New Delhi:
Avantika Malik recently shared her perspective on her divorce from actor Imran Khan in an interview with Janice Sequiera. After Imran had discussed their split in several interviews, Avantika revealed what she went through during her divorce.
During the conversation, Avantika expressed that while divorce isn’t catastrophic, she initially believed she couldn’t survive without Imran.
She said, “It’s just two people growing apart, it’s not the worst thing in the world. I would feel that if my marriage broke, I would die. I felt that I would not survive one day without this guy. I was convinced that I will die. The day we decided that this is it, I wept like there had been a death in the immediate family. I was petrified, because I was also not earning at that time. I’m aware that I come from a lot of privilege and that I will not be on the road.”
Regarding the separation process, Avantika explained it wasn’t straightforward.
She shared, “It wasn’t that structured. We kind of decided to separate for a while before deciding to divorce. There was a fair bit of time… It was also during COVID that all of this happened. The divorce itself took time. My parents are divorced, to begin with, so it wasn’t too difficult to address, or something that made me very uncomfortable. I’ve seen my mom wear it with pride her entire life. It’s not embarrassing to me.”
She reflected on how their relationship dynamics were shaped by their young age when they met and Imran’s public status. “As somebody who has ‘daddy issues’, of course it’s going to colour the way I look at men. We met when we were 19, and when you’re with someone for a long time, a co-dependency happens. I couldn’t book an airline ticket on my own! I was married to someone whose life was bigger, he was a public figure,” she stated, adding that she believes divorce is generally harder for men to navigate.
Avantika confessed to feeling significant guilt about their relationship ending. “This golden couple and their fall from grace. These two were so in love, and always together, and always happy, they threw in the towel. I felt that I had disappointed everybody in my life. It was very, very, very hard. And it took me a very long time to not carry that responsibility and disappointment,” she shared.
The ex-couple, who were together for nearly two decades, share a daughter named Imaara. When asked about co-parenting, Avantika said, “Initially, she had a lot of questions. She was like, ‘Does that mean I’m going to get a new mumma?’ I was like, ‘No, darling, you’re stuck with this one’… What Imran and I did well was that we were very consistent about her spending time with the both of us. We have joint custody. She spends half her week with me, half her week with him.”
