if you’ve been a part of bandom, you know that it’s a misconception that pete wentz dated jeanae white when she was fifteen and he was twenty-four years old and probably accept that he dated her when she was seventeen because that’s the legal age of consent in illinois thanks to this post. neither of those statements are true and were made from rumors and jumping to conclusions. this post is here to debunk and question those theories while being respectful of all involved.
in 2002 pete was a bipolar college dropout with dreams about being a rockstar and famous within the local hardcore/emo scene thanks to having a few bands under his belt. at the time, he was dating a woman named morgan, someone he connected with while attending university.
it was well known that they were a couple and head over heels for each other through both parties talking about each other on their blogs and constantly being seen together. out of all of pete’s relationships previous to ashlee simpson and the current one he’s taken up with meagan camper, morgan seemed likely to be the most sincere one.
(screenshots of pete and morgan’s messages in 2003)
during pete’s time with morgan, he was introduced to jeanae at a party.
jeanae was fifteen at the time and a fan of multiple local bands, including some that pete had been in. she was star struck when she met pete and they clicked immediately, quickly becoming friends. despite pete having a girlfriend and being committed to her, jeanae has a crush on pete and wanted his attention. her way of achieving this was to emulate morgan by dying her hair red and frequently contacting pete to talk and crying/cutting herself when he wouldn’t respond or show interest, as seen here in a quote that has been passed around and is supposedly written by jeanae.
(jeanae is pictured on the left, morgan in the right)
in late 2004, morgan and pete broke up, supposedly because morgan cheated on him. pete was crushed and depressed because of it. due to this and the release of fall out boy’s debut album take this to your grave, people assume that the violent lyrics written are about pete’s relationship with morgan. this is a misconception because the majority of lyrics on tttyg were written by patrick stump after pete told him to be “more brutal” with his songwriting. the original album cover even featured a photo taken of morgan sleeping.
the romance pete and jeanae shared was false, as pete only began dating jeanae as a rebound from morgan and jeanae pushed him until he finally said yes. because pete was a famous rockstar with millions of fans who adored and idolized him, jeanae was the target of hatred and privacy invasion from many of them, just as morgan had been. to counter this, jeanae began going on tour with pete and appearing on the set of music videos to ensure that he wasn’t cheating or encouraging people to dislike her.
on camera they seemed to be the epitome of true love, moving in together and owning a dog, but their relationship was dysfunctional and centered around emotional manipulation. as far as is known, there wasn’t any physical violence between jeanae and pete but there was plenty of verbal dispute from both for various reasons such as accusations of infidelity, threats of self harm and suicide from jeanae and interference with pete’s friendships. by the time they’d broken up in 2007, jeanae was reported as being controlling by pete to rolling stone magazine and rumors of her cheating on him ran amuck on gossip blogs. pete’s suicide attempt in 2005 seems to be semi connected to his relationship with jeanae, likely used as a way to be able to get away from a life with her.
images began to surface of jeanae and pete before 2005 thanks to fans attempting to find embarrassing pictures of jeanae, causing some to believe he’d dated her before she was legal aged (17 in illinois). rumors spread rapidly on livejournal and became an inside joke for some of FOB’s fan base. this also lead people to believe that TTTYG was about jeanae when there was no known muse for the album.
in 2008 pete moved to los angeles, taking the dog he’d purchased while living with jeanae (hemingway) with him. a blog post about that by jeanae can be found here.
around this time, pete became involved with ashlee simpson, whom he later married and had a child with. jeanae befriended a couple of anti ashlee blogs out of spite and jealousy and made several posts about her relationship with pete, mostly seeming to defend him whenever people tried to make assumptions about their relationship and speak of him in a positive light. she also made a post that seemed to be an apology vaguely connected to dating pete.
i’m sure a lot of information is missing but what has been brought forward is enough to confirm that pete didn’t date or prey on an underaged teenage girl. this post doesn’t advocate for hatred or harassment of jeanae or for bothering pete wentz about her. this exists only to bury the rumor that pete is a pedophile and abuser.
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