Gwen Stefani Recalls Breaking Things Off With Blake Shelton

Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani have been married for three years now, but according to the pop singer, their relationship was almost over before it started.

Stefani recently admitted that the timing of the couple’s love story made her very hesitant to jump into anything serious.

“We had just met, and it was chaos. Both of our lives were in complete turmoil, all over the ground. Nothing could save us at that point,” she reveals to People.

Stefani filed for divorce from then-husband Gavin Rossdale in August 2015, a month after Shelton’s divorce from fellow country star Miranda Lambert made headlines. The two The Voice stars bonded over heartbreak and took their budding relationship public that November.

But Stefani tried to stop it.

“There was a point where I was like, ‘I can’t even talk to you. This is insane. I already have enough problems. This is not happening anymore. We’re not going to text or nothing,'” she recalls now.

How Blake Shelton Won Gwen Stefani’s Heart

Shelton and Stefani met in 2014 while serving as coaches on The Voice. It’s not clear exactly when the “Purple Irises” singer broke things off, but she says it was music that brought the country singer back into her life. He started writing what would eventually become his 2016 song “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” and asked for her help.

“He sent it to me, and it was a half-written song,” she explains. “He was like, ‘Help me finish this.’ So I wrote him the verse back — the second verse on the song — and it’s just over text.”

“That was our first song that we ever wrote together. We were never even in the same room, but we were writing a song to each other,” she adds.

“I think he really wanted to impress me, because he doesn’t really write songs as much as he used to,” Stefani says. “And I love writing songs. That’s everything to me. If I want to feel like I have any kind of purpose or any kind of value or anything, it’s about writing a song. That’s where I get my fulfillment.”

Shelton’s plan worked: The pair went public with their relationship in 2015, became engaged in 2020 and tied the knot in 2021.

“Something that I wanted since I was a little girl is to be married and have this love that I saw my parents have and have babies. That dream was completely ruined; it was crushed,” Stefani says, speaking of her divorce from Rossdale.

“And I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and make a new dream. And God putting Blake in my life was just that miracle.”