'It F*cking Devastated Me': Adele Gets Real About Post-Divorce Anxiety

As Rolling Stone‘s December cover star, Adele got real about the anxiety she experienced after announcing her divorce in 2019

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Adele got extremely candid about the anxiety she faced after announcing she’d divorced her husband, Simon Konecki, in 2019. Even though the couple has maintained a close friendship and had already parted ways when they tried to slip the announcement under the radar, it seems the world’s focus on her releasing a divorce album by way of endless headlines, memes, and tweets about a deeply personal thing she was going through added to the “tsunami of emotions” she was feeling at the time.

“I didn’t really know myself,” she shared. “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 public attention on her breakup only added to that pain, as she explained. “It made me really sad. Then having so many people that I don’t know know that I didn’t make that work… it fucking devastated me. I was embarrassed. No one made me feel embarrassed, but you feel like you didn’t do a good job.”

She told the magazine she was bed-bound for weeks with anxiety, even though she’d begun having fun with her friends. “I was like, ‘This is going to be really fucking up-and-down,'” she recalled.

To help cope with her feelings, she shared that she spent the year trying new things, including hiking, traveling, and even having a “sound bath era,” which refers to the ancient healing practice of using sound frequencies, believed to promote wellness for the mind and body. “Anything that could soothe my anxiety, I threw myself in headfirst,” she said.

And, of course, she hit the studio to write and record her forthcoming album, which seems like it will be a cathartic encapsulation of all the transformation she’s gone through in the past two years, which includes losing her dad to cancer earlier this year, as she told the magazine, as well as adjusting to life as a single mom, and learning how to date after divorce — something she says has been quite an adventure. She shared that dating in Los Angeles has been rough, even though friends were game to set her up on blind dates.

“You can’t set me up on a fucking blind date! I’m like, ‘How’s that going to work?’” she said. “There’ll be paparazzi outside and someone will call [gossip site] Deuxmoi, or whatever it’s fucking called! It ain’t happening.”

It seems she’s navigated it all flawlessly, finding love this year with her new boyfriend, talent agent Rich Paul. She described their relationship as the most “incredible, openhearted, and easiest” one she’s ever been in. But it seems the best part of it all is the stuff that won’t necessarily make the juiciest headlines. “I’m not frightened of loneliness anymore,” she said.