Busy Philipps and Marc Silverstein were almost headed for splitsville. The 39-year-old actress revealed in her new her memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little, that she asked her husband for a divorce in December 2016.
“A month [after the 2016 presidential election], I told Marc I wanted a divorce. I was done. I could’t do it anymore,” Philipps wrote.
She also noted that “things hadn’t been great” between them for “a while,” revealing she almost asked him not to come to Charleston with her while she shot the HBO comedy Vice Principals, which premiered in July 2016.
The Freaks and Geeks alum wed the movie producer, now 47, in 2007. They share daughters Birdie, 10, and Cricket, 5.
Philipps detailed the “disconnect” between her and her spouse in her book, admitting she felt alone.
“He didn’t let me talk when we were out with friends. Or worse, when it was just us, he didn’t speak to me at all,” Philipps wrote. “I’d start to do a test when we were alone in the car together, where I wouldn’t say anything until he did, just to see how long it would take him to talk to me. Some days we rode the whole way in silence.”
The former Cougar Town star continued to explain that she use to physically fall “all the time” and thought something was “wrong with [her] neurologically.”
“As it turns out, there was nothing wrong with me neurologically. I was simply waiting for Marc to notice me. My body was subconsciously propelling me to the ground for attention,” Philipps wrote. She then admitted she had a “crush” and “maybe [she] even loved” another man she was friends with.
After Philipps told Silverstein she was “leaving him,” he was “shocked.” However, she “left out the part about the other man.”
“But he didn’t want to get divorced. He wanted a chance to change,” she wrote. “He said I owed our family that.”
The duo then started going to therapy — together and separately — and “started to work through it,” despite Philipps still “talking to [her] emotional boyfriend (for a lack of a better term.)
As the pair started to have more breakthroughs, Philipps concluded Silverstein started to change and their entire family was “starting to mend.”
This Will Only Hurt a Little is available now.
