Melyssa Ford is more than meets the eye. Many know her from her days as a sought-after video vixen. These days, the 48-year-old is a thriving media personality who serves as a permanent co-host on the Joe Budden Podcast while juggling her own wellness-focused Hot & Bothered broadcast. In addition to educating and empowering women in this space, Ford is open about her journey—especially when it comes to love. In an exclusive conversation with ESSENCE, Ford dishes on why she’s at peace in her singlehood, doing the work to heal after some unhealthy partnerships, and the lessons she’s collected as a legend in an industry that applauds being beautiful but not seen.
In the first few minutes of our discussion, Ford makes it clear that she won’t be holding back—especially when it comes to her views on relationships and how she arrived at them. She’s open and transparent about the ways in which her upbringing has shaped her perspective on the complexities of love. “I was very young when I started to witness domestic violence,” she says, fighting through tears. “I was five and my parents were really big people. My mom was Russian and Norwegian [and stood] five foot ten. My dad looked like a former football player. [It was like] clash of the titans. I’m in between these two screaming. It’s like they hated being around each other.”
With that as her example, the idea of a loving relationship felt foreign to her. She recalls viewing stable Black love dynamics she’d seen on The Cosby Show and A Different World as purely fictional and not at all obtainable for herself. And as she hit puberty, things got even more complicated. She recalls that her mind was unable to keep up with the physical changes she was experiencing. “I had to revert from an unattractive, overweight little girl with an afro that sometimes got mistaken for a boy to suddenly having this bodacious figure at 11,” she says. “I was now found attractive by the same boys who were throwing spitballs at me.”
Ford, who was discovered in her early 20s working as a bartender in her native Toronto, went on to become one of the most iconic faces of the video vixen era. She’s appeared in music videos for a laundry list of artists, including Jay-Z, Usher, The Lox, and more. Unsurprisingly, there’s been no shortage of well-to-do men vying to shoot their shot after laying eyes on her. But it’s not as flattering as it sounds.
“The vast majority of men who crossed my path only wanted the one-dimensional pinup version of me,” she says. “A lot of men led with gifts like extravagant condos, cars, and diamonds. I’ve had somebody pick me up on our first outing and put a diamond Rolex on me.” Still, Ford was left yearning for an emotional connection, which proved harder to achieve as her notoriety increased. It dawned on her that, “I did not trust that I could ever be my total vulnerable self. The most human parts of me—my severe depressive episodes, the things that make me a human being—I was made aware that there was no interest in knowing that part of me.”
Ford has openly shared that she’s been engaged twice. “[With my first fiancé] I knew I did not want to marry him,” she says. “I knew I did not love him as much as he loved me, and I did not think that that was fair. The next guy that I was dating, I was madly in love with. He was a professional football player from the south. Six months into the relationship, the real him showed up.”
That relationship is where the cycle of abuse once again snuck its way into Ford’s life. She describes being love-bombed and showered with expensive gifts, fancy dinners, and lavish trips—all while trying to hide bruises on her body from friends. “After two years [with this person], there was some voice inside my head that was just like, ‘Melyssa, you will die if you stay here.’” The past now informs every step she takes toward love—carefully, and with her eyes wide open. She’s pouring that clarity into herself and her career, choosing purpose over distraction.
As the sole female contributor to the Joe Budden Podcast, where she’s often seen checking misogynistic views, she shows up in authenticity and in truth—lending a woman’s perspective to correct the blind spots of her male cohorts. She metaphorically likens her time on the show to “an anthropological experiment” that exposed her to the ways men think in an unfiltered way. She is also self-funding her Hot & Bothered podcast, envisioning it as a safe space for Black women to get educated about their health and fall in love with the idea of aging. “I just want more women to feel seen, heard, understood, and to know that they are really not alone during this stage of their life where everything feels uncertain and disorienting,” she says. Ford hopes to expand the podcast’s reach with tours and in-person events.
That said, as her career ambitions evolve, so do her aspirations when it comes to love. Therapy has helped Ford pinpoint her past emotional availability, which removed the fog that clouded her previous dating decisions. She recognized that her love language is quality time, and that it had been a missing component in most of her relationships. Today, she’s firm on her boundaries and approaches dating from a place of serenity.
“I’m not looking for somebody to complete me,” she says. “I’m not looking for somebody to claim me [or] for male companionship, just for the sake of being able to say I’m in a relationship.” Ford believes that she’s done the work in therapy to heal and get clear about what true love looks like—for her. She embraces the parts of herself that she once thought were unlovable and says her ideal partner would be someone who has also done the work of healing, inside and out. “He would have to be on the same kind of journey towards healing,” Ford states emphatically. “He would have to be there with me because I can’t accept anything less. I wouldn’t be able to function with somebody less. Trust me, I’ve tried.”