Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello’s Relationship Timeline Is Filled With Kisses

Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes’ relationship has been a long time in the making. The “Señorita” singers first met when they were teens as supporting acts on Austin Mahone’s 2014 tour. At the time, Cabello was a member of Fifth Harmony and Mendes was crafting his solo career, so their busy schedules didn’t offer much time for the two to really get to know each other. Now in 2021, they’re still happily dating and relishing in their successful music careers, with both Mendes and Cabello set to perform separately at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 12.

Cabello fondly recalls when they first started talking seven years ago. “I remember I wanted to hang out with you, but you were always on the tour bus, just learning guitar,” Cabello told V Magazine in a joint interview with Mendes. He replied,“I didn’t talk to anybody. You were ... the only one of everybody on that tour who would say words to me.”

That connection between them grew stronger in 2015 when reunited backstage at a Taylor Swift concert and began spontaneously writing a song together that would become their snarling hit single “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Through their mutual passion for music, the singers spawned a close friendship that year “because we had the song together and we did a whole Jingle Ball tour together,” Cabello said in Mendes’ 2020 Netflix documentary In Wonder.

From there, music kept finding ways of pulling Mendes and Cabello back together. The two artists sparked romance rumors in 2019 after the release of their sizzling second duet “Señorita” and its music video that saw the two get intimate. In an interview with Clash, Cabello called writing music with Mendes “one of the most natural things in the world,” adding: “I think I’ve actually known him the longest out of anybody in the music industry ... it’s been really beautiful to kinda grow up together… It’s actually a really beautiful feeling to know that this person is always going to be in my life, we’re always going to love each other.”

Mendes later admitted that each one of his chart-topping hits have all been about her since the first time they met. In his documentary, he recounts seeing Cabello’s stunned reaction when he told her this. “We were in New York and my song comes on the radio or something, and the fact comes up that it’s about her, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s about you.’ And I’m like, ‘Everything is about you. They’ve always been about you,’” he confessed. “And she’s like, ‘Oh, my God.’ She literally had no idea. This whole time I thought she, like, knew.”

As their relationship progresses — the couple celebrated their two-year anniversary in July 2021 — creating a song that encapsulates their relationship has become impossible, according to Mendes, because no song could ever do it justice. “I think it’s like when you see a moon or stars and you try to take a photo of it with your iPhone, and then you just can’t, it just doesn’t look good. And you're like, ‘It's not supposed to be captured.’ You know? It's just supposed to be for us.”

Here’s everything we know about music’s Cinderella and her Prince Charming.

While Mendes and Cabello officially met in 2014 on the road, their friendship didn’t really blossom until 2015 when they reunited backstage at a Taylor Swift concert and began working on a song that became “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” It forged a strong bond between the two artists. “That was the first time we had ever really spent more than a few minutes talking to each other,” she told Rolling Stone in 2015. “I’m very lucky that we wrote the song because I also got a really good friendship out of that.”

Reflecting on the songwriting process with Mendes in another interview with Rolling Stone in 2019, Cabello recalled having feelings for the “Wonder” singer right off the bat. “During ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ I really bonded with him as more than a friend,” she said. “I think he did, too, but we were both really young, and he was experiencing the pressures of his career. I don’t think we knew what to do with those feelings. It was this awkward thing where we both liked each other, but we weren’t together.” Speaking with The Sun, she added: “Definitely there were feelings, but I think we were just too young to know what to do with them.”

Cabello and Mendes remained close friends and could often be seen online congratulating one another on their latest achievements, ranging from Cabello’s first solo single (“Crying In The Club”) to Mendes appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone.

But whenever either artist was pressed on whether they were in a friendship or a relationship, the response was always the same. “We’re just really close friends,” Mendes told PEOPLE in 2016. “She is one of those people who is just very easy to connect with and still, to this day, is one of my greatest friends. You find that instant connection with people, and she’s one of them.”

Mendes did, however, reveal that he would love to continue to work with Cabello on new music in the future, foreshadowing their next collaboration three years later. “She’s a f*cking great writer,” he said. “Even if we just wrote for other people, I would be happy to do that because she’s such a thrill to write with and work with.”

The pair reunited at the 2019 Grammy Awards, where both artists were nominated and performed their hits “In My Blood” and “Havana.” To commemorate the event, Cabello posted a collection of images on Instagram of the duo smiling and hugging, writing: “so proud of this amazing human !!!!!! seems like yesterday we were just kids singing Ed Sheeran songs in the dressing room, now we’re kids trying not to throw up cause we’re at the Grammys!!!! i love you forever ❤️”

Mendes and Cabello once again began to stir up romance rumors shortly after the release of their second duet titled “Señorita.” The song not only featured sensual lyrics about falling in love with someone, but its steamy music video saw them get up close and personal as a lovestruck motorcycle rider and waitress. After witnessing their onscreen chemistry, fans began to speculate about whether or not they were more than just friends, especially given that Cabello broke up with her then-boyfriend Matthew Hussey a few days after the song’s release.

