Plus, there’s extra guilt attached to ending a relationship with someone you have children with, she agreed.“You feel like you’ve gone against your maternal duty or something.”
say ‘you’re brilliant’ to each other, which we didn’t do before. I’ll say,‘I’m so lucky that my kids are your kids’.”
Mentally, Faith, whose UK tour starts in April, is in a better place now after “the most dramatic period” of her life.
Making the decision was complex, she acknowledged.
“I just think certainty is an unattainable idea… I don’t know if anyone ever really knows what they want. They might know for a split second, and go, I’m just gonna do it – and then you live with the consequences. “It would have been just as difficult to stay as it was to leave. I would have written just as emotional an album if I had stayed with him, that was all about the suffering of being in a long-term relationship.” Faith’s children now spend two nights a week at their dad’s house. “So I get two very set days off and I get a break – quite a lot of married women don’t get a break,” she added. “If they want to go out, they have to say,‘Is it OK if I do this?’ sheepishly.Which I know, because I’ve been in that situation as well….‘Sorry, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a night to myself’ – and usually it’s once in a blue moon.” Their new co-parenting arrangement feels “very modern – Gwyneth Paltrow-y”, said the singer. And with “no one to resent”, the pair are on good terms.
“When I first ended it, I felt I had to sort of perpetuate this idea that I could power through and continue to kind of do everything, and I think that I burned out, I do think that I had a kind of breakdown when I broke up with my kids’ dad,” she said. “Now I feel better in the sense that [I’m] a bit more kind to myself in knowing what I have capacity for. My priorities are clearer and less blurry to me than they have been for several years.” And although she’s “on route” to a period of happiness, she can’t quite yet see the decision to split as choosing a happier path for herself.
“I think to feel that way, I’d need to have forgiven myself, and I’m not there yet.”
Forgiven herself for what exactly? “For him not being enough for me.”
The Glorification Of Sadness is released on February 16.
“I think with the distance, my kids’ dad really appreciates me in ways that maybe he didn’t say before.We take time out to
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