Gwen Stefani reflects on ‘terrible’ Gavin Rossdale divorce: ‘I had to literally start over again’

Gwen Stefani has reflected on how her “life fell apart” after her “terrible” divorce from her ex-husband, Gavin Rossdale.

In an interview with People published on 27 September, the “Hollaback Girl” singer recalled the tough time in her life when she and her husband split after nearly thirteen years of marriage. As Stefani and Rossdale announced their breakup in 2015, rumours swirled that her ex-husband had allegedly cheated on her with the family’s nanny.

The former couple share three children together: sons Kingston, 17, Zuma, 15, and Apollo, nine.

“When that happened, I had to literally start over again. It was a reset of my life,” the Grammy winner said. Stefani filed for divorce from the Bush frontman in 2015 and began dating her The Voice co-judge, Blake Shelton, that same year.

Speaking about her relationship with Shelton, Stefani gushed that the country music singer has “changed [her] life”. The No Doubt singer noted that she “didn’t see [Shelton] coming,” adding: “This was just a big old ‘What?’ It was an amazing gift to experience love like that for the first time.”

According to the pop singer, dating Shelton felt somewhat like a homecoming. “When I [started dating] Blake, that’s when I felt home, like: ‘Oh, this is where I’m supposed to be, with this guy,’” Stefani said.

The couple were engaged by 2020 and tied the knot one year later. While Shelton has since become a step-father to Stefani’s three sons, her ex-husband recently revealed on the Not So Hollywood podcast that he doesn’t “really co-parent” with Stefani and her new husband. The rocker cited their “opposing views” stemming from the fact that both parties are “really different people.”

“I think you can go one of two ways,” Rossdale explained on the podcast in June. “You can either do everything together... or you can just parent. And I think we just parent.”

Back in 2017, Rossdale shared rare insight about their split to The Sun, saying that “divorce is one of the hardest, most painful things to go through.” He added at the time: “[Divorce] was completely opposite to what I wanted. But here we are.”

In a 2016 Harper’s Bazaar interview, Stefani called the lead-up to their divorce as “months of torture”. She explained that she had a sinking feeling that Rossdale was hiding things from her, alluding to his alleged affair with their former nanny. The “Rich Girl” singer noted that their youngest son, Apollo, was only 11 months old “when everything happened”.

“It was the beginning of hell. Like six, seven, eight months of torture, trying to figure out this big secret,” the singer said. Because of her ex's actions, Stefani admitted feeling like her “dreams were shattered”.

She added: “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?’”

However, Stefani found solace in Shelton, who was also going through a divorce from ex-wife Miranda Lambert at the time. While she was shocked when her soon-to-be husband disclosed his divorce to his colleagues, she recalled feeling to the outlet: “It was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time.”