They added extra fuel to the relationship fire when they were pictured heading out for brunch together in West Hollywood and smooching in San Francisco. According to Cabello, working on new music with Mendes brought back an onslaught of residual feelings that had lingered for Mendes since their very first collaboration. “An energy was there from the beginning, but after [“I Know What You Did Last Summer”], we didn’t spend as much time together. Our paths just didn’t cross in that way romantically until we started hanging out again and writing,” she said via Rolling Stone. “For me, it just brought it back.”

At the height of their “are-they-dating-or-not” phase in August 2019, Cabello and Mendes all but confirmed the rumors with a salacious performance of “Señorita” at the 2019 Video Music Awards. They coquettishly skirted around one another and paused for multiple near-kisses before they would delve back into the song. Despite their performances, Cabello told Elle in 2019 that she wasn’t too concerned with spelling out whether or not they were in a relationship to the outside world. “I don’t know; people can say whatever they want to say. They can speculate, but at the same time, we are going to live our own lives, enjoy it, and fall for each other like nobody is watching,” she said. “That is how I want to live. I never want to open the door for people to feel like they are involved. ... That’s why I’m so tight-lipped about it: because I want to protect it.”

In September 2019, Mendes confirmed that he was in a relationship while chatting with fans before his concert in Connecticut. The topic came up when a fan asked if he had recently been in love, a callback to a 2017 Clash interview in which he said he’d never been in love before. While he didn’t drop Cabello’s name, he gracefully revealed he was seeing someone: “Honestly, I wanna say I wanna talk to you guys about this stuff, but it’s not just me in the relationship. There’s another person involved, and I can’t say things that I feel. It’s not just me deciding you know?” Later that month, however, Cabello and Mendes poked fun at trolls who said they “kiss like fish” by recording an Instagram video of the couple egregiously licking each other’s faces and laughing.

By October 2019, Mendes was ready to share a few more details about their relationship. He told a crowd of fans in Hindmarsh, Australia, that they hadn’t been “dating for that long” and that they had only gotten together and started “dating since July 4 officially” according to People.

Opening up about their relationship in an interview with The Sun, Cabello called it “more scary” to date a long-time friend like Mendes because “you have more to lose” than if you’re dating someone new. “I think when you fall in love with somebody you’ve known for a long time, there’s more at stake,” she said. “But it also feels more special because it feels like the love story you see in the movies of people who have known each other for a long time but been too stupid to realize it or say it and then it happens — and that’s beautiful too.”

March 2020: They Socially Distanced Together During The Pandemic

Chatting with Jimmy Fallon in October 2020, Mendes revealed that he was staying in Miami with Cabello, which he had similarly done at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that started in March. “This is home,” he said. He also called having a daily routine a “really nice” experience. “At first when I got here it was like the beginning of the album process and I was in full panic state. I was like, ‘There’s no way I'm gonna make music,’” he shared. “But a week goes by and you start cooking eggs in the morning. You start doing laundry and taking dogs for walks. You have your coffee mug, you use the same one every day, and it just becomes really nice. Which sounds so normal for everyone else, but it’s abnormal for me.”

The couple opened up about their daily life together during their Global Citizen: Together At Home performance in March 2020. They gave a few recommendations for activities to do to pass the time, including re-watching the entire Harry Potter film series. “I think everybody should start Harry Potter from top to end,” Mendes said per Glamour. “That’s the way to go.”

September 2020: Cabello Congratulates Mendes On His New Album

On Sept. 30, 2020, Mendes released the first teasers online for his upcoming fourth studio album Wonder and among his first supporters online was Cabello herself. “The world could use some magic, beauty, and Wonder always, but especially right now,” she wrote on Instagram. “@shawnmendes what a gorgeous gift to the world. He’s crafted this album with every last bit of his soul, his spirit, and his essence with the purest of intentions. My love, I’m so proud of the person you are and I’m so excited for people to see and hear your heart. ❤️”

October 2020: “I Want To Be Strong In This Relationship”

In the lead up to the release of Wonder, Mendes revealed in an interview with Radio.com that the lyrics to his upcoming title track “Wonder” were heavily inspired by his newfound struggle to share his insecurities while in a relationship. “I thought that I was a pretty open, emotional, guy until I started being in a relationship with someone that I really, truly love and, realizing that ‘Oh no, I really have this big ego,’” he revealed. “I don’t want to show her that I’m hurting and I don’t want to show her that that offended me. I want to be the man, and I want to be strong in this relationship.”

It was that realization that his cavalier behavior was actually detrimental to their relationship that changed his perspective and made him see that “real strength does lie inside of being emotional and being vulnerable.” A few weeks later, Mends told SiriusXM that Cabello should be credited “all over” his album Wonder because she was his biggest supporter during the creation of the album. “There was nobody during the time that was giving me more advice and encouragement to just stick to the way I felt about the music that I wanted to make, you know?”

