The One Tree Hill alum, who was married to costar Chad Michael Murray for five months before splitting in September 2005, has been vocal over the years about self-love, being happy alone and waiting for The One.

In August 2012, Bush explained why fairytales aren’t always the greatest guides to finding everlasting love.

“I don’t think you can really, truly be the partner you want to be until you know on an absolute level that you are a complete person on your own. I think that’s something all women deserve to know,” the Hard Luck Love Song actress told reporters while attending the Songbirds’ Miss Me album release party. “So many fairytales we read as children — and the love stories we watch on TV when we’re older — tell us that we’re not enough unless we have a man. And it’s like, ‘No, homie! You can be a bonus when I have time for you in my life.'”

The False Positive star — who dated OTH costars James Lafferty and Austin Nichols and Chicago P.D.’s Jesse Lee Soffer before going public with Hughes in May 2020 — admitted two years later that you have to date a couple of duds before finding a good one.

“I’ve dated a couple of the wrong guys, but I’ve also had great love in my life,” Bush told The Chicago Sun-Times‘ Splash magazine in January 2014. “I think every woman on Earth has dated the wrong guy at some point.”

Three years later, the Partners alum spoke out about her failed marriage to Murray, penning a letter for Cosmopolitan. “I refuse to let that one relationship define me, which is why I’ve done my best to avoid discussing it for 10 years,” she wrote in February 2017. “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.”

While Bush has remained quiet for the most part regarding her and the Cinderella Story actor’s split, she has opened up about staying close with most of her other exes.

“It’s really nice that the majority of my long-term serial monogamist relationships, these two and three-year beautiful learning experiences that I’ve had, we’re all friends,” the activist said on the “Unqualified” podcast in December 2018.

The Hitcher actress noted that whether she has a man by her side or not, she’s set in the partner department thanks to her circle of friends.

“I have companionship because I have the most tremendous community,” she added. “My friends are so special and amazing, they are like ride-or-die, travel the world, show up at 2 a.m., like, good humans.”

Scroll down to relive Bush’s most honest quotes about love and marriage over the years:

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This story originally appeared on: US Magazine - Author:Johnni Macke