Photo: Paloma Faith
of it. And I think that’s what I did – and I think that’s what killed my relationship. I was like, that’s not me anymore.”
Paloma Faith: Becoming a mum left me ‘irreversibly changed’ By Lauren Taylor, PA Paloma Faith has revealed that the level of resentment she felt during the relationship with her children’s father was “stifling”.
Since becoming a single mum, she said: “I feel like the lack of resentment is so tangible. I found it really stifling – and I don’t resent anything anymore.” Faith’s new album, The Glorification of Sadness, is “a manifestation of [the] break down” she had after the split from Lahcine. From her latest empowering single Bad Woman, to album track Eat S*** And Die, it’s a raw and vulnerable account of the rollor-coaster of emotions during a break-up. One thing she struggled with post-children was having to act as ‘a mother’ to other people as well – “and not just my boyfriend but lots of friends, my own mother, family members…” She added:“I just can’t do those things anymore. I think a lot of women who don’t say ‘I can’t’ are sort of pretending that they can, and then suffering from burnout. “I’ve never really understood the word boundaries because I came from a crazy, traumatic childhood” (her parents separated when she was two). “But after having kids, I became very boundaried and I think people didn’t really recognise me. I didn’t even recognise me, because [it’s in] my nature to feel guilty.” Ultimately, the decision to leave was hers – but, she added, “it takes two to end it, so whoever says it, it’s sort of irrelevant”.
The 42-year-old said: ” I just felt like I did not have the capacity to be a mother to anyone other than my children.”
The singer announced her separation from French artist, Leyman Lahcine – with whom she shares two daughters, aged seven and nearly three – in August last year. And the How You Leave A Man hitmaker has been vocal about the impact having children can have on relationships. “You lose your entire identity, and not only have you got to adapt and get used to this new person [the baby], you have to learn and get used to yourself again – because you’re irreversibly changed,” Faith explained. “Your entire existence is completely dismantled [when you have a child] and then you’re told to put it back together, but there’s no manual and you don’t remember where the bits are. “And you have two choices: you either try and cobble it together to look a bit like a version of what it was before, or you go, I reject that, I’m making a completely new thing out
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