Imran Khan steers clear on divorce with Avantika Malik: ‘Trauma of separation better than an unhealthy relationship’ – EXCLUSIVE |

Imran Khan has been away from the movies for the last 11 years and he’s made a comeback with a cameo in ‘Happy Patel’. He’ll be seen in a film which he is also co-producing, titled ‘Adhoore Hum Adhoore Tum’ directed by Danish Aslam. While he has been away from the movies, Imran has been largely dealing with his mental health and now has also been an advocate of it, so that others also feel comfortable to open up on it. Amidst all of it, Imran went through a divorce with Avantika Malik. They dated for a few years before they got married in 2011 and separated in 2019. Today, Imran is healed and how. He looks better than ever and as we ask him how he is feeling now? He smiles and says, “Getting better each day.” During a heartwarming, candid chat with Etimes, as we spoke about his life, cinema, mental health and more, Imran also steered clear on his divorce and what probed him to take this step. He said, “It was around 2016 when I had that light bulb moment. My mother is a psychoanalyst so my exposure to mental health and the conversations around mental health are fairly open and free of stigma.So you know that is also an advantage that I’ve had which is that I did not carry any baggage. I started going for analysis through those years 2016-17-18 that was my primary focus. I was a parent full-time because I was otherwise unemployed and other than being a parent I was working on fixing myself to a place of health as I see it.”

Further explaining it, Imran said, “Within that I developed the understanding that my dynamic with my partner was unhealthy. It was a relationship that started at a very young age and when you were 18 19 years old you don’t have nearly enough life experience to have an understanding of what are healthy interpersonal dynamics and what are unhealthy dynamics. You say you know some people are like this some people are like that and you just go along. It’s only as I started to become a little more aware and a little more conscious that I realised we are this and it’s not a healthy pattern. We are locked in a cycle that we are unable to to fix or change. We’ve been locked into that pattern for enough time that it has set and this is now our reality and it cannot change because it requires two party effort.” The ‘Jaane Tu..Ya Jaane Na’ actor admitted that it was during this time that he realised that his relationship with his then wife, was not healthy. “In this context, I understood that it’s not happening that way, it is not working that way and in order for myself to be the healthiest best version of myself I have to remove myself from this relationship. I don’t blame anyone for this. I’ve not been in the media. I’ve been out of public sight and in the absence of me actually being there and speaking, rumors, gossip, all of this stuff kind of speculation just goes about, so things get muddled and conflated. Within that, I think a lot of people took my divorce to be the thing that was uh impactful for me and that I was impacted by by the separation that that triggered a mental health crisis. The truth is far from it. I was infact in the worst years of it during the last couple of years of my marriage. It is my making the choice to end my marriage that was the turning point in my personal mental health journey that that allowed me to actually heal and get better. It is because we were not we were not in sync. We were not able to support each other being the best version of self,” he said. The actor expressed that while a separation is painful, it is still better for both individuals, especially when a child is involved than being in an unhealthy dynamic. He said, “While a a partner’s separation is unpleasant and hurtful to all – from the two individuals involved, the family, the child, it is still preferable over remaining in an unhealthy dynamic because to perpetuate an unhealthy pattern is madness. It is ultimately damaging for both and it is unhealthy for a child because you are teaching and showing a child that you continue to support and to propagate an unhealthy pattern. So whatever the hurt trauma that comes from a separation, it is still preferable to remaining in an unhealthy environment.”