Adele says she was ‘f***ing devastated’ and ‘embarrassed’ by her divorce from Simon Konecki

Adele has spoken candidly about her divorce and how the experience was made worse being in the public eye, with the singer revealing it left her “f**king devastated” and “embarrassed”.

The Easy On Me singer, 33, who filed for divorce from her ex-husband Simon Konecki in 2019, discussed the reasons for the separation while speaking with Rolling Stone, where she revealed that she “just didn’t like who I was”.

“I didn’t really know myself,” she said. “I thought I did. I don’t know if it was because of my Saturn return or if it was because I was well and truly sort of heading into my thirties, but I just didn’t like who I was.”

The singer also admitted that she had wanted to feel settled and happy, but that she never really felt “truly present” in her relationship with Konecki, with whom she shares nine-year-old son Angelo.

“It made me really sad,” she said of the realisation.

According to Adele, the feelings of sadness around her divorce were intensified by the news being made public, as the singer said: “Then having so many people that I don’t know know that I didn’t make that work … it f***ing devastated me. I was embarrassed.

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

Adele also recalled feeling bewildered by the response from fans to the news, as people were both saddened for her and excited at the prospect of the impactful life event prompting her to create new music. The singer, however, said it made her question whether her fans “liked” her.

“During something like that, that kind of significant thing to happen in life, your mind sort of goes to those places: ‘Why don’t they like me? Why would they write that if they’ve followed me for 10 years?’” Adele revealed. “But in reality, that’s not their responsibility. In reality, their responsibility as a fan is to want a good record and to hope I deliver. So I took it with a pinch of salt, and it was fine.”

This is not the first time that Adele has opened up about her divorce, as she previously told Vogue in October - during her first interview in five years – that she hopes her new album 30, which will be released on 19 November, will help explain the couple’s separation to their son.

“My son has had a lot of questions. Really good questions, really innocent questions, that I just don’t have an answer for,” she told the outlet. “I just felt like I wanted to explain to him, through this record, when he’s in his twenties or thirties, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness.

“It made him really unhappy sometimes. And that’s a real wound for me that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to heal.”

While the pair decided to end their marriage, Adele, who relocated to Los Angeles following her divorce, has maintained a close relationship with Konecki, who now lives in the house opposite the star’s.

During the interview with Rolling Stone, the Someone Like You singer also opened up about her new relationship with sports agent Rich Paul, who she met at a mutual friend’s birthday party a few years ago but reconnected with this year.

According to Adele, who described her relationship with Paul as the most “incredible, openhearted and easiest” one she’s ever been, she hadn’t yet told her friends about her new relationship when the news broke.

“I didn’t really tell many of my friends at the beginning because I wanted to keep it to myself,” she explained, adding that “none of them believed it” when photos of the couple taken in July during an outing to a discount mall were published.

Adele made the relationship Instagram official in September, when she posted a black-and-white photo of herself and Paul at a friend’s wedding.