Sophia Bush finally feels like she can breathe after coming out as queer and speaking openly about her long-rumored relationship with soccer star Ashlyn Harris.
“When I take stock of the last few years, I can tell you that I have never acted with such integrity in my life. I hope that's clear enough for everyone speculating,” the “One Tree Hill” alum wrote in an essay for Glamor's April issue on Thursday.
The 41-year-old detailed how her year-long marriage to Grant Hughes seemed fake and fell apart amid her grueling fertility issues. She also explained how her recovery from that relationship led her to Harris, who had simultaneously been going through her own divorce from her former teammate Ali Krieger.
Bush wrote that after her fairytale wedding, which she has no regrets, she found herself “in the deepest and most anguished depths of the fertility process.” She kept all of that private as she endured months of ultrasounds, hormone injections, blood draws that caused scar tissue in her veins, and numerous egg retrievals, “all the while realizing that the person I had chosen to be my partner “I didn't necessarily speak the same thing.” emotional language that I made.”
The “Work in Progress” and “Drama Queens” podcast host said she felt something in her “seismic shift” about six months into that trip and “knew deep down that I had absolutely made a mistake,” and ultimately applied for the Divorce after approximately 13 years. months of marriage. Her separation from Hughes, a businessman and property investor, caused Bush to move to London “to get out of our house” and perform a play to “rekindle the joy” she had been pursuing. (She retired from “2:22 A Ghost Story” in July 2023 due to illness.)
The “Love, Victor” and “Chicago PD” actress returned to her empty home in Los Angeles last summer and said a growing group of women in her life began to open up about their own problems. That group included the “kind ear” of the US women’s national team goalkeeper, whom she met in 2019. She didn’t expect to find love there.
“I don't know how else to say it other than: I didn't see it until I saw it. And I think it's very easy to not see something that's been in front of you for a long time when you've never seen it as an option and you've never been seen as an option.”
It took other people in her “safe support bubble” to signal to Bush that she and Harris would finish each other's sentences or be deeply affected by the same things, she wrote.
Reports of the couple's affair emerged in October, months after each of them filed for divorce. The “One Tree Hill” alum and the US women's national team goalkeeper reportedly went out to dinner for the first time a couple of weeks earlier, People reported at the time, and TMZ claimed they were “officially.” one thing”.
In his essay, Bush shed light on that supposed first date, which he described as a four-and-a-half-hour meal that was “truly one of the most surreal experiences of my life thus far.”
“I know for one bright moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me,” he wrote. But facing the judgment she felt before the public was daunting.
“Those who said I left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women: my partners have known what I like for a long time (so it's not that, sorry!),” he wrote, noting that he didn't leave his marriage because of a random date, but rather after a year of “doing the most heartbreaking work of my life.”
Bush also praised his partner's integrity and love for their children.
As for her identity, the lifelong LGBTQIA+ ally described feeling at home in the queer community.
“I think I always knew that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines him is queer,” she wrote. “Actually, I can't say it without smiling. And that feels very good.”
