Continued from page 3

Britney & Kevin: It's Over

Tuesday November 07, 2006 12:00 PM EST

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NOV. 3: "He was performing long before he met Britney," says a friend of Federline (at his CD's release party). "This was the right time for him to be in front of the mike."

BRIAN ACH / WIREIMAGE

Different cities, demeanors and goals – that pretty much sums up their turbulent two years together. Spears, whose spur-of-the-moment first marriage to boyhood chum Jason Alexander in 2004 lasted all of 55 hours, made no secret of wanting to be a mother and live a less public life. "I'm a country girl at heart," she told PEOPLE in February. "I long to be at home. I like that simplicity for my child. I really, really do." But her unlikely marriage to Federline, a former backup dancer from Fresno, Calif., with designs of his own pop stardom, seemed made somewhere other than heaven. "We're an opposites attract," Federline told PEOPLE on Nov. 3, just days before the divorce announcement. "If she gets mad and she yells at me, it just turns me on more, ya know?"

But a source close to Federline says the marriage took a turn for the worse when he headed off on a Las Vegas trip with his friends in late September to party at Tao for the nightclub's one-year anniversary, leaving Britney, who had just given birth three weeks earlier, home alone. "This was her last straw," says the source. "He said, 'I have to go to Vegas.' He didn't have to go to Vegas. He uses any excuse to party. She said, 'I've had enough.' " Not long after that, according to the source, Federline moved out, and has been staying with friends who have a place in the San Fernando Valley.

But the beginning of the end may have been even sooner. "Their relationship changed after the first baby was born," says a source. "Things became more strained. It was overwhelming at times, especially when Britney got pregnant again." Federline, adds the friend, "still loves Britney and their sons so much and has tried to be a good husband and father. He's not pursuing his career as a rapper for purely selfish reasons; he genuinely wants to take care of his family, and this is one way he sees he can do that." Federline himself told PEOPLE on Nov. 6 that "having two kids and trying to do all the business and everything, it's not easy. It's tough but we will make it through this. We're a superpower."