Lily Allen is peeling back the curtain — and she’s not holding anything back.
In a new Perfect Magazine interview, the 40-year-old It’s Not Me, It’s You singer opens up about love, loss, and the sometimes-brutal reality of starting over. For the first time since her breakup with Stranger Things star David Harbour, Lily is speaking candidly about what life looks like on the other side of “happily ever after.”
“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 admitted. “It’s hard for me to not have my person, you know? And I am quite a codependent person… 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.”
It’s a raw, painfully honest reflection on love and identity — the kind that only Lily could deliver. “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 continued. “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.”
When it comes to dating again, Lily says it’s been… complicated. “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. It’s bitterly disappointing,” she shared. “There’s an element of humiliation and shame around it. The world doesn’t portray women of my age as being desirable.”
Still, the singer’s sense of humour — and self-awareness — shine through. “Being in a relationship is not the answer to all of my problems,” she said. “In fact, it’s probably the opposite. But it feels like the easier option.”
As for an open marriage? That’s not her vibe. “No. I guess it’s just my attachment style,” Lily said, recalling her unstable upbringing. “Neither of my parents was particularly present… What I craved in adulthood from my relationships was to be centred. And I’m not particularly interested in anything else.”
Lily even touched on getting a breast augmentation, explaining, “Good, although I have got f–king massive lump in my right boob… I went to have a mammogram and an ultrasound in New York last week and it came back OK.”
She said the choice was ultimately about feeling balanced: “I got really, really thin when I was feeling at my lowest… I felt like, why not gift myself a get-out clause? Make it feel more enticing.”
And as she teases her upcoming album, Lily’s not shying away from being bold. “Hey, if what you’re doing isn’t provocative, what’s the f–king point?” she said. “My gift is my pen and my writing… My strength is my ability to tell a story. And so I’m going to lean into that.”
