Jennifer Lopez's Daughter Isn't Sure She Ever Wants to Get Married: I Want Her to 'Love Herself'

Jennifer Lopez couldn’t be prouder of her daughter Emme Maribel‘s willingness to keep her future options open.

In her March cover story for U.K. magazine Red, on sale Wednesday, the musical powerhouse says she “grew up with the fairy tale” about finding the right partner in life.

” ‘A Prince is going to save you,’ ‘Wait for true love and that’s what makes you happy,’ ‘If you’re not married, you’re not happy,’ ” says Lopez, 49, of some of the phrases she remembers hearing as a little girl.

At only 10 years old, though, Emme seems to be starting off with a different set of expectations when it comes to her romantic future — namely, that she isn’t sweating the pressure.

“My daughter is eons above me already. She said to me when she was 8, ‘I don’t know if I want to get married, Mommy,’ ” the star recalls. “And when she said that I was like ‘YES!’ because I’ve been teaching her to love herself since she was little.’ ”

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After Lopez and ex-husband Marc Anthony welcomed Emme and her twin brother Maximilian “Max” David in 2008, the World of Dance judge tells Red that she realized she “had to be” and “do better” as a person.

“So I started doing a lot of work on myself,” she says. “I started searching spiritually, religion, all of it. Self-help, life coach, meditation, yoga, more meditation.”

“Different types of working out; just trying to find, ‘How do I be the best me?’ ” Lopez explains. ” ‘You’ve taken the knocks so your kids can be better, right?’ ”

RELATED VIDEO: Jennifer Lopez on Blending Families with Alex Rodriguez: “The Kids Are So Open to Love”

After being in a relationship with Alex Rodriguez for the past two years, Lopez says she and the former baseball pro, 43, have an easy time relating to one another in both being “Latino” and “self-made,” as well as parents (Rodriguez is dad to daughters Ella Alexander, 10, and Natasha Alexander, 14).

“He was always the hardest-working baseball player that was — me, the same,” says the Selena actress. “We have that in common. We have the same work ethic. We also appreciate and know that coming from nothing, we always want to try to help and give back and teach our kids that.”

Lopez’s full interview appears in the March issue of Red, on sale Wednesday.