I really don’t know much about Sophia Bush beyond the fact that I think she is crazy beautiful. I don’t know if that is a universal opinion but she is my type so I pore over photos of her. I did know that she married Chad Michael Murray when she was young (she was 21) and that their marriage was over in a New York Minute. I assumed wrongdoing on his part and felt she took the high road in not discussing it. Sophia, who currently stars on Chicago P.D., recently wrote an essay for Cosmopolitan in which she finally speaks, not about the failed relationship, but why she never addressed it. I have edited her essay for space but you can read the full piece here. I’m not sure why she is writing this essay now but I found myself agreeing with almost every point.

It seems we often learn about what love is—or what we think it should be—from movies and TV. There’s this binary idea of “I love him!/He’s the worst!” “I’m going to marry him!/I never want to speak to him again!” Sure, everybody has moments when they look at their partner and wonder, Could this person be my person? But I believe that the more you experience, the more your feelings begin to exist in shades of gray.

In my 20s, when I was starting out my career as an actor, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but one found me and became serious, even though I hadn’t planned to settle down until my 30s. But when the person you’re with asks you to marry him, you think: This must be happening because it’s supposed to.

But I refuse to let that one relationship define me, which is why I’ve done my best to avoid discussing it for 10 years. The reality is that, yes, it was a massive event in my life. And the trauma of it was amplified by how public it became, which was incredibly foreign and bizarre to a girl who’d been just another college kid 24 months before her life blew up.

And thus, I came to appreciate that relationships often serve a specific purpose at a certain point in time, for myriad reasons. This reality has taught me that the relationships that don’t lead to lifetime commitments are not failures. Not every love can last forever. 

A few months with the right person can be as great an experience as a decade-long union with someone else.

[From Cosmopolitan]

Sophia once said of her first marriage, “It devastates me now that I have been reduced to a Hollywood statistic – another joke marriage.” I can’t imagine what it would be like to try and reemerge from such a thing only to see your name chased by, ‘Chad Michael Murray’s ex wife’ everywhere it’s printed. I appreciate that she was able to discuss her divorce without demonizing her ex-husband (although I still suspect he might deserve it). Because her essay isn’t about what a jerk Chad Michael is, it’s about realizing that all of your relationships help define you are what you want in love, even if they don’t last. On that point, I could not agree more. Once I realized I was dating for the experience and not forcing each guy to be THE ONE – I had a blast. More importantly, I learned a lot about myself. People don’t really talk about this much. Like she says in the beginning, we are fed the notion that love is extreme and enduring through movies and stories when in fact, sometimes it merely serves a purpose in the here and now.

As I said, I didn’t know much about Sophia. I have come to find out she is a hands-on activist for several causes and frequently speaks out when she feels she should. Clearly I have been doing myself a disservice by just looking at her photos.

Photo credit: WENN Photos and Getty Images