Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown: at the heart of their unstable relationship

While the world first learned of Whitney Houston’s drug addiction when she entered rehab in 2004, some initially blamed her husband, rapper Bobby Brown.

But Brown, who has written a new memoir Every little stepdenies being the first to introduce her to drugs and claims in an ABC interview with Robin Roberts (aired in full tonight) that he first saw her taking drugs on their wedding day.

“People want to blame Bobby, (but) there are things that predate Bobby,” a close family friend told PEOPLE after his death in 2012. “It turns out that meeting Bobby was the one of those things – like people were drawn together.” They had this kind of Bonnie and Clyde mentality where it was them against the world and having to defend themselves against the world and that bonded them even tighter. ”

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“People think Bobby Brown introduced him to drugs, but that’s not true. On the contrary, it was she who introduced Bobby to real drugs,” explains a music source. “Bobby was just smoking weed. They had more in common than you might think…the rough guy from the Boston neighborhoods with that bad boy image and America’s princess. She loved him. She really loved him. In a way, Bobby brought stability to her life, and she had someone who truly cared about her. Unfortunately, it became too much for both of them to handle. They squandered their money, they began doing more and more drugs together, and they were both struggling with declining careers. »

In the meantime, she made him one of her advisors when her career took a decisive turn. “She did a lot of things to please him,” says this close family friend.

The relationship also became volatile when allegations surfaced that Brown had hit Houston. In 2003, he was reportedly charged with battery for alleged domestic violence. But when asked how far the fights between the couple went, Houston said Red Book in 1999: “It’s me who knocks. »

Eventually, in 2006, Houston filed for divorce and was granted full custody of their daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 2007.

Despite their rocky relationship, Brown and Houston “had finally gotten to a point where there was no drama” when Brown tragically passed away in 2012, an insider tells PEOPLE exclusively. “He loved her as the mother of his child and as a woman he had spent his youth with.”

But for her mom, Cissy Houston, it was already too late. As she told PEOPLE in 2013 after writing her own memoir Remembering Whitney: “She finally got rid of him, but it was too late. I blame him for the way he treated her. And he didn’t help her (with her drug problems). Damn, he didn’t didn’t do that. He wasn’t much help to him.”

As for the stories that then circulated around her daughter’s life, and which continued in the years following her death, Cissy says that “the people who really want to remember her will, and the people who ‘really loved ones will remember her as she was.’

• With reporting by TIFFANY MCGEE and STEVE HELLING