Country star Kacey Musgraves realised she was "dying inside" when the Covid-19 pandemic forced her to evaluate her marriage to fellow singer Ruston Kelly.
The Follow Your Arrow hitmaker split from Kelly in July 2020, after less than three years as husband and wife, and she admits she may still be married had the lockdown not made her consider her priorities in life.
"If you would've told me the night of the (2019) Grammys, 'Hey, in two years, you're going to be divorced and have a whole 'nother album written,' I would have been like, 'F**k off. No. No way,'" Musgraves told Elle magazine.
It was only when they found themselves isolated at home with nowhere to go during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic that the marriage started really going downhill.
"I could have coasted for another couple of years," Musgraves mused, "just not paying attention to my feelings or not really dealing with some things."
However, she couldn't ignore the questions which kept bugging her about the choices she had made in her private life: "(I kept thinking), Why did I make these decisions? How did I get here? How can I prevent myself from getting there again? Why do I keep choosing the same kind of people?" she shared.
"I felt, in many ways, on top of the world in my career, but in my personal life, I felt like I was dying inside. I was crumbling. I was sad. I felt lonely. I felt broken."
And it took Musgraves a while to accept her relationship was ending, because so many of her relatives, including her parents, have enjoyed "long marriages".
She added, "It was hard to not feel like I was in some ways a failure. There's nothing more shameful than staying somewhere where you don't fit anymore."
Musgraves and Kelly, who have remained friends, finalised their divorce in September, and in February, she told Rolling Stone magazine the union "just simply didn't work out".
Musgraves has since moved on with her love life - she revealed she is dating a Nashville, Tennessee doctor named Gerald Onuoha as she made the romance Instagram official last month.
