Everything Kacey Musgraves Has Said About Love and Moving On After Ruston Kelly Split

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Everything Kacey Musgraves Has Said About Love and Moving On After Ruston Kelly Split

Not her “Golden Hour.” Kacey Musgraves has slowly opened up more and more about her divorce from Ruston Kelly — and she’s ready to fully heal from the heartbreak. The musicians tied the knot in October 2017 after sparking their romance the previous year. In July 2020, they announced they were going their separate ways. “We believe that we were put into each other’s lives for a divine reason and have both changed each other infinitely for the better,” the duo said in a joint statement at the time. “The love we have for each other goes far beyond the relationship we’ve shared as husband and wife. It’s a soul connection that can never be erased. … We hold no blame, anger or contempt for each other and we ask for privacy and positive wishes for us both as we learn how to navigate through this.” According to their filing, which was obtained by Us Weekly, the pair asserted that they “still have love and respect for one another.” Musgraves cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the split. [jwplayer w4EQGPPy-zhNYySv2] Two months later, the singers’ divorce was made final. A source told Us at the time that while Musgraves “was the one who initiated” the separation, she was “really upset” about the end of her marriage. The “Butterflies” artist didn’t publicly address the breakup until February 2021, telling Rolling Stone that there’s a small part of her that “questions marriage as a whole, in general.” She added, “I mean, I was open to it when it came into my life. I embraced it. I just have to tell myself I was brave to follow through on those feelings.” Several months after breaking her silence, Musgraves revealed that she felt a shift in her relationship during the coronavirus pandemic. While she was thriving in her career, things were different at home, causing a number of questions to form in her mind. “Why did I make these decisions? How did I get here?” she recalled wondering in the June/July 2021 issue of Elle. “How can I prevent myself from getting there again? Why do I keep choosing the same kind of people?” Though marriage might not be for her, the seven-time CMA Award winner has let herself fall in love again. She was briefly linked to Nashville-based doctor Gerald Onuoua before going public with boyfriend Cole Schafer. “Life is so much prettier with you in it,” the “Space Cowboy” singer gushed in an Instagram comment after the writer shared a handful of black-and-white PDA pics in August 2021. Scroll down to see Musgraves’ most candid quotes about life and love after her divorce: [podcast_block]

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July 2020

Musgraves told her former spouse that she’s “in [his] corner” while wishing him happy birthday weeks after they split. “Hope you know how lucky the world is to have you in it,” she added in an Instagram Story.

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February 2021

“It’s nothing more than [growing apart],” the Grammy winner told Rolling Stone while addressing her divorce for the first time. “It’s two people who love each other so much, but for so many reasons, it just didn’t work. I mean, seasons change. Our season changed. … Part of me questions marriage as a whole, in general.”

The “Golden Hour” singer continued, “I think I live best by myself. I think it’s OK to realize that. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on growing up as a woman in the South and being a performer from a young age — we were told to please, to make this person happy. That has to imprint on your code. It kind of erodes boundaries. So, I’m trying to examine things that may not be useful anymore and maybe unlearn some things.”

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May 2021

Nearly one year after the duo called it quits, Musgraves reflected on the “crumbling” feeling she experienced during her marriage. “I could have coasted for another couple of years, just not paying attention to my feelings or not really dealing with some things,” she said in the June/July issue of Elle. “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. I was crumbling. I was sad. I felt lonely. I felt broken.”

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August 2021

“People have come to know me as someone who really speaks my mind. … I wasn’t going to be a real country artist without at least one divorce under my belt,” the Texas native told The New York Times while preparing to drop her fifth record, Star-Crossed.

In the same interview, Musgraves confirmed her romance with Schafer, telling the outlet, “He did not know who I was, which I loved.”

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August 2021

The songwriter painted a picture of her post-split life with one of the lead singles from Star-Crossed, titled “Justified.” In the first verse, she sings, “It was a fun, strange summer / I rolled on, didn't think of you / We lost touch with each other / Fall came and I had to move.”

The record’s title track, on the other hand, tells the story of “two lovers ripped right at the seams” who “woke up from the perfect dream / And then the darkness came.”

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September 2021

Following her long-term relationship with Kelly, the country star was thrown “back to ground zero” in the dating world, she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. She recalled feeling “let down” by someone she’d been seeing after her split who promised to visit her over Thanksgiving.

“It was kind of my first few steps into exploring being a single 30-something-year-old person, after a marriage and … nothing for nothing,” she said, admitting she was “really disappointed” by modern dating. “After a huge point in my career, more notoriety, it was a really naked place. We live in this hookup culture, and I'm for it. I'm for whatever makes you feel happy, as long as it's safe, doesn't hurt other people, fine. But I've just never experienced that, the dating app culture and all that. … It was a little shocking.”

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September 2021

“There’s nothing more relatable than sadness,” Musgraves told The Guardian of using her breakup as inspiration for her music. “Actually, going into Golden Hour, I was nervous that I was going to be completely f--ked when it came to creation, because at that point in my life I was happy. It was nice to know that you didn’t have to suffer to create good art. I’m glad I had that experience, and this, I think, just allowed me to dig even more into the pain I was feeling, the trauma.”

The songs that made the final cut of Star-Crossed were “a time capsule of all my feelings over the last year,” she said, helping her “to transform my trauma and my pain into something else.”

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April 2022

Musgraves explained to Architectural Digest how her design plan for her new Nashville home, which she purchased in 2020 after splitting from Kelly, reflected her fresh start. “I wanted a place that felt like me,” she said. “Where I could express myself without having to think about another person and what they might want. This felt like a new beginning.”

In addition to using a lot of neutral paint colors and subtle textures, the “Velvet Elvis” songstress found herself adding a lot of orbs and circles throughout the estate. 

“I was writing the [Star-Crossed] album at the same time I was moving into the home, and there were a lot of themes that were kind of presenting themselves [in both projects]. This theme of full-circle-ness kept appearing, and I had some spiritual experiences that involved orbs,” she explained. “I had a psychedelic plant therapy session in which people from my past kept presenting themselves to me in the form of orbs. Without running the risk of sounding like an absolute psycho, it was really transformative for me.”