Debbie Gibson: Battling Lyme disease affected my choice to have children

Debbie Gibson doesn’t need a wedding to get lost in her partner’s eyes.

The ’80s pop icon discussed her decision not to tie the knot with her boyfriend of eight years Wednesday on Conversations with Maria Menounos.

Related: Hear Debbie Gibson’s favorite songs on her exclusive SiriusXM show

“I grew up saying I’m gonna get married, I’m gonna have kids, I’m gonna get married, I’m gonna have kids, and then when you examine what your own personal reasons for doing it are, I couldn’t really come up with anything because I was like, I’m not fanatically religious to the point that I feel that pull,” she said. “To me, my commitment is to my man, and our commitment is to wake up every day and do our best to make it work, because there obviously are challenges, but at the same time we’ve also always agreed that if it was not healthy for either one of us to be in the relationship anymore, then we shouldn’t be in it.”

“To me, it’s not loving to say I’m holding you to this agreement, even though we’ve tried everything and it’s not the best and the most loving. And you know what, at that moment, if that happens, I don’t want a lawyer involved. It’s nobody’s business but ours. I don’t want anyone profiting off it. So we’re way more committed than most people are who have a piece of paper. We don’t run easily,” she added. “I feel like I’m married at heart, and I take the commitment very, very seriously. But again, I love him so much that I want him to be happy, and if that meant without me then that meant without me.”

Though she has 10 nieces and nephews, Gibson doesn’t have children of her own, a choice she admitted to considering before being diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2013.

“I was thinking a lot about kids in my late 30s, even 40, and again, in the context of our relationship, it didn’t feel like the right time. And then I had the Lyme thing happen, and then it became about me,” she said. “Then it became about okay, now I need my body just to function for me, and I can’t even think about that. I can’t think about egg freezing, I can’t think about anything like that, because right now if I so much as take an aspirin, I have a reaction. I’m very hypersensitive to any chemistry changes in my body, hormonal or otherwise.”

Now that she’s recovered and turning 46, she said she’s “thinking about it again,” especially because her family members have “miracle stories” getting pregnant later in life.

“Honestly, I’m at the point where, because I didn’t do it at 35, I just don’t know now, and I’ve decided it’s okay that I don’t know. I mean, I feel like the universe might decide it for me, obviously, but I also am open to adoption,” she said. “My dad was an orphan, he grew up in the foster care system, he didn’t meet his own dad until he was 50, so I’m very, very sensitive to people who need to be adopted. I just feel like the right thing is gonna happen, but I feel like I’m coming out of a black hole, out of a tunnel of Lyme disease, and I’m just getting my own footing.”

Conversations with Maria Menounos airs live weekdays at 1 p.m. ET on SiriusXM Stars (Ch. 109).

For a free 30-day trial, check out http://www.siriusxm.com/freetrial/blog.