Shania Twain was “uncontrollably fragile” after her husband cheated on her with her best friend.
The 57-year-old singer's 14-year marriage to Robert “Mutt” Lange ended in 2008, after she discovered he had been having an affair with her close friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud, and Twain admitted she still doesn't speak to them.
She told the “Armchair Expert” podcast: “I don't think that a lot of things that happened to me since my divorce should have been so hard on me. I should have been less naive about life's ups and downs. Maybe I'm too much, like, ‘that's all behind me’.”
Twain went on to find love with Thiébaud's husband – former Nestlé executive Frédéric Thiébaud – who she tied the knot with in 2011 and Twain revealed that Frédéric handled the betrayal of their former spouses better than she did.
She explained: “(Before the affair was discovered) I did not get close to Fred at all, we didn't have each other's numbers. He was not really part of our daily lives because he was working these crazy hours. A lot of travel (for his) very high-profile company, just suit and tie and so he would be around, like, weekend dinners and stuff like that — we would all eat together and that was it.
“It would be mostly him and Mutt chatting, so I didn't really know Fred very well. I guess it was a beautiful surprise to then see how gracefully and graciously he was dealing with navigating the same pain.
“He was so thoughtful about it all … It was not cool with him, but he was smarter about it. I was uncontrollably fragile over it, which I had never felt before ever because I thought for once I was stable. I really believe that I'm safe, so that really devastated me I think more than any other instability I've ever felt.
“Fred's so smart. This is one of the smartest people I know, he didn't know either. That helped me feel better … Neither of us saw it coming … I allowed myself to trust too much … I did let my guard down too much.”
Twain said she and Lange only communicate about their son Eja, now 21.
She said: “Mutt and I parent well together – for people who don't talk to each other. We'll just text. We both love our son so much, so we don't play any games like that. We have the same priority, we share spaces for him. No nonsense there.”