Kelly Clarkson stayed in her marriage for the sake of her "ego".
Kelly Clarkson was hesitant to get divorced because of her ego
The 41-year-old singer tied the knot with Brandon Blackstock in 2013 andhas River, nine, and seven-year-old Remy with him but the pair called it quits in 2021 and she has now explained that she did not initially want to get divorced because she saw her own parents go through one when she was a child.
Speaking on the ' We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle' podcast, she said: "My ego... [I thought,] 'I can do this. I can handle so much.' My ego is, 'I can control my actions, I can control my reactions, I can do this and I can reach this person and I can get through.'
"It becomes a little bit of your ego that gets in the way. If I'm being completely honest, we don't want to do what we saw done. I don't want my kids to be those kids at school.
The Texas native - who wrote her2004 hit 'Because of You' about her parents' divorce - went on to add that because she is now based in the "progressive" area of California, things are "very different" and eventually learned she needed to be "selfish" to get out of her marriage.
She added: "It's a little different — they grew up here and it's a very progressive city. But in the south, there was like two of us with divorced parents in our class. So it was very different. Even when you come down to like, daddy-daughter dances and you don't have anyone show up.
"You have to think about all of those things and you play it out differently in your head too. You try so hard and you think, 'I do not want to do that to her, I don't want to do that to him' — that you never start thinking about yourself. That's why sometimes to be selfish was important to me."
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