Ethermac Exchange-Julianne Hough Says Ex Brooks Laich Making Her Feel Like a “Little Girl” Contributed to Their Divorce

“I started becoming more of a woman,” she shared. “And when that was happening, I was starting to listen to my voice more, not the 10-year-old voice that was making decisions subconsciously. And as that was happening, things started changing.

As she put it, "I really started shifting and changing and questioning what I believed in.”

Part of that process involved Julianne coming out as “not straight,” which she spoke publicly about in a 2019 Women’s Health Magazine interview. As for how she looks back on that moment?

“I think for me it was not about being straight or gay or bi or queer, it’s more about I think I’m just learning what love is and I love people,” the dancer explained to Jamie Kern Lima. “I don’t know what I’m attracted to, but I choose you. That is the freedom of the love that I was starting to experience.”

And as she began exploring different sides of herself, Brooks, 41, was going through a different journey.

“My ex was contracting,” she said. “Because he had just got let go from playing hockey and he was going through an identity shift."

To put it plainly, Julianne noted, "It was an expansion for me and a contraction for him, and we weren’t understanding each other, and I don’t think we had the maturity to come together.”

The pair, who broke up in 2020 before finalizing their divorce in 2022, have since reflected on their relationship.

“We’ve had this conversation now that we wish we would have had the maturity to come together,” Julianne said. “That there would have been potentially a different outcome, but I think everything has happened the way that it should have happened.”

And though Julianne was quick to shut down the idea that they would rekindle their romance, she did note, “We are very important, special people in each other’s lives, and we shared a really powerful season together.”