Adele is opening up about her personal life like never before in new interviews with Vogue, her first in five years. The notoriously private singer looks stunning covering the November issues of both American and British Vogue, and talks in depth about the end of her marriage to Simon Konecki, her fears about how it affects their son, Angelo, and dating again following her divorce.
Adele and Konecki's divorce was finalized in March, two years after they split. The two share an 8-year-old son together, Angelo. Adele, 33, says she ended the marriage because she was unhappy, and that no major event preceded their split.
"The timeline the press have of my relationship, my marriage, is actually completely wrong," she tells British Vogue. "We got married when I was 30… and then I left. It just wasn't… It just wasn't right for me anymore. I didn't want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn't miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first. But, yeah, nothing bad happened or anything like that."
"I was just going through the motions and I wasn't happy," she also tells American Vogue. "Neither of us did anything wrong. Neither of us hurt each other or anything like that. It was just: I want my son to see me really love, and be loved. It's really important to me. I've been on my journey to find my true happiness ever since."
Still, she says she was "embarrassed" over not having her marriage work out.
"We've been trained as women to keep trying, even by the movies we watched when we were little," she explains. "At the time it broke my heart, but I actually find it so interesting now. How we're told to suck it up. Well, f**k that."
"I'm fully aware of the irony of me being the heartbreak girl who found her person, being at Radio City Music Hall being like, 'Never mind, I'll find someone like you'… And then, yeah…," she also shares. "I f**ked up. It didn't work."
Adele said she and Konecki kept their split quiet "for a very long time" because of their son. Deciding to divorce Konecki still weighs heavily on her when it comes to how Angelo is affected, though she hopes her new music will help him understand things when he's older.
"My son has had a lot of questions. Really good questions, really innocent questions, that I just don't have an answer for," she acknowledges. "'Why can't you still live together?' I just felt like I wanted to explain to him, through this [new] 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."
Adele is still close with Konecki – who lives across from her in L.A. so he could still be close to his son -- and is now dating sports agent Rich Paul. Adele made headlines when she and Paul -- the founder of Klutch Sports Group, whose clients include LeBron James -- attended Game Five of the NBA Finals together in July.
"We're very happy,” she says. "And I didn't get dragged along to the [basketball game the other night] because that's his line of work. I was like, 'We're going to the game.'"
"I didn't mean to go public with it," she also says. "I just wanted to go to the game. I just love being around him. I just love it."
She reveals that she dated other men after her split from Konecki, though unlike Paul, they were bothered by her fame.
"I think I get scared about it because it's very emasculating. Really emasculating," she says about what it's like going out in public with her. "I did date before Rich, but they hated it. They'd find it stressful being out or seen with me, which meant that I guarded all of it beyond. It never evolved because we were never experiencing things together. Whereas he's not frazzled by it at all. It feels like it's consistent and considerate enough that I don't care who knows. He's great. He's so f**king funny. He's so smart, you know."
"Rich just incredibly arrived," she also says. "I don't feel anxious or nervous or frazzled. It's quite the opposite. It's wild. I'm a 33-year-old divorced mother of a son, who's actually in charge. The last thing I need is someone who doesn't know where they're at, or what they want. I know what I want. And I really know what I don't want."
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