When Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray married in 2005, they divorced only five months later. The duo starred together in One Tree Hill, and after their separation became a pretty interesting cover story. But that’s all behind her now.

“In my 20s, when I was starting out my career as an actor, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but one found me and became serious, even though I hadn’t planned to settle down until my 30s,” Sophia wrote in an essay with Cosmopolitan. “But when the person you’re with asks you to marry him, you think: ‘This must be happening because it’s supposed to.’ I refuse to let that one relationship define me, which is why I’ve done my best to avoid discussing it for 10 years. The reality is that, yes, it was a massive event in my life. And the trauma of it was amplified by how public it became, which was incredibly foreign and bizarre to a girl who’d been just another college kid 24 months before her life blew up.”

Now at 34, the actress has learned a valuable lesson: “I came to appreciate that relationships often serve a specific purpose at a certain point in time, for myriad reasons. Some are meant to heal you, some are meant to teach you how to build yourself up, and some are meant to show you how to trust your own intuition. You call in exactly whom and what you need over the course of your life, as you are learning life’s lessons. And learn them you will. Even if you try to avoid these teachings, they’re coming for you. This reality has taught me that the relationships that don’t lead to lifetime commitments are not failures. Not every love can last forever… When you take the pressure of The One off, you’ll open yourself up to endless possibilities. You’ll learn to have a truly deep, knowing relationship with yourself first. Then the rest will fall into place.”