Living and learning. Joey Fatone achieved new clarity after his divorce from ex-wife Kelly Baldwin.
“Something that I have learned over the years later on, especially being in a divorced family, and even if you’re not divorced and you’re still obviously with your spouse and everything is going great, give the time for your spouse — whether it be the male or female or whatever under your roof is — give that time to say, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m gonna take the kids or the kid or whatever for the weekend,’ or ‘You know what? You go somewhere,’” the former ‘NSync member, 43, explained during an episode of the “How Men Think” podcast earlier this month. “Give each spouse a chance to kind of recharge their batteries. Because nobody’s perfect. We get angry, we do this, we do that.”
Fatone admitted that he did not understand Baldwin’s side of things in the early days of coparenting. “We all need downtime to ourselves, whether that be either watching TiVo all day, going to play golf, going to a hotel and reading a book,” he noted. “Whatever in that sense may be your Zen, I think it does give the other person a break, and I never noticed that when I was younger because I was always traveling with ‘NSync. My ex was always with the kids, and it was always, ‘Well, the kids did this and this and that,’ and [I was] always like, ‘Yeah, yeah, but you can deal with it.’ It’s not that easy.”
After his split, the Common Knowledge host realized how demanding juggling his personal and professional lives could be. “Especially when I got divorced, I became Mom and Dad when I got home, so when I’m home by myself, legit, pardon my French, but I’m like, ‘Oh s—t. I gotta cook, I’ve gotta get them ready for school, I have to make sure the house is livable,’” he shared.
Fatone confirmed that he and Baldwin are “100 percent” divorced now. Us Weekly broke the news in June 2019 that the pair were “separated [and] going through a divorce.” He filed the papers in May 2019.
The Dancing With the Stars alum and the screenwriter married in September 2004. They are parents of daughters Briahna, 19, and Kloey, 10.
Fatone moved on with girlfriend Izabel Araujo in October 2014. He revealed on the “How Men Think” podcast that he waited nearly two years to introduce her to his children “just to know 100 percent that [the relationship was] gonna be right.”
