Lily Allen has spoken candidly about life after her breakup with actor David Harbour, sharing her frustrations with dating and the emotional challenges of starting over in her 40s. In a new interview with Perfect magazine, the 40-year-old singer admitted that navigating the dating world feels overwhelming and far from fulfilling.
“Dating just feels like climbing up a mountain,” Allen said, explaining that she no longer believes a romantic relationship will be “the answer to all of my problems.” “The dating scene is much harder as a 40-year-old woman with two teenage children than it is for a 34-year-old woman,” she added. “It’s bitterly disappointing. There’s an element of humiliation and shame around it.”
Allen went on to reflect on how society often overlooks women her age when it comes to desirability. “The world doesn’t portray women of my age as being desirable. And it just feels like climbing up a mountain,” she said.
The Smile hitmaker’s comments come months after her split from Harbour, best known for his role in Stranger Things. The pair married in 2020 in a low-key ceremony in Las Vegas and appeared together frequently at red carpet events before quietly separating in February after four years of marriage.
Discussing the end of her relationship, Allen expressed sadness and a sense of loss. “I don’t know what I can say. Two people who were once together are not together. And that’s really sad. It’s hard,” she said.
She admitted the breakup has left her struggling to adjust to life without her partner. “It’s hard for me not to have my person, you know? And I am quite a codependent person,” she confessed. “I find it difficult to lean on the people who are available to me when I’m missing the comfort and stability of what is not available to me.”
Allen also spoke about the challenge of finding happiness within herself. “I know that what I have to do is to be able to make myself happy, and that is a source of extreme irritation for me,” she said. “And it means doing the f–king work, and I feel like I’ve been doing the work for f–king ages. I’m exhausted by it.
And I thought it was done. I thought it was happily ever after, you know?” Her candid remarks highlight the emotional reality of heartbreak and the difficulty of rediscovering independence after love, especially while balancing motherhood and public life.
