How Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris Became the Perfect Teammates

How Sophia Bush is Supporting Partner Ashlyn Harris’ New Career

As Harris and Bush navigated these changes, they leaned on each other and the other women in their friendship circles.

"I didn’t expect to find love in this support system," the actress wrote in an April 2024 essay for Glamour. "I don’t know how else to say it other than: I didn’t see it until I saw it. And I think it’s very easy not to see something that’s been in front of your face for a long time when you’d never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option. What I saw was a friend with her big, happy life. And now I know she thought the same thing about me."

But it wasn’t until Bush asked Harris out that they realized they could be something more.

“Our friends were trying to set her up with someone and I was like, 'If she’s ready to date, she’s f--king going on a date with me. Sorry, uh uh, no f--king way,'" the John Tucker Must Die alum recalled on her podcast Work in Progress in July. "And people were like, 'Wait, what?' She even said to me, 'Hold the phone, I always thought you were straight.’ And I was like, ‘I always thought you were happy. But we’re both f--king single. What are we doing?'"

Remembering how they “were f--king cackling,” Bush continued, she told Harris, "'Yeah, dude I never looked at you as an option.' And she was like, 'I never looked at you as an option.' And it’s cause we weren’t options."

But after their date—which Bush noted in her Glamour essay was a four-and-a-half hour-long meal and “truly one of the most surreal experiences" of her life—they decided they were both interested in the option of seeing where their connection could go.

In October 2023, reports spread that they were dating. And given that fans had just learned of their respective divorces, many were quick to make assumptions.

"People looking in from the outside weren’t privy to just how much time it took, how many painful conversations were had," Bush wrote. "A lot of effort was made to be graceful with other people’s processing, their time and obligations, and their feelings. What felt like seconds after I started to see what was in front of me, the online rumor mill began to spit in the ugliest ways. There were blatant lies. Violent threats. There were accusations of being a home-wrecker. The ones who said I’d left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women."

But as the Good Sam star—who came out as queer in her essay—noted, "my partners have known what I’m into for as long as I have (so that’s not it, y’all, sorry!).”

And to anyone who thinks Bush left her "marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous," she continued, "that, to be crystal-clear, never happened."

Instead, she expressed how it was doing self-work, going to therapy and being vulnerable that brought her to where she is today.

"Just because I didn’t want to process my realizations in real time on social media and spell them out for the world doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t long and thoughtful and exhaustive," Bush added. "It’s painful to be doing deep work and have it picked apart by clueless strangers. Everyone that matters to me knows what’s true and what isn’t."

Meanwhile, Harris had been on her own journey of self-discovery before dating Bush, one that involved learning more about what she needed for herself and in a partner.

"I just know the things I’m willing to compromise [on] and the things I’m not, and I wasn’t there before," the World Cup champion said on the Question Everything podcast. "I think we don’t ever have to feel trapped in something that doesn’t serve us. I think as women we get this idea that we’ve kind of dug this hole, we kind of have to sit in it and make our bed. I kind of just was like, 'I have one life to live. I’m on borrowed time.' I just wanted more."

"I was so scared to say that and acknowledge that because I knew I was going to hurt people along the way,” she added. "I was going to really hurt people. But do I minimize myself and live a life full of regret and the things I don’t preach, or do I make the hard decision, do the brave thing and be ready to receive the love I’ve always imagined? And now this f--king unicorn fell in my lap. There’s no coincidence."

Over the past few months, fans gave gotten glimpses into the couple’s relationship, as they share their red carpet dates, vacation photos, Instagram tributes and interviews.

"She’s the smartest human I know," Harris raved on the podcast, "and it’s so sexy and fun ‘cause I’m like, ‘You are such a nerd, and I am such a jock.’ She’s a theater baby with asthma. I’m this unhinged, unfiltered, unbuttoned, tattoo athlete. We are so different. We’re such empaths. We’re such lovers. We’re such givers. She makes me better every day. I’m the luckiest human alive.”

And it's clear the feeling is mutual.

"You are the sun, in human form," Bush wrote on Instagram for Harris' birthday in October. "You light up the world and warm each and every person you touch. There is no one like you, and everyone who knows you knows it’s true. We are all so lucky. And I am the absolute luckiest."

To see more of the couple’s photos together, keep reading.