When reports of Gavin Rosedale cheating on Gwen Stefani with the nanny first circulated I didn’t want to believe they were true. In part because it’s so cliché in the celebrity parenting world, and in part because Bush was my first concert. As a 90s kid I have a special place in my heart for both of these stars’ music, and I didn’t want to see their longtime marriage fall apart.
But then news of their divorce hit the web, and nearly a year later Gwen is talking about Gavin’s betrayal.
After 13 years of marriage she found out he was cheating with the nanny. “February 9…I obviously know the date,” the singer told Harper’s Bazaar. She went on to describe the discovery as “the beginning of hell.”
“It was…like six, seven, eight months of torture, trying to figure out this big secret,” she added.
Gwen Stefani unexpectedly turned to prayer during the tough time.
“That’s my childhood, that’s how I was raised,” the mother of Kingston, 10, Zuma, 7, and Apollo, 2, explained. And I think I strayed from that. But you know when it gets that bad, you just get desperate? You’re on your knees. You’re like, ‘What do I do?’ You can’t even go to your parents and ask them what to do.”
Along with her marriage falling apart, The Voice coach struggled with the reality their split meant she was losing being with her children half the time.
“It was so insane because not only did my family break up, but then my kids are taken away like half the time, so that was really like, ‘What?! What did I do?'” she said.
“All I wanted my whole life was to have babies, be married, like what my parents have. Then I remember thinking, ‘There’s gotta be a reason for this.'”
That reason appears to be fellow The Voice coach Blake Shelton, who is Gwen’s new love.
“It was just like everything flipped,” she says of her new relationship. “It went from horrible to, like, hopeful and, like, ‘Wow, God, you just don’t know what’s gonna happen next.'”
Though I imagine we’re all happy to see Gwen happy and healing, reading her words about having to share custody after being betrayed sends a chill up my spine. I can only imagine how infuriating it must be to not have done anything wrong and only get to see your children half as much.
It’s not that I don’t realize people make mistakes, or that I believe one mistake means you shouldn’t get your kids at all, but being in Gwen’s shoes must have been horrific. Gavin is the one who took the actions that blew their family apart, yet they’re both paying the price.
I don’t know what a better solution is, but it really doesn’t seem fair. My heart goes out to anyone who has been in a similar situation.
Photos: PR Photos
More stars talk divorce:
"[It's been a] year of wine," mom-of-three Jennifer Garner said in 2016, opening up for the first time about her split from Ben Affleck. “When I can’t sleep—and I am not someone who typically has that problem, but I really have in the last year—and I need something to switch my brain off, it has been Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. God bless those girls. I used to think I would never watch television on my phone, but there I am, because I am sleeping next to my daughter [Violet, 10, who has become her "temporary roommate"]. I’m happy to have her; she’s happy to have me.” (REX Features)
Three years after her "humiliating and isolating" split from Ryan Phillippe in 2006, actress Reese Witherspoon (who has since remarried) revealed, "By the way, if it’s not painful, maybe it wasn’t the right decision to marry to begin with. Those are the appropriate emotions. When people get in your face and say, "This will pass," you think, are they crazy? I’m never gonna feel any better than I feel right this minute and nothings ever gonna make sense again. And I still have moments where I’m like, nothings ever gonna make sense again." (INF Photos)
"My life's mission and the only thing that matters as of now is that my daughters know what our lives were like, how we lived, and how much I love them," Drew Barrymore said after announcing that she and Will Kopelman were divorcing after almost four years of marriage. "For them to know that they were not just loved, but, like, ridiculously, utterly, life-alteringly loved. That's the only reason I'm here now!" (REX Features)
"I still wake up down a lot of days. But now I feel like I've been given the tools to turn it around," Chris Martin revealed over a year after he and Gwyneth Paltrow conciously uncoupled. "You can come at it very aggressively and blame and blame. Or you can put yourself in the garage, so to speak. Take yourself apart and clean off the bits. Reassemble.... I have a very wonderful separation-divorce. It's a divorce but it's a weird one. It's funny. I don't think about that word very often- divorce. I don't see it that way. I see it more like you meet someone, you have some time together and things just move through."
"My life basically blew up in my face," Gwen Stefani said of her divorce from Gavin Rossdale, with whom she has three sons. "On the way into the studio the first time [after the split], I didn't want to go. I wanted to be in my bed, like, crying. And I did, I cried all the way down to Santa Monica, driving to Santa Monica, and I was like, 'What am I doing? Why am I doing this?'" (REX Features)
Model mom-of-four Heidi Klum puts a practical spin on her divorce from Seal, saying, "People say, 'Oh, God, how devastating to go through a divorce.' Did I wish for this to happen to my family? No. But everyone is healthy; we're moving on with our lives." (REX Features)
Mom-of-four Madonna, who has been through two divorces, has admitted: "I'm very grateful that I had work to do. I may have thrown myself off a building." (REX Features)
"It was a long time in the making, my divorce," says mom-of-two Ricki Lake. "One day became less special than the [one before], and pretty soon we ceased all conversation. It is a sad day when you have nothing left to say." (PR Photos)
Opening up about her own split, Sharon Stone admitted, "I don't think anybody whose ever been divorced can tell you divorce is easy or fun or feels like anything other than a tremendous failure." (PR Photos)
Courteney Cox's ex-husband David Arquette reveals, "People that go through what I went through and people going through divorce, it's really a difficulty process; it's heartbreaking and it hurts really bad. It can really mess with your head." The exes are parents to daughter Coco. (PR Photos)
Actress Regina King has revealed, "I know in my own marriage I stayed in it to provide my son with what I thought was a stable background and to give him what I thought was the family life a child should have with two parents. But that isn't always the best way, and it took me taking my son to therapy after the divorce to really see it." (PR Photos)
