Why Sophia Bush Doesn’t Believe in ‘The One’

Actress Sophia Bush went through a fairly public divorce over a decade ago, but that’s not stopping her from passing on some crucial life lessons to her fans. In a personal essay for Cosmopolitan, the One Tree Hill alum said that one of the biggest problems with modern dating is assuming everyone has just one perfect soul mate.

“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.” Bush wrote. “I came to appreciate that relationships often serve a specific purpose at a certain point in time, for myriad reasons. Some are meant to heal you, some are meant to teach you how to build yourself up, and some are meant to show you how to trust your own intuition.”

She drew from her own failed marriage in her 20s to back this up, and said, “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.”

But it got easier when she realized that there will never be a be-all end-all relationship. “A few months with the right person can be as great an experience as a decade-long union with someone else. When you take the pressure of The One off, you’ll open yourself up to endless possibilities. You’ll learn to have a truly deep, knowing relationship with yourself first. Then the rest will fall into place. Reasons, seasons, and lifetimes. They’re all valid.”

Read the full essay at Cosmopolitan.com