Natalie Bassingthwaighte on the downfall of her marriage and how she knew it was time to leave

Aussie star Natalie Bassingthwaighte has opened up about the end of her marriage to Cameron McGlinchey and how she knew it was time to call it quits.

The pair first met when Bassingthwaighte joined the band Rogue Traders in 2004. They tied the knot in 2011 and after more than a decade of marriage, they separated in late 2022.

Speaking on the Inherited podcast, Bassingthwaighte went into detail about the moment she knew her life was changing, one night feeling something magnetic with a friend of hers named Pip Loth.

“The next morning I rang my friend; I said, ‘I need a therapist. I don’t know what’s going on’,” she recalled.

“And then I just started therapy and everything unravelled.”

She explained that up to that point she had been living with walls up constantly, adding that the facade had fallen and she “couldn’t change it”.

She found herself unable to let McGlinchey touch her, explaining that her body entirely rejected the idea.

“The weirdest thing is, from that night, we never touched each other again,” she said.

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“We never kissed. We never held each other. Well, we’d hug. But my body said, ‘No, don’t touch me’.”

She said that she would discuss the issue with her therapist, trying to find a way to be with him, but it just didn’t work.

“You have to feel safe, and it’s not because he’s an awful person,” she said.

“It’s just that I said I’m not being involved in this, and of this any more, this masculine energy of life. It just didn’t suit. Everything was screaming no.”

She was going through therapy by herself, as well as with McGlinchey, when he asked her not to see Loth any more. It was an ask that she immediately knew wasn’t a possibility.

Looking for anyway to keep their marriage alive, Bassingthwaighte threw out the idea of polyamory, knowing that deep down it wasn’t something either her or her husband would be able to do.

“I still love this guy. But I couldn’t let him touch me. But I couldn’t imagine not being with him,” she said.

A few weeks later, the couple came to the decision to separate.

“There was no way I could live a life and be with him and never see [Loth] again,” she said.

“That felt like an awakening, a connection that I’d never felt ever with anybody, and had brought myself out of being me.

“Like I felt this real mirror reflection with the two of us, It’s so odd honestly.”

At first it didn’t make sense to Bassingthwaighte; she’d never been in love with a woman before and was struggling to admit it to herself.

She said she was scared of her kids “not loving” her anymore, and of her work “just falling apart. But eventually, she came to terms with it and began seeing Loth romantically.

The couple went public with their relationship in late 2023, and announced their engagement in October 2025.

“We’re both sensitive humans. We both are givers,” Bassingthwaighte explained.

“We care about people and life and humanity and nature. It just feels right and easy.”