Phil Collins and Orianne Cevey had become distant after the birth of their second child since she was going through post-natal depression.
British musician Phil Collins's broken heart led to his successful solo career. His then-wife Andrea Bertorelli left him in 1979 and took their kids with her. To fill his time in his empty home, the member of the British rock band Genesis recorded some heartfelt demos in his home studio. Since then, the sadness of being left by a partner has brought him some joy in different ways.
"People used to say to me, ‘Don’t you feel embarrassed showing your dirty laundry?’" Collins, 69, told The Guardian. "And really, I didn’t, because it was the only way I knew how to write songs. With Genesis it had all been surreal and science fiction. I felt this was more me."
While this marriage ended in unhappiness, his fame grew, and eventually, he found love again with Jill Tavelman, with whom he has a daughter Lily Collins. But, he broke Tavelman's heart in the worst way possible. He had an affair and then while he was in Tax exile, he told Tavelman about the divorce through fax. However, he claims that their divorce was already underway in 1996.
Eventually, he found love for the third time with a translator called Orianne Cevey, 46, who was more than 20 years younger than him, in the late 1990s. He met her during his European tour in the mid-1990s and married her in 1999 in a lavish ceremony worth almost $400,000. The couple went on to have two sons, Nicholas and Mathew, but things started going wrong after their second child's birth in December 2004. Cevey was battling post-natal depression and that took a toll on their bond.
"I was breastfeeding and one day he stopped wanting my milk. It felt like instant rejection. I wasn’t feeling that great and it was emotionally overwhelming for me. It was hard for Phil to understand. Men do not have the same way of expressing their feelings as women," she told The Daily Mail. "Phil couldn’t understand why I wasn’t happy. He didn’t want the divorce."
Eventually, in 2006, after years of issues between them, they divorced, a process that led to more than $31 million settlement. It was the biggest celebrity divorce in Britain at the time.
The pain of losing his family again broke Collins and in 2010 he announced his retirement. His family had moved to Miami, Florida and he found himself completely alone once again. This time it made him turn to alcohol. "I didn’t go around rolling drunk. But I just started to drink," he told the Daily Mail. "I used to get up and I’d start drinking and watch the cricket. Red wine, white wine."
For years as a rock star, he had not fallen prey to the many substances freely available around him but losing his family made him turn to vodka as breakfast. "Before you know it, within months, you're drinking vodka from the fridge in the morning and falling over in front of the kids, you know," he admitted in 2016.
Retirement wasn't working out for the legendary musician. He came close to dying in 2012 due to acute pancreatitis and that took him to rehab afterward. However, that too didn't work and once he had so much to drink while on a holiday on the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean that he had to be airlifted to New York, according to the SUN UK. More health problems piled on after that and in 2016, his ex-wife returned to him. They said they were more "profoundly and deeply" in love again. He even moved to Miami to be close to his family.
"It’s different this time," Cevey told the Daily Mail. "When you first fall in love there is passion and excitement. But the second time around it’s more thoughtful, more mature. You’ve both thought about it for so many years, you’ve missed each other, you’ve come to the realization that this is the right place to be and this is the person you truly love. It’s more profound, a deeper connection."
"I don’t think I ever stopped loving Phil but it took me a while to realize that he is the love of my life. Everyone makes mistakes and sometimes you don’t realize you’ve made a mistake until it’s too late. If you have a chance to go back and correct a mistake, as we have been lucky enough to do, that’s a wonderful gift," she said.
They told their sons that they were getting back together and the kids were happy to see their parents together. "We sat the boys down and told them, 'We’ve decided to get back together and we’re going to do our best to make it work this time.' Their reaction was filled with joy, they screamed, 'Yesssss!' It was so cute. Then Mathew said, 'My wish has come true'."
She had also said that they plan to remarry and while that still hasn't happened, she just calls him husband anyway. "Our separation was the wrong decision," she told the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick, according to The Guardian. "I now call Phil my husband again. We are so close that it does not actually make a difference if we are married or not, but we are determined to get married for a second time one day,” she added.
References:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10057768/phil-collins-health-battle-and-love-that-saved-him/
