Sophia Bush ‘Gaslit’ Herself While Going Through Fertility Journey amid End of Marriage to Grant Hughes

Bush married Hughes in June 2022 before filing for divorce in August 2023

Sophia Bush is opening up about going through a challenging fertility journey while married to Grant Hughes.

In her memoir And I Will Tell You Mine: Notes from a Life in Progress, the actress and activist recalls feeling “beaten down after nearly a year of family planning and the fertility process” and realizing her marriage wasn’t working during the summer of 2023.

Bush, now 44, went through several medications and surgeries, but she “would have given anything” to become a mother and was pushing herself beyond her limits.

She also claims there was a point when she went through a fertility surgery and ended up crying and asking her ex-husband why he “couldn’t just be nice” to her.

Bush, however, didn’t go into a ton of detail about her experience, and she isn’t sure she necessarily will in the future.

“It was really important to honestly contextualize an experience, especially because again, when everything felt wrong, it was very easy for me to trust other people’s voices, and it breaks my heart for that version of myself that I even participated in it,” she tells PEOPLE.

“I gaslit myself a little bit, and said, ‘Oh, the hormones, they’re making me miserable. They’re making me feel terrible.’”

But Bush came to realize that it was her body recognizing that something else in her life wasn’t working — her relationship.

“Even though I didn’t talk about the whole journey, and I didn’t talk about the full year or really give people my own personal details, I don’t think that matters, and I think it’s okay to keep some things for me. But again, it felt so important to say, ‘This is what I realized I was doing, and by the way, I had done it to myself 20 years before,’” she says.

According to Bush, she had this “dogged determination” to stay on track.

“Frankly, I was torturing myself,” she said. “There’s no betrayal I’ve ever been through that stings as bad as the ways I’ve betrayed myself by continuing past what felt right in order to not mess up the plan.”

Bush married Grant Hughes in June 2022, but filed for divorce just 13 months later. In 2025, she wed former soccer player Ashlyn Harris.

A rep for the entrepreneur previously told PEOPLE that “Grant will always want the best for Sophia, and is supportive of all that makes her happy and fulfilled.”

And I Will Tell You Mine is available now, wherever books are sold.

Via: People