Emeli Sande has revealed she divorced her husband after just a year of marriage.

The 'Next to Me' hitmaker admitted she came close to suffering a ''breakdown'' after splitting from Adam Gouraguine in 2013 after dating for ten years.

Emeli, 27, said she's still coming to terms with losing her ''best friend'', telling The Times newspaper: ''Everyone thought I'd gone mad. 'What do you mean a divorce? We were all at your wedding a few months ago!' But there was just something inside me that said, 'This isn't the life. You're pretending to be someone else.'

''And that's so hard to explain to someone. I can't even explain it now.

''I just felt I had to wake up. I'd been sleeping and things were happening. I could get up on stage and sing but, I don't know, it was just a real ... I don't want to call it a breakdown, but it felt like that.

''Every day you get a bit stronger. Every day you stop blaming yourself for things.

''I think I spent the couple of months after not in denial, but not really dealing with what had happened.

''Adam and I had been together since I was 17. He was my only boyfriend. That's the only person I've been with for the past 10 years.

''So [losing] our relationship more than the marriage was the big part for me to deal with.

''Having a friend who'd been my best friend for so long ... losing that support and structure in my life was the biggest thing.''

The singer now acknowledges she shouldn't have got married to Adam, because their lives were ''so separate''.

But Emeli doesn't have a bad word to say about Adam and plans to keep her tattoo on her left breastbone, which reads ''I love you Adam'' in Serbian.