Whitney Houston's longtime close friend and confidante Robyn Crawford has shared new details about her romance with the music legend, opening up about their relationship for the first time in her forthcoming memoir, A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston.
"Our friendship was a deep friendship," Crawford said in an ahead of the book's release.
"In the early part of that friendship, it was physical."
In her book, Crawford shares how the pair met as teenagers in 1980 and quickly became not only inseparable - but physically intimate.
"It was during that first summer that we met," Crawford told NBC.
"It was the first time our lips touched. And it wasn’t anything planned, it just happened. And it felt wonderful. And then not long after that we spent the night together. And that evening was the night that we touched. And that just brought us closer."
She added: "We never talked labels, like lesbian or gay. We just lived our lives, and I hoped it could go on that way forever.”
However, as Houston's singing career began to skyrocket it became harder for the pair to conceal their relationship - something Houston struggled with, according to a book excerpt published in .
Crawford said that once Houston had signed onto a new record deal with Clive Davis at Arista, their physical relationship came to an end - with Houston gifting Crawford a blue Bible.
“She said we shouldn’t be physical anymore because it would make our journey even more difficult," Crawford writes in her memoir.
“She said if people find out about us, they would use this against us, and back in the ’80s that’s how it felt.”
According to Crawford, Houston's mother, Cissy Houston, had a big problem with how close the two were, describing their relationship as "unnatural".
“Whitney told me her mother said it wasn’t natural for two women to be that close," Crawford writes.
"But we were that close.”
is set for release on November 16.
