Kit Chan: 'I was never divorced because I was never married'
Home-grown singer Kit Chan recently revealed on the CNA Insider programme The Assembly on Jan 16 that she was never married.
In the third episode of the interview series which features a panel of neurodivergent individuals asking prominent figures unfiltered questions, Singaporean poet and aspiring journalist Stephanie Fam, who has cerebral palsy, asked the 52-year-old star, who reportedly got married in 2012, why she kept her divorce a secret.
Chan had revealed she split from her former partner, a banker, in an interview with The Straits Times in 2018.
She told Fam on The Assembly: “This is something that I really have never talked about... I was never divorced because I was never married.”
Chan then said she held a “wedding dinner”, but never legally tied the knot for reasons she declined to share.
In an interview with Chinese news outlet Lianhe Zaobao published on Jan 18, the Home (1998) singer said she had no idea what she would be asked on the programme, and was briefly stunned by Fam’s question.
“The understanding was that there were no questions that cannot be asked, but I can choose not to answer,” she said.
Still, she went ahead and replied to Fam, in the no-holds-barred spirit of The Assembly.
“When you have enough life experience, you’d know that many things are simply out of your control. When you truly get that, you will try to learn to let go. But letting go is not giving up, it is being comfortable with what comes your way, and that’s not a bad feeling,” she said.
Chan, who largely keeps her personal life private, said she had considered clearing up the misunderstanding over her marital status in previous years, but was never the sort of person to approach the media directly.
“I just felt that I wanted to wait for an appropriate moment to explain myself. But sometimes, I felt that even if I never explained myself, I never lied. I never said I was married or divorced, I always referred to my previous relationship as a relationship. I referred to him as my partner, never my husband – that’s something reporters would have noticed if they paid attention.”
In 2018, Chan eventually revealed that she split from her former partner because she was tired of answering questions about how she spent Valentine’s Day. She told ST then: “I’m single now. It happened last year (2017). I kept it to myself for a long time and only a few very close friends know – even my family knew about it only much later.”
Reports about her getting a divorce then followed. She said she felt clarifying that would have required her to explain herself a lot, at a time when she was still feeling vulnerable.
“Back then, I had just ended that relationship and a lot of things were still muddled in my head. It took me three years to heal, but by then, no one cared about (my divorce) any more, until I was asked again on (The Assembly).”
Chan said clarifying her marital status now is a sign that there is “A Time For Everything”, the title of a song she released in 2018.
“I don’t really care what people think, as long as I know what I’m doing,” she added.
She has found love again following her split. She has been in what she described as a “happy and stable” relationship for five years with a partner who is around her age, but declined to reveal more about him.
She told Zaobao: “I really like this person. He lets me be myself and is also a great partner. For someone not in the public eye, he’s very understanding and supportive of my job.”
She also said he has changed how she views romance.
“I used to be very serious about dating. I would feel that we need to have the same way of thinking, but now, I don’t feel that way at all. Now, I think the important thing is to be happy.”
She added: “If I do get married, I’ll happily share that news with everyone. But right now, that’s not something we have talked about yet.”
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