Cardi B went through a rough time recently, but luckily, Shakira was there to help her through some of it.

In an interview on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast posted Monday (Oct. 6), the rapper looked back on the period of time in her marriage to Offset during which she felt their feelings for each other waning. “I also feel like my marriage, I felt the love dying — from my end, from his end,” Cardi said. “I was very lonely, because I chose to be lonely.”

“Around that time, I was working with Shakira, and I was like, ‘How the f–k did you overcame this?’” she continued of her “Punteria” collaborator. “Like, how did you overcame this? And she’s like, ‘It’s going to happen.’ And [I’m] like, ‘It will never happen.’”

Despite her initial disbelief, Cardi eventually realized that she would simply have to push through the unraveling of her relationship — just as Shakira, who went through her own split from longtime partner Gerard Piqué in 2022, had said. “And it happened,” the Bronx native told Shetty. “It took some crying, it took some thoughts, scary thoughts. But I’m here, honey, and I’m the strongest I’ve been.”

The interview comes just a couple of weeks after the Grammy winner dropped sophomore album Am I the Drama?, on which she seemingly unpacks her feelings toward ‘Set. After eight years of marriage, Cardi filed for divorce — for a second time — in July 2024, and the pair have been publicly trading barbs as they work toward finalizing their divorce.

Aside from the remaining legal disputes, though, Cardi has fully moved on from her estranged husband. Earlier this year, she started dating Stefon Diggs, and she is now expecting her first baby with the NFL star.

Watch Cardi’s full appearance on On Purpose below.