Adele says she was ‘devastated’ and ’embarrassed’ following her divorce

When it comes to separations and divorce, they are something that should be more normalised than they are. So many go through it. But it can be an isolating experience. We can feel we failed, even though we really just tried our best, and life, as it so often can, had other plans. We grow and change in a partnership. Sometimes we grow together and sometimes, we realise, we become too different to continue on the same path.

Singer Adele has added to this discussion and opened up about how she felt ashamed following the breakdown of her marriage.

The Grammy Award-winning singer told how she felt “devastated and embarrassed” when news about her divorce to Simon Konecki emerged in 2019. She told Rolling Stone magazine about the “tsunami of emotions” she felt during that time. At the time, she publically announced her decision to separate in April of 2019, and referenced the co-parents’ commitment “to raising their son together lovingly” in a statement issued at the time, yet it’s only now she admits that she felt a personal failure as a result.

“It made me really sad,” she shared. “Then having so many people that I don’t know, know that I didn’t make that work…it f**king devastated me.”

She said she had “never really felt present” in a happy home with her family.

“I think I’ve never been fully in any of my relationships. I always had this fear from a really young age that you’re going to leave me anyway, so I’m going to leave or I’m not going to invest myself in anything.”

“I was embarrassed,” Adele continued. “No one made me feel embarrassed, but you feel like you didn’t do a good job.”

She had previously told Vogue that the marriage didn’t last “very long” and that it occurred when she was 30, hence the title of her upcoming album, due for release next week.

She admits something that many can feel when they enter a partnership; that they lose a part of themselves as being a couple becomes the focus. Reflecting on her state of mind when the divorce happened, and personal growth since then, she said, “I didn’t really know myself,” adding that it took a lot for her to be selfish, as she previously said, and put her personal happiness first.

Naturally, it was never going to be an easy decision, especially as her young son Angelo was going to be affected.

Adele told the magazine she suffered distress to the point she was bed-bound until she overcame it.

Bed-bound with anxiety

[It was] “an intense few weeks of bed-bound anxiety” following the split, until the day of her 31st birthday in May 2019.

“I felt quite hopeful,” she continued. “It was the first time I felt I’d had a really nice evening and I was OK being in the house and going to bed on my own. “I was not excited, but I was looking forward to the next day.”She added that the following day she woke up and “saw this tsunami of emotions” coming towards her. “I was like, ‘this is going to be really f****** up-and-down,” she said.

“I thought I did [know myself],” she said of her time in her marriage. “I don’t know if it was because my Saturn return or if it was because I was well and truly sort of heading into my 30s, but I just didn’t like who I was,” she continued. “I didn’t really know myself. I thought I did. But I just didn’t like who I was.”

Read Adele’s full interview with Rolling Stone here