Reese Witherspoon is on the cover of Parade magazine and in her accompanying interview she gets a little personal about her relationships with Jake Gyllenhaal Ryan Phillipe. It’s been a while since she’s given a major interview like this.

On her divorce from Ryan Phillipe
“There are things in my life that are hard to reconcile, like divorce,” she says. “Sometimes it is very difficult to make sense of how it could possibly happen. Laying blame is so easy. I don’t have time for hate or negativity in my life. There’s no room for it. When you make wrong choices, you have to take responsibility for them: ‘What part of this do I own?’”

She pauses and takes a sip of tea. “I struggle to figure out what made me make those choices,” she admits. “All I can hope for is that I’ve learned something from it and won’t make the same choices again.”

I love that Reese makes a point of saying that laying blame is easy, and that she did have a role in the end of her marriage. Ryan Phillipe has a lot of negative press about his relationship with Abbie Cornish, but obviously only the people inside the marriage know what happened.

On raising her children with Ryan after they split:
Since their divorce, both Reese and Ryan continue to share the care of their children. Both kids, she says, still know they have the same two parents. “My ex-husband is very involved in raising our beautiful children,” she says. “We’re very lucky because we both grew up in working families in middle America. We’re on the same page that way. When we’re with our children, we’re very good about checking ourselves.

“I’m teaching the children what we were taught growing up—a real set of rules, discipline, and love,” she says. “Children thrive with a sense of structure, and they’re frightened without it. The ways you behave, how you speak to other people—those things don’t leave you.”

On celebrity:
I ask if she worries about her children’s safety. “After my second baby, I was scared,” she recalls. “It’s hard to protect your babies from the press and all the people out there wanting a part of you. It made me hibernate a little bit more. I got very ‘Mama Bear’ and protective. You give birth, and worry and guilt come with it. It’s a natural part of being a parent. But for me, the most difficult part is seeing my children being followed and harassed. They’ve been treated terribly. They were shouted at in their Halloween costumes, photographers screaming, ‘You don’t look scared!’ We used to take our daughter to a wonderful school, and she was so harassed that we had to take her out. I hope not to live in this place forever.

“The biggest detriment of my life is tabloid fame,” she continues. “It removes me from people. When I first meet someone, it is so hard for me to overcome everything they’ve read about me. It’s not fair. It’s difficult, because I’m the kind of person who just wants to hug people.”

On marriage:
“Family is all we have in life, but I don’t know how I feel about marriage,” she tells me. “Obviously, I’m not far enough out of being married to think about doing it again. You sort of reconstitute your family. You find a family, with people who come into your life for a reason.

“I definitely still have a capacity to love.”

Parade

Reese is one of my favorite celebrities for her ability to be so down to earth, and I love that she isn’t going to rush into marriage. Some people just seem to crash from one relationship to the next without thinking hard about it, but Reese seems to be able to handle her marriage, divorce and new living arrangements with grace. Of course, she is taking more than her fair share of the Hollywood Hot Guy pie, but I can forgive her for that.

Photos from Parade.com.