How Adele Protected Her Son By Avoiding A ‘Messy Divorce’
The singer’s ex and current beau were spotted at her concert together last weekend.
Is the key to an uneventful and friendly divorce a matter of will or one of luck? According to 15-time Grammy award winning singer Adele, it takes both to shield a child from the stress of their parents splitting.
The musician, 34, who now shares custody of son Angelo, 9, with ex-husband Simon Konecki, 48, describes the end of her marriage as amicable.
“It was never really tricky because we’re such good friends,” she told Lauren Laverne on the BBC podcast Desert Island Discs, adding that she also refused to allow things to get ugly, saying, “over my dead body is my kid having a messy divorce in his life.”
The singer had nothing but kind words for Konecki, who was spotted on Friday in the audience at Adele’s concert, sitting with her new beau, sports agent Rich Paul, 40.
“There are no issues and there were no issues,” she explained. “So I guess it was easier to make sure that didn’t happen. I was blessed with them and him. He’s just the best. I definitely approached it all with grace and I think that really paid off.”
While the pair have a solid relationship, that doesn’t mean that the divorce process was without pain, which Adele expresses in music on her latest album, 30. In voice notes with her son mixed in to the third track, “My Little Love,” she says, “I love your dad cause he gave you to me. You’re half me and you’re half Daddy.”
On Desert Island Discs, the singer spoke of her own upbringing. Her own mother was only 18 when Adele was born, and the pair were “thick as thieves.” Adele’s mom nurtured her creativity, while an absent father who suffered from alcoholism returned to his native Wales. The singer said that she was able to reconcile with her father before his death from cancer, although there was no way to make up all the years lost.
She wanted something different for her own child, Adele told Oprah last year in an interview special, Adele One Night Only.
“I just, from a very young age, promised myself that when I had kids, that we’d stay together. We would be that united family. And I tried for a really, really long time.”
When she split with Konecki, Adele said, “I was just so disappointed for my son. I was so disappointed for myself, and I thought I was gonna be the one that stopped doing those bloody patterns all the time.”
While life may not look quite like the one that she pictured, Angelo has parents who care for and respect each other, and also a mom who is encouraging his love of music.
“We sit down and we have the most intense conversations about music,” Adele told Laverne on Desert Island Discs. Rather than lecturing, as in, “Well, did you know,” the songstress says, “we sit down and listen to these songs together, and we’re talking about, ‘Well, what do you think this means?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know, it could mean this, it could mean that.’ It’s heavenly.”
Motherhood, says Adele, has changed her in “every single way. Good, bad, strange, I love being a mom.”
“I definitely would like a couple more kids. It’d be wonderful if we can,” she added, presumably referring to Paul. “If not, I’ve got Angelo. I just want to be happy.”
