It was with a heavy heart that Vanessa Feltz confirmed the end of her 16-year relationship with fiancé Ben Ofoedu.
Despite having her world turned upside down, the devastated TV star says she's 'absolutely determined' to keep going following the heart breaking split.
In an emotional Instagram video released on Sunday, she told fans: "Well I haven't been on Instagram for three weeks and that's because my relationship with Ben is over after sixteen years and I honestly didn't know what to say to you on Instagram.
""But now it's clear that it's over... I just wanted to say that obviously I feel incredibly sad and I am pretty disappointed and shocked and all those horrible things but also full of resolve. Because I am not going to let this defeat me."
The couple were first introduced in 2001 by Vanessa's Celebrity Big Brother co-star Keith Duffy, but both were dating other people and nothing happened until their paths crossed once more five years later at a magazine's Christmas party.
"We didn't see each other or go out with each other or make any contact with each other whatsoever, until a few years later at the OK! Christmas party, where I was standing at my spiritual home, which is right next to the chocolate fountain," she told the publication last year.
And Phats and Small star Ben, 50, fancied her immediately, recalling how Vanessa's quick wit had him hooked.
"Apart from being beautiful and me actually fancying you, I just thought, 'Wow, I've got to stay on my toes here,' because you had an answer for absolutely everything. I think [I was] slightly intimidated, because I knew you were so quick-witted."
He popped the question less than a year later, and despite never marrying, they were considered to have one of the strongest partnerships in showbusiness.
Indeed, when they weren't appearing as a couple on shows such as Celebrity Wife Swap, Vanessa was sharing details of their sizzling sex life.
Less than 12 months ago, she declared that they'd never suffered so much as a 'fallow period', describing sex as 'one of life's great pleasures'.
"Mine and Ben's sex life is still the same as when we first got together. It's never got to the point of having to take note of how often we have or haven't done it," the star told The Sun, revealing how she likes to create a 'sexual climate'.
She continued: "Ben and I will switch it up in the bedroom, too, instead of always doing the boring tried-and-tested formula. It might be with what I wear, or what I don't wear, the room that we're doing it in, or the position."
Sadly, their steamy chemistry wasn't enough to keep them together though.
And according to Vanessa, 60, in the end, their split came down to trust.
Struggling to keep her composure as she confirmed their breakup on Instagram, she said: "I really do feel that once the trust in a relationship is gone then you can't really get it back, and that's what I would tell anyone else to do."
Ben is said to have moved out of their £3.5million home in St John's Wood, North London as Vanessa contemplates life without the man she thought she would grow old with.
From the start though, another challenge was the 10-year age difference between the agony aunt and the pop star. Especially as the last decade has been a time a big change for the mother-of-two.
"Don't let anyone tell you that the age gap doesn't matter," she previously told The Sunday Times.
"It's bloody annoying and it gets worse, especially as our relationship coincided with acres of menopause, which started on my very first day presenting the Radio 2 breakfast show in 2011 with a massive hot flush at 4am and is still going on."
Meanwhile, this isn't the first time that Vanessa has had her heart decimated. Back in 2000 her marriage to surgeon Michael Kurer ended suddenly amid allegations he had been unfaithful.
The couple's daughter Allegra and Saskia were just teenagers when Michael told Vanessa he was leaving.
"I remember getting home from a wedding with him and thought he was getting ready for bed," she told the How To Fail podcast of that fateful day.
"The next thing I saw, he was getting dressed and packing a case and said, 'I'm leaving'. I didn't understand what I'd done wrong."
The heartbroken star said she begged and pleaded for him to stay with the family, admitting: "I don't need to give you all of the details, but effectively I put my arms around the wheels and said, 'Please don't drive away, please don't leave us.'"
And it was because of that trauma which derailed her to 'the most terrific extent' that Vanessa was never in any rush to walk down the aisle for a second time with Ben.
"I was so shocked and broken-hearted and rocked to my absolute core," she once told OK! magazine.
"It makes you wary of getting married again. The marriage seemed to be so disposable - it could just be chucked down the toilet in 10 seconds flat, even though I didn't want it to be."
