Kelly Clarkson Realized "Both of Us Deserve Better” Prior to Divorce

NBC / Contributor, Getty Images

On the November 30th episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, Clarkson talked to Untamed author Glennon Doyle about going through a highly-publicized divorce—something they both have experience with. Clarkson, who filed for divorce from husband Brandon Blackstock in June, empathized with Doyle, who wrote about the "fallout" from her own divorce from Craig Melton, and the two agreed that risking fallout for happiness is worth it in the end.

"Glennon, you write about the fallout from your divorce—I'm obviously going through one right now," Clarkson, who has two young children with Blackstock, said. "It's horrible. There are so many hard parts. The hardest for me is the kids. I think, as women especially, we're trained to take it all on and deal with it and you're fine. But it's your babies that you worry about."

Doyle agreed that women carry a specific guilt and feeling of responsibility to stay in an unhappy marriage in order "to avoid, at all costs, a broken family."

"I stayed in a broken marriage for a long time for my children," Doyle said, "and one day I was looking at my daughter, and I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm staying in this marriage for her, but would I want this marriage for her?'"

"Modeling bad love and calling it good mothering," as Doyle said, was not something she was willing to burden her children with, thus leading her to decide to follow her gut and separate from her husband.

And that sentiment, which Doyle wrote about in her book, was what Clarkson needed to read to realize the relationship she was in with Blackstock "isn't happiness."

"Both of us deserve better," Clarkson said she realized upon reading Untamed. "Neither one of us would want this for our children."

Oftentimes, children best learn by example. And watching parents coexist in an unhappy relationship can be detrimental to all parties involved. Unhappiness is a hard thing to come to terms with, but doing so can change your life, as well as the lives of those around you, for the better.