Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan has spoken of 'losing the will to live after the break-up of his marriage to heiress Jemima Goldsmith. He told The Telegraph in an interview that the six months leading to the divorce and the six months after was the 'hardest year of my life. Speaking for the first time about his nine-year marriage, Mr Khan admitted not seeing their two sons - Sulaiman and Qasim, then aged eight and five - caused him deep anguish. He said: 'I loved fatherhood more than anything I had ever experienced in life...now not having them around was the hardest thing to come to terms with. For the first time I began to understand how people could lose the will to live. The childrens obvious distress exacerbated the misery. Seeing Sulaimans pain doubled my pain. I missed them terribly. Nothing filled the void. My greatest sacrifice for being in politics was not always being able to spend as much time as I wanted to with my family, he said. He describes how he was vilified and ridiculed in Pakistan when he launched his own political party and his wife faced allegations she was part of a Zionist plot to take over the country. Jemima, who had converted to Islam, 'wished I had never gone into politics, he said. He had become the butt of jokes and his private life was 'raked over in the media. He recalled how critics would attack her to get at him. 'Hard for anyone, this kind of treatment was particularly distressing for somebody like Jemima, who was naturally shy and sensitive. Mr Khan revealed his relief that the 'burden of Jemimas unhappiness was lifted from him after they parted. He said: 'If theres one thing worse than seeing a loved one leave, its seeing a loved one unhappy. He admits that he now realises his wife may have been too young and inexperienced to cope with the challenges of his political career.