Nick Cannon is opening up about his experience with insecurities during his marriage to Mariah Carey.

“I didn’t actually really care what the world thought because the perception, you know, that is what it is. People are going to love you one day, hate you the next day,” Cannon explained during a new episode of the Ray Daniels Presents podcast. “I could care less about that. … But going to myself with that pressure of, ‘Who am I?’”

“I got married in my 20s, you know what I mean? To the biggest star in the world. My trajectory was here,” he added, putting his hand lower, “and then hers — she’s already in a different stratosphere.”

He noted that he struggled to find his identity outside of the relationship, as well as his sense of masculinity. “I would lay up at night thinking, like, ‘Is is this who I am? Am I Mariah’s man? Is that what my life is supposed to be?’ There’s nothing wrong with it,” he shared. “I’m carrying a purse, the diaper bag and, you know, I’m standing on the corner like, ‘Wait.’ She’s rocking being the alpha.”

“I believe she needs a dude like that. I’m just not that dude,” Cannon concluded, agreeing that she “deserves” to be the “alpha” in her relationships.

Carey and Cannon tied the knot in the Bahamas in 2008, and welcomed their twins, Moroccan and Monroe, in April 2011. The five-time Grammy award winner and comedian separated in 2014, and their divorce was finalized in 2016. Cannon still has nothing but glowing words to say about the superstar singer. “I get a lot of this delightful disposition from her,” he told The Shade Room in 2023. “She’s just always happy, always doing for others. No matter what’s happening in life. I’m like, ‘Wow, a person can really operate like that and don’t allow negative energy into their space.’ When I found that out, about how remarkable she was, that woman is not human. She’s a gift from God.

The Masked Singer host has since fathered 10 more children. He shares twin sons Zion and Zillion, as well as daughter Beautiful Zeppelin with Abby De La Rosa; Golden Sagon, Powerful Queen and Rise Messiah with Brittany Bell; Zen — who died in December 2021 — and Halo Marie with Alyssa Scott; and Onyx Ice Cole with LaNisha Cole. Most recently, he welcomed son Legendary Love with Bre Tiesi.