Gwen Stefani sat down with the Howard Stern Show yesterday (July 20) and opened up about how her relationship with Blake Shelton formed out of friendship.

The singer says when she went back to taping The Voice she was in "my hell of my life" with a big secret about the split between her and her husband, Gavin Rossdale. She got through by praying a lot, calling the whole ordeal eye-opening.

"When you have really bad things happen to you, I feel like that's a little bit of an awakening. Pharrell [Williams] was a really good friend to me as well, just pointing me in the right direction," she says.

As Stefani explains, when Shelton revealed his split from Miranda Lambert to The Voice team backstage, she "went white."

"I was in shock, because I felt like he was exposing me. I just couldn't even get my head around it," Stefani admits. "I never saw him look so upset and I said I have to talk to him. We started this friendship that was unbelievable that God would put us in a position to have each other in that moment, in the same exact moment."

Stefani eventually opened up to Shelton about her marriage, and says there was never any plan for a relationship; it just happened. Instead, she was trying her best to keep her life together.

"We started emailing here and there," she adds. "It was an incredible gift to be able to have a friend."

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