One of the things that I admire about Kate Hudson is how self-assured she always seems. She’s always seemed like the kind of person who rolls with the punches and considers every choice something that’s brought significant life experience. Kate appeared on the May 22 episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. During her appearance, she talked about doing a “year without men” at her therapist’s suggestion, falling in love and getting married at a young age, and her general thoughts about love and relationships. Kate, who has son Ryder, 20, with Chris Robinson, son Bingham, 12, with Matt Bellamy, and daughter Rani, five, with fiancé Danny Fujikawa. Despite her storied love life, Kate doesn’t regret a thing. In fact, she still has love for all of her exes.
She and Robinson are “so connected:” “I didn’t question it for a second. We were so connected. And Chris taught me so much about love, connection. It was just a wonderfully passionate relationship.”
She has no regrets: “And by the way, not a mistake. look back at my entire life at this point, and I actually feel like I might have gotten it right.”
He kept her grounded: “So when I met Chris, it’s like when my career is taking off,” she reflected, “it was also a time that could have been a whirlwind and instead I was in this very grounding, loving relationship.”
Love is forever: “At the end of the day, I believe you love someone—if you loved them once, you really love them in some way forever,” she explained. “Even if you can’t stand them, if you really loved them, if it was pure, you’ll love them through anything. Maybe not romantically, but that will always, always be there.” Perhaps that is why Kate seems to still have such good relationships with her exes, often mentioning them in interviews or even posing for pictures with their current partners (as she did with Matt’s wife Elle Evans in June).
Wise words on relationships not working out: As she told Allure in 2015, following her split with the Muse musician, “Relationships ending are painful, and you can choose to carry that or you can choose to reframe it. If Matt and I had a great relationship, we would still be together, but we chose to move on because we had different visions of how we wanted to live our lives. That doesn’t mean, though, that we can’t rebuild something that would be the best thing for the kids.”
The dysfunction she was raised in created harmony as an adult: That foundational belief allowed Kate to maintain a relationship with Matt over the years. As she shared during a Feb. 2023 episode the iHeartMedia podcast Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi, “I love him so much. I’m exactly where we were supposed to be. I think he feels the same way about me. However I was raised, whatever environment, whatever dysfunction…it’s created a very harmonious family life for me. It’s totally unconventional. It doesn’t make any sense. It goes against every religious grain in the book and yet, I’m happy and my kids are happy and it feels liberated. I don’t feel the failure.”
I love this for Kate and her children. My husband’s grandparents got divorced when their youngest turned 18, and they got along so much better afterward that even new spouses and step-families were welcomed in. They still celebrate all sorts of occasions together, even 40-something years later. On the other hand, I know children of divorce whose parents could not stand to be in the same room together while they were growing up. For them, it was incredibly tough because they didn’t like feeling like they had to pick sides or even code switch back-and-forth to appeal to each parent. So yeah, I’m really happy that Kate has such a positive outlook and agreeable exes.
That said, I disagree with her sentiment that once you love someone, ”you really love them in some way forever.” I think that discounts a lot of people’s situations, basic human emotions, and interactions in general. It also takes a very rose-colored glasses look to the world. Sometimes people get married for the wrong reasons, sometimes the person they fell in love with proves not to be who they presented themselves as, and sometimes people just fall out of love. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You may still love or care for an ex, but there’s also nothing wrong with putting a person or the past behind you.
Photos Credit: IMAGO / Avalon, Paul Treadway / Avalon, Roger Wong/INSTARimages
I miss those two together. That was a fun era. What’s Chris Robinson up to these days?
Last I heard about him, he was suing her about custody issues a few years back…
I think she mostly just loves love, but I respect her for always speaking so highly of the father(s) of her children. Everyone seems to have a pretty healthy co-parenting situation. Good on them.
I totally agree with this.
I’ve been struggling with this recently. An ex of mine reached out to me and we finally had the closure conversation that I think we both needed. It didn’t work out for us and I’m now in a loving, stable relationship with someone I met 2 weeks after things ended for the umpteenth time with my ex. He couldn’t commit when I needed him to, but he wanted more from me and I couldn’t give that to him without a commitment to be together.
I met my current partner who is wonderful, loving, kind and generous. But we have a very different connection than what I have with my ex. It’s stable, calm, peaceful. It brings me security and room to grow within myself and the relationship. With my ex, it felt like I could only nurture him and that’s what would help our relationship grow. All that being said, hearing his voice on the phone, our energy and conversation picking up from where it left off more than a year ago was so jarring. He told me so many times he loved me, more than he ever said when we were actually together. I’ve always missed him but it made me miss him even more. He told me he loves me and he’s now ready but I don’t think he’s as ready as I am. The timing just didn’t work out.
I told him that I wasn’t saying no to being with him to punish him. In fact, I think I’ll always love him. I don’t think I’ll ever have the connection I had with him with anyone else. It makes me sad I won’t have that with my current partner, who I know I want to spend my life with. But I want to give myself more than just connection. I need love, peace and stability and room to grow, I don’t see that with my ex. But I know I’ll always love him. He’s so special and that’s why I fell in love with him in the first place. He thanked me for saying the things I said and for being so kind and open to discussion. I told him I would never want to hurt him, you don’t hurt the people you love.
I love Kate’s attitude and I think it’s even healthier to have when you have kids. I can understand this outlook might be different for exes who split due to abuse, lying, cheating, etc. And that completely makes sense. But if you split because of timing or that priorities have shifted, I love her approach. For me, my past relationships didn’t work out due to timing or because we ultimately weren’t good matches for each other. And because of that, I want our legacy to be a legacy of love and kindness, not bitterness or resentment.
I’ve always been very meh on Kate Hudson but I do really appreciate her outlook on this. It’s not for everyone but it does seem incredibly positive and healthy for everyone involved all around. It sucks that this can’t be the case for everyone but it’s nice that, given her platform, she can talk about making an effort to maintain these relationships, even if the love is no longer romantic. The world is a dumpster fire so reading something like this is just nice. It’s a tiny little bright spot even if I have absolutely no proximity to the situation. Nice things are just nice and people being nice to each other is nice. Plus it’s a lovely diversions from constantly seeing the Windsor’s toxicity.
I don’t feel the same as her. I think love is too strong of a word. I *care* enough to say I wish my exes the best in life, but no, I don’t have feelings of love for them anymore. It’s okay to move on. I’m really glad she has found peace and has a good relationship with the father of her children.