Julianne Hough Broke Down What Happened in Her Marriage With Brooks Laich & It’s Heartbreaking

While quick marriages in Hollywood are hardly a rare occasion, when Julianne Hough and her ex-husband Brooks Laich announced their split in 2020, fans of the couple were understandably crushed. After all, they seemed like a picture-perfect couple throughout their three years together.

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But, just like many other couples out there, life just got a little too hard for them. In a new interview, Hough looked back at their marriage and revealed what really happened between her and the former ice hockey player.

“He was injured and then he got traded before his team that he had been there for almost 12 years won the Stanley Cup,” Hough said in an appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast, per Page Six . “It makes me want to cry because I feel for him so bad,” she added, getting clearly emotional.

“That was in 2017,” she detailed. “That was the year we got married and the year that everything started unraveling.”

Two rocky years later, the Dancing With the Stars co-host asked for a separation in September 2019. A week later, her dogs, Lexi and Harley , sadly passed away.

“It was very tragic,” she added. “That was all kind of happening at the same time and it was an unraveling.

“Everything that I had ever known, that I had put in place for my control and my protection … I had this marriage to this guy who represented more of a father figure to me, and while he was changing, I was changing,” Hough continued.

With her marriage and her family falling apart, Hough felt like the ground was crumbling under her feet. “I [felt like] I literally blew up my entire life and I have nothing,” she said.

But, with all that said, it seems Hough has an appreciation for her and Laich’s time together, even if it didn’t work out. “I feel like our relationship and our marriage was exactly right, and the end of it is right, too,” she said. “We both have regrets that it didn’t work out because I don’t think we had the maturity to come together. He was contracting while I was expanding. We just couldn’t find each other in that.”

Back in 2020, their separation announcement showed how amicable their split was. “We have lovingly and carefully taken the time we have needed to arrive at our decision to separate,” they said in a joint statement to People at the time. “We share an abundance of love and respect for one another and will continue to lead with our hearts from that place. We kindly request your compassion and respect for our privacy moving forward.”

Before you go, click here for all the celebrity splits and divorces we never saw coming.