Former U.S. soccer star Abby Wambach admits she and wife Glennon Doyle have “gone through ups and downs” after nearly 10 years together.
“We’ve gone through ups and downs of feeling really connected and so in line and so on the same page, then stuff happens,” Wambach, 44, said during her Wednesday, May 7, appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “People die, diagnoses happen, and it forces you away from this homeostasis line, in a way.”
Wambach, who was joined by Doyle, 49, on the podcast, noted that it’s not her dream to be “living at the high” point of love.
“I don’t think that that, No. 1, chemically is just not sustainable. That happens for the first couple of years and you’re just, like, infatuated with each other,” she continued. “But then you fall into a sense of loving, of complete partnership and intimacy.”
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Wambach admitted she was “terrified” of starting a relationship with Doyle, who had “never been in love before.” (Doyle was previously married to Craig Melton from 2002 to 2016.)
“I remember you telling me that it was going to change when we were in the obsessive obliteration of early love and you saying, ‘This is going to end,’ and I said to you, ‘I feel like you’re saying we’re not going to love each other as much,’” Doyle recalled. “You said, ‘I’m telling you we’re going to have to love each other more.’”
Doyle explained that “falling in love” had nothing to do with “intimacy” for her and Wambach.
“It’s not a ‘we’ thing. It’s like, ‘Here I am,’ and you’re like, ‘Here I am,’ and then the more intimate you can be with yourself, I think it’s our therapy,” Doyle continued. “It’s our work we do individually that makes us able to connect deeply as two people.”
Doyle joked that she and Wamabch were “insufferable” during the early days of their relationship.
The couple met at a book event in 2016 after Doyle discovered that her husband had been cheating on her and made the decision to stay in her marriage.
“We’re at a long table full of authors and I stood up,” Doyle recalled, detailing the moment that Wambach walked into the room. In what was one of the “weirdest” moments of her life, Doyle started to bow.
“I thought maybe if I bow, people will think I just bow when people walk in rooms,” she admitted. “I lost control of my body.”
Doyle has tried to explain her feelings in the moment over the years and has landed on “desire” above all else.
“I just had relationships with people who I thought made sense to have relationships with,” she admitted. “The best way I can explain it, it was just a moment where my body was like, ‘There she is. You better get your ass up. This is an important moment.’”