The sports world thought it was dealing with its own Scandoval in October 2023, when reports that famed soccer player Ashlyn Harris was dating One Tree Hill star Sophia Bush surfaced just six days after news of Harris’ divorce from former teammate Ali Krieger went public. Like Harris, Bush had recently split from her own spouse, Grant Hughes, leading many on the internet to believe something nefarious transpired. Let’s just say, the phrase “home-wrecker” was thrown around a lot.
However, in a first-person account of the entire ordeal for Glamour’s April cover story, Bush claimed that while she’s known Harris since 2019, the pair connected romantically while processing their respective breakups in the summer of 2023. “In hindsight, maybe it all had to happen slowly and then suddenly all at once,” Bush said of falling for Harris. “Maybe it was all fated. Maybe it really is a version of invisible string theory. I don’t really know. But I do know that for a sparkly moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me. And that feeling that I have in my bones is one I’ll hold on to no matter where things go from here.”
Here is a complete timeline of Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris’s relationship, presented with the most recent developments at the top.
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Sophia Bush: ‘I Finally Feel Like I Can Breathe’
In 2023 actor Sophia Bush filed for divorce one year after a storybook wedding. By the fall it was public knowledge that she was in a new relationship. With a woman. The internet seemed to be foaming at the digital mouth for a scandal, but to those who knew her, it was clear she’d never been more herself. Here, in her own words, Bush speaks to the power of learning to listen to her intuition.
April 25, 2024: Bush opens up about her relationship with Harris and discusses the backlash in her candid Glamour cover essay. “People looking in from the outside weren’t privy to just how much time it took, how many painful conversations were had. A lot of effort was made to be graceful with other people’s processing, their time and obligations, and their feelings,” she writes. “What felt like seconds after I started to see what was in front of me, the online rumor mill began to spit in the ugliest ways. There were blatant lies. Violent threats. There were accusations of being a home-wrecker. The ones who said I’d left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women—my partners have known what I’m into for as long as I have (so that’s not it, y’all, sorry!).”
She continues, “The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous—that, to be crystal-clear, never happened—rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? Rather than realizing I had to be the most vulnerable I’ve ever been, on a public stage, despite being terrified to my core? It feels brutal. Just because I didn’t want to process my realizations in real time on social media and spell them out for the world doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t long and thoughtful and exhaustive.”
Bush says she’s “absolutely in awe” of Harris’s “relentless integrity,” writing, “The way she prioritizes and centers her kids, not only in her life but in the core of her being, is breathtaking to behold. Falling in love with her has sutured some of my own childhood wounds, and made me so much closer to my own mother. Seeing Ashlyn choose to not simply survive, but thrive, for her babies has been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed a friend do. And now I get to love her. How lucky am I?”