The couple adopted a golden retriever that they named Tarzan. The puppy is the newest addition of the Cabello-Mendes pet family, which includes Mendes’ black German Shepherd named Thunder and Cabello’s Chihuahua Eugene and Shih Tzu Leo. Tarzan has his very own Instagram (@tarzandadog) run by the couple that depicts the dog’s daily life including getting hugs from Mendes and FaceTiming with Cabello.

During this time period, the couple addressed their mental health. Speaking with GQ in November 2020, Mendes revealed that Cabello’s body positivity made him come to the realization that “taking that extra few hours of sleep, instead of waking up to pump iron, is a better choice sometimes.” He added: “It really changed my view of [my body]. It really changed my life.”

A year later, in an interview with Bustle in August 2021, Cabello recalled the experience of watching Mendes make a positive change in his mental health. “[He] would tell me like, ‘Dang, I have these kinds of thoughts or whatever.’ I think that him talking about it has been a really big step in transforming that relationship with his body,” she remembered. “I certainly feel obsessive, [like] I need to go to the gym, I need to do this, I need to lose weight quickly. I’ve felt like that. That’s the societal voice in your head.”

November 2020: She Pens A Post About Their Relationship

The “Havana” singer posted a sweet photo of her and Mendes sharing a kiss with a heartfelt caption about the beauty and complexities of love that she’s come to learn while dating Mendes. She opened the caption acknowledging that a relationship is “not just the happy, blissful moments you see in pictures and videos” but can bring its own unique set of challenges too. “When you’re in a relationship with someone, it feels like they are this mirror reflecting yourself back to you — I constantly have to confront my fears, my anxieties, my insecurities, my patterns of thinking, my beliefs about life and about myself,” she revealed. “It’s not as simple as it looks in pictures sometimes. sometimes, it’s messy and uncomfortable and ugly lol.”

However, she continued that there’s nothing comparable to the “force that is love” that she feels when she’s around Mendes; it’s one that gives her “relentless strength to be braver, wiser, and better” than in the past. “To be in love means to choose that person over and over again, to go through the messy stuff with. And that’s way more beautiful and raw and real than perfection,” she added. “I’m all for being vulnerable on social media because I think only the neatness and perfection of life is shown on here; and that can make us all feel extra lonely and weird! So raise your glass to the messiness and weirdness of being human and the miracle.”

On Dec. 7, Mendes and Cabello released a cover of “The Christmas Song” together. The song’s wholesome, home movie-inspired music video allowed fans to take a glimpse into the holiday season with the couple as they wore Christmas sweaters, hung up lights, decorated a tree, and sang together with their family, friends, and pets in Miami.

That same month, Mendes took Cabello back home to spend the holidays with his family in Canada. “I just know that she is [my person],” Mendes said per PEOPLE. “I think that your person really just has to be your best friend, and she has been that for so many years now. She is so unapologetically diving into love, and she really taught me what it is to be vulnerable and honest and true in a relationship ... She’s really so brave and courageous in love. I’m constantly learning from her.”

June 2021: Mendes Reveals Not Wanting To Be “Evil” Around Her

While speaking on Justin Baldoni’s Man Enough podcast, Mendes brought up a pivotal moment that caused him to reflect on the “darkness” inside of him and his inherent fear of being a bad person. It happened when the “Stitches” singer raised his voice at Cabello during an argument and she called him out on it. “She was like, ‘I don’t like it when you raise your voice. Why did you raise your voice?’ And I got so defensive,” he said. “And I felt her shrink, and I felt me grow, and I was like, ‘Oh god, this is the worst.’ I’m so terrified of being evil. I’m so scared to be bad. I don’t want to be bad.” The two ended up remedying their situation by speaking openly and honestly with one another. “I made it about my evil and my fear, and she comforted me,” he shared. “And then it took me like 20 minutes of us separately reading our books to be able to come back to her and be like, ‘God, that was a whole thing and I’m really sorry.’”

To properly celebrate the major milestone, the couple went on a relaxing holiday to the Caribbean Islands, and both shared adorable Instagram posts to commemorate their trip. Mendes’ short but sweet post featured an image of him and Cabello kissing by the beach with the caption: “happy 2 years my baby.” Cabello’s collage of photos from their vacation included the couple sharing a slice of watermelon, making silly faces, and smiling at one another. “happy anniversary Kuko ❤️” she wrote. “here’s to more joy, more friendship, and more love ❤️”

September 2021: Mendes Cheers On Cabello At Her Cinderella Premiere

In September, 24-year-old Cabello made her acting debut as the star of Amazon Studios rendition of the classic fairytale Cinderella and to say 23-year-old Mendes was extremely proud of her and her accomplishments would be an understatement.

In addition to walking the red carpet together at the film’s premiere in Miami, the singer penned a very sweet message to her on Instagram alongside a photo which saw featured the pair kissing on a balcony. “Congratulations my love, I’m so proud of you. I’ve never seen anybody work as hard as you did to show up everyday and be truly professional, kind and authentic,” Mendes wrote. “I admire you so much. Such a beautiful movie with a beautiful message 🤍 te amo mi vida”