Everyone knows that separating from your long-term partner is difficult, but amid our perfectly filtered, Instagram world, it’s easy to underestimate the very real pain, confusion, and sense of loss someone is going through during a breakup.
Just yesterday, I wrote about my own five-year relationship coming to an end, including how physical the pain was and how much I’ve been relying on my closest friends and therapist through it all and in return, I received countless messages from people saying they assumed I was doing okay because I’d posted a few times on Instagram.
The same must be true for Irina Shayk, an internationally renowned supermodel, who posted a bikini photo days after her split from Bradley Coopper and who left the house in a nice outfit, prompting headlines about ‘breakup style’ and ‘revenge bodies’ with full articles focused on how well she’s clearly doing.
But in a new interview, the mother-of-one dispelled all illusions that she kept calm and carried on when the couple ended their relationship after four years together in June 2019. In the new issue of British Vogue, Shayk said that some days she wakes up and feels like she’s “falling apart,” admitting that life without Cooper is “new ground.”
“I think we’ve been very lucky to experience what we had with each other,” she said. “Life without B is new ground.”
The model and actor co-parent their two-year-old daughter, Lea De Seine, from New York and Shayk said she’s still finding her feet in terms of being a single mom. “It’s hard to find a balance between being a single mom and being a working woman and provider,” she said. “Trust me, there are days I wake up and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know what to do, I’m falling apart.’”
“I think in all good relationships you bring your best and your worst — it’s just the nature of a human being,” she said, adding, “Two great people don’t have to make a good couple.”
