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Rachel Stevens has admitted that she isolated herself during her marriage to her ex-husband and childhood sweetheart, Alex Bourne, which contributed to their split.
The 46-year-old singer first rose to fame in the 2000s with S Club 7, when she reconnected with childhood Bourne, 47, who was an aspiring actor at the time.
The couple got engaged in 2008, and married 18 months later, walking down the aisle to the band’s hit single, “Never Had a Dream Come True”, and went on to have two children.
They announced their separation in July 2022, just one month short of their 13-year wedding anniversary.
The “Funky Dory” singer, who also appeared on the sixth season of Strictly Come Dancing, explained that she was scared of getting “too close” to Bourne, because of a troubled relationship with her own dad.
“When my parents separated, it really shook my world,” she told Jamie Laing on the Good Company podcast.
“It was like the rug had been pulled from beneath my feet; not just the separation but my relationship with my dad. Everything I thought was sacred and real and true to me was kind of pulled away overnight.”
She explained that the event led to her trying to protect herself in relationships.
“So from then on, and I think things leading up to that, I learned to build these protections so high that it’s taken me so many years to knock them down,” she explained.
“My protection was to never allow myself to get too close and never let my guard down.”
She unpacked the effect the relationship had on her, as she tried to avoid “heartbreak”. However, she confessed that the self-protection kept her disconnected from real connections.
“A lot of that stems from my relationship breakdown with my dad because I absolutely idolised him growing up and then it changed overnight,” she explained.
“That’s when I had that moment of, ‘Oh my God’. From then on, it was just, keep going and don’t let anyone in too much because you can’t have that heartbreak again.
“When you do that, you isolate yourself from real love and connections and you keep everything very small and I did that for a very long time.
“It’s been years and years of trying to unravel all that and move through that.”
Stevens has since moved on with her Dancing on Ice partner, Brendyn Hatfield, after being paired on the show together. The couple went public with their relationship in November 2022.
Bourne said of the split and co-parenting, “We’ve handled it really well. I guess we are a blended family and I’m totally cool with it.”
