Back in August, Julianne Hough announced that she was gay.
In what therefore can’t come as a very surprising development, it now sounds like her marriage has come to an end.
In the wake of Hough being spotted without her wedding ring on, husband Brooks Laich has released a lengthy statement on Instagram that strongly implied this relationship does not have a bright future.
Or any future, really, to be exact.
“On New Year’s Eve, I had a friend ask me ‘what’s your adjective for the new year?’ I asked him what he meant, and he said it’s about picking a word that is going to be a guide for you in 2020," said Laich to open this message.
He then continued as follows…
His word was ‘mindful’ — he wanted to be more mindful of his time, his friendships, his money, etc. and throughout the year he will remind himself to be ‘mindful’ of all things in his life.
I then immediately fell in love with this question. And the word that keeps coming up for me right now is ‘boundless.’
Okay…. we guess. Go on, dude…
I feel like a lot of my life has been “bound” to certain identities that have come through the sport I spent my life playing.
Canadian, male, hockey player, disciplined, competitive, etc… and though I am all of those things, they do not define me, and I am not bound by them.
In 2020, I look forward to releasing old identities, and stepping into a new chapter in my life.
Ah, yes, there it is:
A new chapter in his life.
Laich, a former professional hockey player, wrote these words not long after saying he wants to explore his own sexuality going forward.
"I want to learn more about intimacy and my sexuality," Brooks wrote in early January, likely responding to what his wife had said several months earlier.
Back over the summer, as previously mentioned, Hough explained to the world that she told her husband that she isn’t straight and yet she was choosing to be with him.
The dancer added that this admission made their relationship more "intimate" at the time.
But that was then.
Now, Laich is writing:
I feel a new stage of life calling me, and though I don’t exactly know what it is yet, it feels right, and exciting!
“[It’s] probably not the stuff you would envision me doing, and I’m right there with you. But I love it, and I’m not going to stop — I’m going to embrace it for what it is at this moment,” Laich explained.
“So in 2020, I am ‘boundless’ and on a new journey.”
Will it involve his wife?
We somehow doubt it.
Hough and Laich started dating in 2014 after a mutual friend introduced the paid in December of 2013.
The “How Men Think” podcast cohost proposed in August 2015, and they later tied the knot in a July 2017 ceremony held near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
If this is the end of the line, we wish both halves of the former couple nothing but the best.