【Mother】

Kristen Stewart opened up to ELLE UKabout her relationship with girlfriend Alicia Cargile for the first time.

Stewart has previously declined to directly address her sexuality,Mother though she has been significantly less shy about her romantic relationships with women in public lately.

"I think also right now I'm just really in love with my girlfriend," said Stewart. "We've broken up a couple of times and gotten back together, and this time I was like, 'Finally, I can feel again.'"

Stewart recently dated French pop singer Soko before getting back together with Cargile, a producer who used to work as Stewart's personal assistant.

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When Stewart was dating her Twilightco-star Robert Pattinson, she kept the relationship as private as possible considering the circumstances of their super teen stardom. When she fell in love with Cargile, her instinct to be secretive remained, but Stewart eventually realized that her silence on the issue was perceived as shame.

When I was dating a guy I was hiding everything that I did because everything personal felt like it was immediately trivialized, so I didn't like it. We were turned into these characters and placed into this ridiculous comic book, and I was like, 'That's mine. You're making my relationship something that it's not.' I didn't like that. But then it changed when I started dating a girl. I was like, 'Actually, to hide this provides the implication that I'm not down with it or I'm ashamed of it, so I had to alter how I approached being in public. It opened my life up and I'm so much happier.