The couple has publicly said very little about their divorce, but in 2015, Ryan stated that their celebrity status and age played a role in their decision to go their separate ways. “I think more of the problem was age, you know, when we got together so young,” he told Larry King Now. “I think it can create issues—two people in this industry—because there’s so much noise that goes around with it.”
And in 2008, Reese reflected on being a people pleaser, admitting that she was more focused on Ryan’s happiness than her own. “I wasn’t good about protecting myself,” she explained to Parade. “I spent a lot of my 20s just trying to make other people happy, rather than trying to figure out if doing that made me happy.”
She continued, “There are things in my life that are hard to reconcile, like divorce… Sometimes it is very difficult to make sense of how it could possibly happen. Laying blame is so easy. I don’t have time for hate or negativity in my life. There’s no room for it. When you make wrong choices, you have to take responsibility for them: ‘What part of this do I own?'”
