The husband of Nicole Kidman revealed he was a terrible boyfriend after he was slammed as a ‘hypocrite’.
‘I sucked at relationships,’ confessed the Graffiti U crooner to Grammy Museum’s Scott Goldman for SXSW.
‘I would write these songs about love and relationships – I remember writing Somebody Like You and playing it for my girlfriend at the time, and she just looked at me and said: “You’re a f****** hypocrite,” and I couldn’t argue that.’
Keith referred to the time in which he was battling an alcohol addiction and revealed at the conference that these songs were more aspirational.
‘I realised I was writing from all these place of the kind of person I wished I could be. I wasn’t that person, but I wanted to be,’ he said. ‘It was only a song, but my real life was a disaster. The only thing that’s changed in my life is I’ve more so become the person I was trying to be.’
He also said he wished he’d put his life on track sooner and that he had felt ‘enslaved’.
‘I wished I had gotten sober many years before I did, but I’m glad I finally got here. It has made it possible to do the things I do. I wasn’t at my full potential. I was enslaved, is what I was,’ he revealed.
Keith first went into rehab in 1998, before meeting Nicole in 2005 and checking into rehab for the third and final time in 2006. He credits her intervention for his being sober. That said, he still admits he feels he’s living a lie.
‘At the end of the day, Keith might be sober and clean, but he still feels in many ways that he’s living a lie,’ a source close to the singer revealed to New Idea.
‘He can’t believe he’s come through the other side of his addiction and wound up marrying the world’s numberone actress, and that he now has two beautiful children. Keith just can’t believe that Nicole chose him and loves him – he feels like it can’t be true, given the mess of a man he used to be.
‘He still has really dark days sometimes, when he feels like that person with demons inside. Keith keeps it to himself because he feels that this is his battle to overcome, but he can’t help but feel that he’s sometimes living a lie and it will come crashing down one day.’
The source adds: ‘He beats himself up about it a fair bit – he’s a little tortured inside.’ And now Keith is reportedly back in therapy, but this time with actress Nicole.
The couple spent three days in ‘marriage boot camp’ in the small US town of Cabot, which In Touch says later turned into ‘therapy hell’. ‘They have been putting a bandaid over their problems for too long,’ spilled an insider.
At the camp, the couple reportedly confronted their many marital problems in recent times, including emotional issues.
‘They addressed a range of emotional issues, including emotional intimacy, and focused on the root of their problems as they learned to break down the walls and start working on their issues, rather than plastering over the cracks.’
Last year the couple celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary.
This year, it’s rumoured they are set to celebrate a second wedding that will take place later in the year.
‘When Keith got down on bended knee and proposed – again – it was with the promise of them both turning over a new leaf in their marriage,’ said a source close to the couple. ‘There’s no doubt that they absolutely love each other, but they have certainly been tested over the past few years.’
In the early stages of their relationship, Keith has even admitted to ignoring calls from Nicole, saying he first thought she was ‘out of his league’. The pair share two daughters, Sunday Rose, nine, and Faith, seven.
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