Thomas Rhett On His 12-Year Marriage to Lauren Akins: ‘It’s About How You Weather the Storms’

Transcript

00:00how did you kind of weather those storms together? And did you ever think like,

00:03I don't know if we're going to make it through this?

00:06No, not making it through it for either of us was never an option. You know what I mean? Like,

00:13I don't know. I think I've experienced like a lot of divorce in and around my family. And I know

00:18that some of that can be generational, you know, like when great granddaddy gets divorced, it kind

00:24of goes all the way down the line. And so for me, it just never was an option. You know what I'm

00:29saying? Like that thought has never crossed my mind and never crossed Lauren's mind either.

00:34I just think we were dealing with becoming famous at arguably the hardest part already

00:42in our personal lives. You know what I'm saying? Like adopting a child and getting pregnant

00:49at the same time while having to be, you know, in Uganda for a year, like in me traveling back from

00:57America back to Uganda and all these things like, put the fame aside, like, or the shows aside,

01:03just that part alone was so challenging. You know what I mean? Because I feel like in a way,

01:09and Lauren talks about this a lot in her book, and it's talked about a lot on podcast, but like,

01:13when you feel like you're living two different lives, you know what I'm saying? It's almost

01:19like I would go to Uganda and be, you know, husband and dad, and then I would go to America

01:26and be like, oh, shows, like music, like it was like, my brain couldn't handle it. And so I think

01:34I was sort of internally imploding and Lauren was sort of internally imploding. And so we both would

01:43come to these like breaking points of just like, something has to give, you know what I'm saying?

01:48And obviously I think career would be the first thing that would have to have given,

01:52you know what I'm saying? But gosh, I look back at that time and I'm so grateful for that time.

01:59Because that period of our lives is what gave us strength to overcome things today. You know

02:06what I'm saying? I think when you're in a valley, you're there and you're being tested. And I think

02:11it's like just a testing of your faith and a testing of your will to want to keep going. You

02:16know, I think the easiest thing to do in the world is quit. You know what I mean? But when you don't

02:20quit and you keep grinding it out, like you will inevitably become a stronger person on the other

02:25side of that. And so, yeah, it was not a fun time in our marriage for a plethora of reasons. You

02:31know, we were living dual lives. I was being a musician in America and Lauren was in Uganda

02:36working on adoption process stuff. And that's just hard to kind of, you never hardly link up

02:41with each other, especially with time zones and like, hey, I'm about to go on stage while you're

02:46waking up to eat breakfast. And, you know, you just kind of started missing each other.

02:51But man, like once Willa Gray got home and once Ada James was born, I feel like we looked at that

02:57time period and we were like, man, I'm so grateful that, I hate that we had to go through that,

03:02but I'm grateful that we did because now I feel like we now have a full bag of tools

03:07to learn what to do the next time something hard enters our lives. Because you're promised,

03:13you know what I'm saying? Like a hardship is going to enter your life at some point in time.

03:16It's just a matter of when and a matter of how. And I think it's just really about how you weather

03:21that storm really just determines what kind of character you have. And so for me and her both,

03:26like giving up on that was not an option. And so me being a fixer of a human being and her being

03:32stubborn, we made it work. You know what I'm saying? We made it work. And gosh, like being,

03:3934 now looking back at that moment, it's such a testimony at this point of just like, man,

03:43how hardship can kind of bring you to the other side and learn how to deal with it in the future.