If you thought you’d get through the end of 2024 without one more account of how soccer stars Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger’s 2023 divorce went down, I have bad news for you. On Monday, Harris was a guest on the Naked Sports podcast and went into detail about how her marriage unraveled and the subsequent media attention/speculation about her soon-to-follow relationship with Sophia Bush.
As a quick refresher, Harris filed for divorce from Krieger in September 2023 — a move that Krieger told SELF happened during soccer practice and came as a complete surprise. About a month later, Krieger posted a photo of herself with the caption that she was in her "Beyoncé lemonade era" obviously fueling rumors that Harris had played, excuse me, offsides during their marriage. Then this past spring, Bush penned an essay in Glamour about coming into her queerness later in life, including a timeline of her and Harris' relationship that absolved both of them from any wrongdoing. It's been a real she said-she wrote-she posted, as is often the case with modern-day lesbian love triangles.
Now to complete the confessional trifecta, Harris has laid out her account of the divorce:
"It's the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. And I think people miss that. People think only one person was in pain, or people think you have to choose a side that you know, you have to really punish this person because the idea you had through social media didn't manage your expectations. However, you haven't lived my experience. That is one thing I'm not willing to compromise after I've done so for so long, is live my life for other people through this lens of social media, which just I can't do it anymore. It destroys you."
Harris was also clear that the two hadn't been intimate during most of their marriage and that she'd "felt so embarrassed" and "so much shame" over that. She said that the two had been living separately and that she wanted to jointly file for divorce in the fall to help stave off the tabloids as much as they could.
"The whole plan was to hold off until the end of the season. And I remember calling and saying, "you want to jointly file?", like this is going to be what's best and she said, "na, you'll come crawling back in six months." And I filed, and then all of a sudden she was blindsided by it."
Harris was adamant that there was no cheating, but that the backlash from Krieger's statements and her relationship with Bush made her a a bit of a social pariah. As with all things, I imagine the truth lies somewhere on the — I'm sorry!! — 50-yard line. The last person we have to hear from in this tangled web of love and pain is Bush's ex-husband, Grant Hughes!! Just kidding, I don't want to read an essay in GQ by a man scorned by lesbian love.
