Gwen Stefani will never forget Feb. 9 2015, the day she learned that her husband of 14 years, Gavin Rossdale, was cheating on her with the family’s nanny.
“It was the beginning of hell,” Stefani tells the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She goes on to add that she spent the next several months going through “hell” and “torture,” trying to unravel this “big secret” that had been right under her nose for quite some time.
Stefani tells the magazine that she immediately moved in with a girlfriend, who “helped me through the whole thing.” Then in June, she penned her first number one solo hit, “Used to Love You,” a candid glimpse into her heartbreak over her split.
“My dreams were shattered,” Stefani said. “All I wanted my whole life was to have babies, be married, like what my parents have.”
Not only is Stefani mourning her marriage, she’s coping with the fact that she now only sees her three children: Kingston, 10, Zuma, seven and Apollo, two, part-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?'”
Although she knew her marriage was falling apart, she kept it a secret for months before confiding in her fellow “The Voice” judge, Blake Shelton. Stefani reveals that when he dropped the bombshell in July that he and Miranda Lambert were divorcing, she found comfort that he was going through the “exact same thing.”
“It was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time.”
Shelton and Stefani ended up dating shortly after her divorce was finalized in October, and they subsequently fell in love.
“I’m at a certain time in my life where I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Every day is art, you know? Some days are really bad, and some days are so good.”