Demi Moore Says She Lost Herself in Her Three Marriages
Demi Moore Says She Lost Herself in Her Three Marriages
"I had changed myself so many times over."
After being married three times, Demi Moore says that she's finally learning how to heal from a failed relationship. During an appearance on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show, Moore said that after being married to Ashton Kutcher, Bruce Willis, and Freddy Moore, she realized that she had to love herself before she could love anyone else. While she explored the topic in her book, Inside Out, she told Cagle that in all of her marriages, she lost herself trying to be what she thought her husband wanted.
"I think it's a process of, you know, not to sound cliché, but it’s really a process of learning to love yourself," Moore said. "Accepting who you are just as you are. For me, I had changed myself so many times over and over to fit what I thought somebody else wanted. It's that idea that we’re kind of conditioned to work towards being desired, but we’re not supposed to have desires of our own."
Paul Archuleta / Stringer
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Demi married Freddy Moore in 1981 and filed for divorce three years later. She and Willis were married for 13 years and share three daughters. They split in 2000. Demi and Kutcher got married in 2005. They separated six years later. In an example of changing herself, she said that she gave up 20 years of sobriety to "appease" Kutcher. While she didn't describe any of her relationships as easy, Demi said that she applauds any couple that tries to work through their issues and not immediately turn to divorce.
"Working through a relationship, it's really commendable in our disposable times," she told Cagle. "You know, to go through the journey of really honoring the love that brought you together in the first place and to really give it everything you've got. But you can't do that really without the love and acceptance of yourself."
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Moore added that her sobriety was one way that she was working to love and work on herself. She told Cagle that the late director Joel Schumacher was one of the people who helped her while they were filming St. Elmo’s Fire and that they were both going through issues with substance abuse. For both of them, the film meant more than themselves, which Moore acknowledges was an issue at the time.
"I will forever be so grateful to him. In a way he was doing it for himself, he wasn't yet sober. It was like he was doing for me what he couldn't yet do for himself," she said. "Work was the only thing that meant anything to me. I didn't have any value, I wasn't enough to have kept myself sober, but doing the film was."
