Ashlyn Harris says she doesn’t resent her marriage to Ali Krieger, but insists “it just wasn’t for me.” In a candid interview tied to her documentary Gamechangers: The Ashlyn Harris Story, the 40-year-old also shares how ending their nearly four-year marriage
Ashlyn Harris didn’t come at the end of her marriage with anger. She came with a kind of exhausted clarity.
In a new interview promoting her documentary Gamechangers: The Ashlyn Harris Story, the former U.S. women’s national soccer team star, 40, reflected on splitting from her ex-wife Ali Krieger and said, “I don’t resent or regret anything about the life that I built with her; it just wasn’t for me.”
Harris filed for divorce from Krieger in September 2023 after nearly four years of marriage. The former teammates on the U.S. women’s national soccer team share two children together: daughter Sloane, 5, and son Ocean, 3.
When she described the days leading up to the decision, Harris made the process sound less dramatic than relentless—something you keep trying to solve, even when it’s starting to cost too much.
“You try and you try and you try and you keep trying to make it work and you don’t want to fail. ” she recalled. “You don’t want to give up. But also, life is really short and really long at the same time. I get one shot at this. There’s no second act. If I’m feeling this way in my 30s and I’m so unhappy that I don’t want to get out of bed. am I really serving her and my children and my friends and myself?”.
She added, “I had to make a really hard decision. I know I hurt her in that process.”
After the divorce, Harris said she was finally able to focus on discovering who she is outside of the life she had built. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” she said, noting that she began dating actress Sophia Bush in October 2023.
Harris talked about learning to trust herself again, describing a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time. “I love myself. I don’t remember the last time I woke up being like. ‘I love the person I’m looking at in the mirror.’ I [used to] have to remind myself every day. ‘You’re enough. It’s going to be OK. Just gotta put one foot in front of the other.’”.
She continued with a blunt truth about the cost of staying. “Life is too short to feel the burden and weight of a life you don’t want to be in and you don’t want to live. It f–king sucks. and you have to make the hard decisions sometimes. but on the other side of that bravery is a life maybe you’ve always imagined. I’m privileged enough now to live that.”.
Gamechangers: The Ashlyn Harris Story covers more than her relationship ending—it includes family struggles, her soccer career, her upbringing, and her relationship with Sophia. The documentary premieres June 8 on The Roku Channel.
There’s also a wider spotlight on marriage in sports and entertainment: Lena Waithe recently opened up about her brief marriage to Alana Mayo and how she feels about it now.
Ashlyn Harris Ali Krieger divorce Gamechangers: The Ashlyn Harris Story Sophia Bush U.S. women's national soccer team Lena Waithe Alana Mayo