Hilary Duff Opens Up About Her Relationship With Ex-Husband Mike Comrie

Hilary Duff appeared on The Love Bomb podcast, hosted by her Younger co-star Nico Tortorella, on Tuesday, and while there, the actress got candid about her journey in love, talking about everything from her first love at age 16 to her divorce from ex-husband Mike Comrie.

“I was like, ‘I get it. Like, I actually get it,’” E! News reports Duff as saying of her first serious relationship, which was with GoodCharlotte’s Joel Madden and lasted for three years.

“It was so all encompassing. It was so intense. It was my life,” she added. “It was like every minute of my day. It was pretty major.”

Duff married hockey player Comrie in 2010, and the two finalized their divorce earlier this year. They share son Luca, 4.

“When we were deciding to get married, I was totally down and I felt totally ready,” the actress explained. “I had already been working as an adult since I was 12 years old,” she told her co-star. “So 22 doesn’t seem that crazy to get married. But I never like pictured my wedding dress and all that.”

“It is a sacred thing, obviously,” Duff continued. “It’s something to be taken very seriously, and I was so happy to be married. I think that I was in a very successful marriage for a long time. I never want to have any negative…I mean, that’s hard to say: ‘no negative feelings.’ But we got together based on love and we separated in a very loving way. I can’t imagine going through that process with anyone but him, and he continues to be my very good friend. That’s honestly speaking from my heart. So, I think we handled it very consciously and with a lot of love. But marriage is sacred and marriage is not for everyone. Marriage is work. Marriage is really hard. Everyone’s like, ‘Are you going to get married again?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know!’”

“All your relationships can be a success if you make it that way,” Duff explained to Tortorella. “Even if they don’t last forever.”

Tortorella also asked Duff about love, and how she would define the concept to her son.

“Love is that feeling that makes you feel complete, that you get when you’re around your family, that you get when you’re around your friends,” Duff answered. “It’s a feeling of acceptance, that you’re accepted for who you are completely, and it’s that beat you get in your heart, in your chest.”

Tortorella finished with the question, “Do you love yourself, Hilary Duff?”

“Do I love myself? That’s a good question,” she replied. “I think I do. I think a have a lot of things in my life that offer me love, so I don’t feel like I have a lot of time to focus on the love that I have for myself. I feel more grateful for things in my life that create love around me, instead of like, ‘I just love that about myself.’ I’m really not that person. But I do respect myself, and I think that I’m content—for the most part—with myself. And I know that I’m a good person and that creates a good feeling, which might be love for myself. Did that make sense? Was that weird?”

“I try to just be nice,” Duff added. “I just want to be a nice person and be happy.”

This article first appeared on Womanista.com