she said.
Da’Naia Jackson Admits To Studying The Bodies And Sexual Acts Of Women Derrick Cheated With
Da’Naia revealed Derrick’s alleged sexual partners more than two years after she sat by his side while he publicly admitted to cheating.
“I want to be clear I’m not talking about just casually kicking it, maybe a lunch or something like that. I’m talking about as serious as sex, sexual flirtation, and meeting up–those type of things,” Derrick Jaxn. “It’s important that I let you know I don’t stand by those actions. I don’t want to encourage anyone to do that. Secondly, I know I can’t build a platform preaching certain things, preaching against certain things, and then in my real life live contrary to that.”
At the time, in March 2021, Da’Naia sat in supportive silence, but a few days later, she spoke about her decision to stay beside Derrick.
Her estranged husband’s initial video and her follow-up explanations made her a trending topic–from her “helmet of salvation” to her loyalty to a cheater.
Following Derrick’s divorce announcement, Da’Naia didn’t say much on her public platforms. A few weeks prior, she had defended him by “cursing” anyone who spoke against her and Derrick’s name in “mockery, accusations, slanders, and lies.”
It wasn’t until March 2023 that Da’Naia broke her silence on the situation, citing her strong faith as her rock during the pending divorce.
“When the man you love & have kids with destroys your soul with reckless decision-making, you must CHOOSE be alone with God. When your heart has been shattered & reshaped into something that doesn’t quite feel normal inside your chest, with mental, emotional & soul pain that is unbearable, there is only ONE MAN who can fix it & that is the Holy Spirit,” Da’Naia wrote.
In part one of her exclusive Dear Future Wifey podcast interview, Da’Naia detailed some of Derrick’s cheating effects on her.
Wiping tears, she admitted to knowing the bodies of several women better than her own because she studied them and their behaviors, including Derrick’s sexual acts with these women.
All in all, Da’Naia says she became a shell of herself and didn’t know who she was.
“I knew several other women’s bodies better than I knew my own and I spent a lot of time…I went in such a deep hole where I was like studying these women. I would go to their profiles and I would study their pages and what they wear. I knew when they had met up so I watched their videos of them having sex so I would try to imitate that and recreate that in our relationship so that he could choose me and want me and that is a low point to be in.”
Jackson said she “hates” that she got to that point.
The Jacksons Dated For Nine Years Before Getting Married
As for their beginnings, Da’Naia says she and Derrick were “in love” after “three days” of hanging out and being his tutor. She claims they were smitten with each other, it felt right for the 19-year-olds.
“Looking back on it, I feel like there was a lot of compliments on the physical attributes as opposed to more of the mental and emotional attributes that I had. But then again, we were in love after three days.”
In love or not, Da’Naia says they were in a situationship for nine years before getting married. She says there was “commitment at times,” but they were “on and off again” through and after college.
“Leading up to our marriage, we were actually off. We were living in North Carolina at the time, 2015 going into late 2016, we went our separate ways because there other people involved and there had already been other people involved, even in college.”
She clarified that there were other women on Derrick’s part. However, she claimed she “set Derrick up” by trying to make him jealous of another guy–who was in on her plan. She says his infidelities during their college years created resentment, and she wanted him to feel the same hurt. They didn’t unpack his cheating or her revenge scheme until they were married years later.
“I was dealing with severe heartbreak. The things that I seen Derrick do with other women at the time, and I was really attached to him, and then you have to think I was coming off of that rape trauma–that I never dealt with, that I never talked to anybody else about,” Da’Naia recalled.
During those early years, Jackson says she first suspected his cheating by the change of his touch, and her gut feeling would push her to snoop. Jackson admitted that she would seek and find evidence of his infidelity only to end up not confronting Derrick. Instead, choosing to let him console her based on a lie she’d tell rather than the truth about seeing his indiscretions.
When things imploded, Da’Naia says she became a willing participant in just being one of the women on his roaster. Then, she got pregnant, and he proposed.
See what else Da’Naia said about the unfolding of their relationship:
On Tuesday (May 23), Da’Naia shared a smiling photo on her Instagram profile. Her caption said, “Healing looks good on me! Elevating by God’s Grace, thank you, Jesus.”
