Supermodel Gisele Bündchen said her ex-husband Tom Brady's decision to extend his NFL career was only "one piece of a much bigger puzzle" in their decision to get divorced last year.

Bündchen, 42, called her split from Brady, 45, "the death of my dream" in an exclusive interview with Vanity Fair published on Wednesday (March 22), which included addressing speculation that the seven-time Super Bowl champion's decision to unretire last offseason was the cause of their divorce.

“Wow, people really made it about that,” Bündchen said, before later adding, “What’s been said is one piece of a much bigger puzzle. It’s not so black and white.”

“Sometimes you grow together; sometimes you grow apart,” she added. “When I was 26 years old and he was 29 years old, we met, we wanted a family, we wanted things together. As time goes by, we realize that we just wanted different things, and now we have a choice to make. That doesn’t mean you don’t love the person. It just means that in order for you to be authentic and truly live the life that you want to live, you have to have somebody who can meet you in the middle, right? It’s a dance. It’s a balance.”

“When you love someone, you don’t put them in a jail and say, ‘You have to live this life.’ You set them free to be who they are, and if you want to fly the same direction, then that’s amazing.”

Mychal Maguire