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Kylie Minogue says her boyfriend, French actor Olivier Martinez, whom she calls the "most honorable man I have ever met," put everything aside to help her as she battled breast cancer.

"Olli was there all the time," the Australian pop star tells U.K. Elle in its December issue. "He was incredible. He didn't hesitate in canceling work and putting projects on hold so he could be with me."

After receiving her cancer diagnosis in May 2005, Minogue underwent treatment, but struggled to maintain a positive outlook. In the Elle interview, she says that it was Martinez who kept her both active and reassured.

"On particularly dark days, I'd be lying on the bathroom floor wailing and he'd say, 'OK, honey, you can cry for just five minutes, then I'm taking you on the bike for a ride around Paris,' " she says. "I'd find myself thinking, 'Hmm. Actually a ride on the bike sounds pretty good.' "

Though the couple have been together for four years, Minogue, 38, says that, despite rampant speculation, they have no immediate plans to wed. "The press has had us up and down the aisle every other week it seems," she says. "I understand the excitement at the prospect of a wedding, but we're simply happy together and getting on with life."

Last year, Minogue was forced to postpone the dates of her "Showgirl" tour while undergoing treatment, including surgery to remove the tumor and a course of chemotherapy. But she will hit the road in Sydney beginning Nov. 11 – on the "Showgirl Homecoming" tour, which she will then take to the U.K. in January.

"I'm still trying to get better, still in recovery," says. "But life goes on and I'm back working and being creative and enjoying all of that." But Minogue says her outlook and her attitude have changed: "Friends comment that I seem more present, more 'here.'

"We're over stress," she continues. "I feel more inspired than ever, and think that I will finally achieve what I have long been wishing for: a balance of work and privacy – a harmony."