For People’s new cover story, P!nk opened up about the ups and downs of her 15-year marriage to husband Carey Hart.
The couple raised a glass to their 15th anniversary in January this year after tying the knot in 2006, five years after meeting at the Summer X Games in 2001. They also briefly separated in 2008. The couple have always kept it real about the turbulent but beautiful marriage, but in her latest interview, she further discusses how couples counseling and individual therapy have been monumental tools in keeping their relationship afloat.
“I am a huge proponent of counseling in general. We both have therapy, individually, and we do couples counseling,” she says. “Long-term relationships are not easy. It is much easier to stay in the solid days and jump from relationship to relationship, because then you don’t have to fix the problems that keep recurring. You have to end up fixing yourself; you can’t fix the other person.”
Although she explains how the two have “really grown up together,” she also believes people can’t be expected to grow at the same pace as the other. She notes that at the beginning of relationships, it’s easy to look at your significant other as “your entire world,” but that narrow scope prevents you from pursuing your own passions and time for yourself. “Now we expect less of each other, and that allows us to give each other more somehow,” P!nk adds.
“It can be challenging, and there’s good days and there’s bad days. I think it’s an impossible expectation for you to think that you’re going to evolve at exactly the same pace as another person in exactly the same direction,” the 41-year-old pop star says. “So it takes work to redefine what’s important. I don’t want to break up my family. That’s been my main goal, since I had a broken family. So sometimes you have to let it go. You can’t die on every mountain.”
In the recent trailer for her tour documentary All I Know So Far, she offers a sneak peek as to how she juggles being a rock star mom to her 9-year-old daughter Willow and 4-year-old son Jameson while also being suspended in the air during her concerts. But when asked about whether Hart is still a fan of her performing the songs inspired by their temporary split, the “So What” singer says, “I think deep down he’s flattered. He has been my muse. He knows what he signed up for, and the hits are just going to keep on coming, as they say.”
