During their first joint interview post-divorce, the Fastlane actor reflected on his marriage to Garth, which he said felt “arranged.”
“We came together very fast, very furious, and very quick, and I remember thinking, ‘Well, let’s move in together and see how it goes,’ and it just went,” Facinelli said of their romance in a June 2024 episode of Garth’s I Choose Me With Jennie Garth.
He continued, “Five years went by, and I thought, ‘Well, we should get married.’ Then we got married and had another kid. It was almost like an arranged marriage in a way, and things seemed well. We had disagreements here and there, but I think we were really young.”
According to Facinelli, he did not have a sense of who he was, so he was “just trying to be all these things for other people.”
“When that fell apart, it took me time to try to get in touch with me,” he admitted.
Reiterating his statement that they were like in an “arranged” marriage, he added, “I loved you, and we had this beautiful family from the outside, but I hadn’t developed who I was. So how you could you love me? I didn’t know me.”
The 13 Minutes actor told his former spouse he felt he lacked the “space” to discover himself during the marriage.
“Considering all of that, we really did last a long time. I think because of the children,” Garth acknowledged.
“I think if we didn’t have children, I wouldn’t have stayed,” Facinelli admitted. “Because of the freedom to go, ‘OK, I need to figure out who I am.'”
During the same podcast appearance, he shared he felt conflicted about asking Garth for a divorce, saying it “broke” his heart “to break up a family.”
“It was one of those decisions where you never know if you’re making the right decision,” he reflected.
His sentiments echoed what he shared on the Allison Interviews podcast about noticing how their relationship slowly changed before their split.
“Somebody might say something that is kind of hurtful. The other person might permit it, and then they get into a habit,” he stated. “So, bad things can become habitual, the way you start to treat each other, giving the other person permission or an allowance to talk to you in a certain way.”
Facinelli pointed out, “If that person talks to you in a certain way or does something, then all of a sudden, they feel they have permission to do that because you didn’t say, ‘That hurt my feelings.’ You didn’t speak up. All of a sudden, it gets habitual, and it grows, and then you get resentful.”