Ashlyn Harris is ready to acknowledge she caused a lot of pain for her ex-wife.
As you may recall, the 40-year-old professional soccer player filed for divorce from Ali Krieger, who is also her former teammate on the U.S. women’s national soccer team, in September 2023 after nearly four years of marriage. The pair have two kids together: a 5-year-old daughter, Sloane, and a 3-year-old son, Ocean.
While promoting her new documentary, Gamechangers: The Ashlyn Harris Story on Thursday, Ashlyn told Us Weekly she has zero regrets about the life they created as a couple, but at the end of the day she was “unhappy” in their relationship:
“I don’t resent or regret anything about the life that I built with her; it just wasn’t for me. You try and you try and you try and you keep trying to make it work and you don’t want to fail. You don’t want to give up. But also, life is really short and really long at the same time. I get one shot at this. There’s no second act. If I’m feeling this way in my 30s and I’m so unhappy that I don’t want to get out of bed, am I really serving her and my children and my friends and myself?”
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But at the same time, Ashlyn knows she “hurt” Ali during the process:
“I had to make a really hard decision. I know I hurt her in that process.”
The Gotham FC star doesn’t say exactly how she “hurt” Ali — such as not having the guts to tell her she was filing for divorce, so she had to find out while out on the field training. Or any subsequent interviews about their marriage in which she pulled a full-on Tom Sandoval, blaming Ali for not being “intimate” enough with her. Or that Ashlyn allegedly cheated on her with current girlfriend Sophia Bush! Remember, Ali herself heavily implied Ashlyn wasn’t faithful! So if the athlete is going to start owning up to her faults in this situation, maybe the next best step would be acknowledging the how!
Following the divorce, which they finalized in December 2024, Ashley said she put in the work to “figure out who I am outside of that brand,” and she is finally “the happiest” she has “ever been” in her life:
“I love myself. I don’t remember the last time I woke up being like, ‘I love the person I’m looking at in the mirror.’ I [used to] have to remind myself every day, ‘You’re enough. It’s going to be OK. Just gotta put one foot in front of the other.’ Life is too short to feel the burden and weight of a life you don’t want to be in and you don’t want to live. It f**king sucks, and you have to make the hard decisions sometimes, but on the other side of that bravery is a life maybe you’ve always imagined. I’m privileged enough now to live that.”
Hey, loving yourself is super powerful. We’re honestly glad she’s reached that point. And maybe now Ali can heal too since Ashlyn is beginning to publicly acknowledge things. Ashlyn continued:
“I just always want to be authentic. I think that’s where you meet the most truth and connection with life, people and community. We live in this really jaded, fragmented world because of social media now. I think we’re really portraying things that aren’t true a lot of the time. We always have the shiny objects and the vacations and this life that you imagine, but you might not be living. I think sharing your scars is one of the most beautiful things you can do.”
We’ll see how much of the “truth” Ashlyn shows in her new doc, which is supposed to cover everything in her life so far, including her relationship with Sophia! Thoughts, Perezcious readers? Tell us in the comments (below)!
[Image via MEGA/WENN, Ali Krieger/Instagram]