Originally appeared on E! Online
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton‘s love story almost had a sweet escape.
The couple — who wed in 2021 after meeting in 2015 as coaches on "The Voice" — may be inseparable now, but the “Hollaback Girl” singer recently revealed she was on the verge of making herself just a girl to the “Ol’ Red” crooner.
"There was a point where I was like, 'I can't even talk to you,’” Stefani told People in an interview published Nov. 25. “‘This is insane. I already have enough problems. This is not happening anymore. We're not going to text or nothing.'"
And the No Doubt frontwoman noted that both her and Shelton’s divorces at the time — from Gavin Rossdale and Miranda Lambert, respectively — made 2015 a difficult starting point for the pair.
"We had just met, and it was chaos,” she added. “Both of our lives were in complete turmoil, all over the ground. Nothing could save us at that point.
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But despite her initial hesitations, Stefani — who shares sons Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10, with Rossdale — explained that songwriting is what helped Shelton persevere.
"I think he really wanted to impress me,” she continued, “because he doesn't really write songs as much as he used to. And I love writing songs. That's everything to me. That's where I get my fulfillment.”
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So, Shelton reached out to Stefani for help on "Go Ahead and Break My Heart," a country duet they eventually released in 2016.
"He sent it to me, and it was a half-written song,” she said. “He was like, 'Help me finish this.' So I wrote him the verse back — the second verse on the song — and it's just over text. That was our first song that we ever wrote together. We were never even in the same room, but we were writing a song to each other."
And for Stefani, she saw Shelton as more than just a songwriting partner — she saw an answered prayer.
“Something that I wanted since I was a little girl,” she shared, “is to be married and have this love that I saw my parents have and have babies. That dream was completely ruined. It was crushed, and I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and make a new dream.”
“God putting Blake in my life,” she added, “was just that miracle.”
