Kacey Musgraves‘ split from ex-boyfriend Cole Schafer didn’t come down to just “one thing,” a source exclusively reveals in the new issue of Us Weekly.
Schafer, 29, didn’t care for the “glitz and glamour” that came along with dating Musgraves, 35, in the spotlight, the insider tells Us, adding that the former couple’s “personalities didn’t exactly gel” in the end.
According to the source, Schafer didn’t like “attending all these events as Kacey’s plus-one” and is “an extremely sensitive, soulful guy who doesn’t share her ambitions.”
A second insider hints that the idea of marriage is what caused the twosome to drift apart. “Kacey and Cole weren’t seeing eye to eye in terms of where they are in life right now, [so] they decided to end things,” the second source tells Us.
Us confirmed in November that Musgraves and Schafer called it quits after two years of dating. The pair were first spotted together in June 2021, nearly one year after she filed for divorce from ex-husband Ruston Kelly.
Musgraves confessed in the June/July 2021 issue of Elle that she was “crumbling” throughout her three-year marriage to Kelly, 35, saying, “I could have coasted for another couple of years, just not paying attention to my feelings or not really dealing with some things.”
She asked herself some big questions — “Why did I make these decisions? How did I get here? How can I prevent myself from getting there again? Why do I keep choosing the same kind of people?” — during the coronavirus lockdown that shifted her perspective.
“I felt, in many ways, on top of the world in my career, but in my personal life, I felt like I was dying inside,” she added. “I was crumbling. I was sad. I felt lonely. I felt broken.”
Musgraves felt like “a failure” after filing for divorce. “There’s nothing more shameful than staying somewhere where you don’t fit anymore,” she said.
Despite the end of her marriage, Musgraves didn’t give up on finding love. “He did not know who I was, which I loved,” she told The New York Times of Schafer in August 2021. “A handful of grown men come out, and they’re sweating trying to keep up with you on the sidewalk. It feels very predatory.”
She called Schafer “the brightest flame in my world” in a January 2022 Instagram tribute while celebrating his birthday, and he returned the favor after her Madison Square Garden concert in February 2022.
“She’s the most naturally gifted human I’ve been around. I’ve read about artists vomiting in dimly lit bathroom stalls prior to pulling themselves on stage,” he wrote at the time. “And, while I think there is something strangely romantic about this kind of torture, Kace just sort of floats around backstage like a butterfly that can’t make up its mind where it wants to land … But, besides being the most naturally gifted human I’ve ever been around, what impresses me most about her, is that she’s the same human when she’s talking to my mother, my father, my grandfather, my brothers or my best friend Jack, as she is when she’s talking to an arena filled with 15,000 people.”
For more on Musgraves’ love life, watch the video above and pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on stands now.
