Gwen Stefani’s ex-husband Gavin Rossdale admitted in a recent interview that he was ashamed of his “contentious” divorce with the pop singer and wished they had more of a connection.
On a new episode of the “Amy & TJ” podcast that aired on Wednesday, the British frontman of Bush made rare public comments about his split with Stefani, calling it a “very contentious, hugely emotional, flared-up situation.”
The Voice host filed for divorce in 2017, citing irreconcilable differences.
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“While the two of us have come to the mutual decision that we will no longer be partners in marriage, we remain partners in parenthood and are committed to jointly raising our three sons in a happy and healthy environment,” they said in a joint statement. They’d been married for 13 years.
“I never thought I’d ever get divorced. So there’s a simple shame in my life,” Rossdale said.
He explained that both of his parents went through three divorces, and so he knew how “debilitating” a split could be for their three children. “I wish I could have found a way to not have that in their lives. It wasn’t fun for me to come from a broken home,” he said.
Rossdale expressed a desire to reconnect with the singer, who he did not mention by name, for his kids’ sake. “The biggest thing would be when you see the kids that sometimes there’s a loss. It’d be nice if there was more of a connection with the person who made them with me,” he said.
In 2021, Stefani married Blake Shelton, who she’d begun working with on The Voice in 2014. Stefani has said that she and Shelton bonded over their collapsing marriages. She said it was “unbelievable that God would put us in a position to have each other at that moment, in the same exact moment.”
Rossdale seemingly referenced the couple in his discussion of his split with Stefani. “I go to a lot of events where there’s ‘the other team,’ so to speak, and I just feel really proud of myself in my consistency as a father. I know in my heart that I’m super consistent,” he said.
Rossdale has not been keen to comment on the “debilitating” divorce.
“Less said, soonest mended and I said nothing,” he said, but he also suggested that he was not willing to say anything harsh about Stefani. “I’m handcuffed because I would never want to overly say anything negative about [my sons’] mom,” he said. “That’s just not right.”
