Being single is a study in contrasts.

There’s the highs of independence, of being in total and complete control of your own life and self. And then there’s the lows of being alone, the solitude and the silence. It’s swings and roundabouts, you know?

Sophia Bush gets it. Speaking to Anna Faris on her chart-topping podcast Unqualified, she talked about how being single has shaped her life.

“I’ve been single for years,” she said. “So here’s what’s interesting to me, what anybody perceives from the outside is always so different than how you feel on the inside, right?”

In the past, Bush said, she had also made the mistake of falling into serial monogamy for all the wrong reasons. “What I realize, when I look back at the way I have operated… also by the way as a serial monogamist for a long time, and stuck in relationships that were not good for me… I now look back and go, ‘Oh, it’s not my fault, it’s not their fault.’ Even the guys who f*cked up so bad—and I’ve had a handful,” Bush said.

“What I realize is that I have to own my role in it, because more often than not, I have chosen to date the potential I see in someone and not who somebody is in this current moment.”

“And that’s not to throw shade at anybody,” Bush added. “That’s simply to say, I settled for less, and maybe that’s because I came into the world like a little Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was like an old woman from time that I was born, and the guys just haven’t caught up? I don’t know. But even in the relationships where I’ve been cheated on or f*cked over or they’ve been so toxic, or like, I’ve fallen in love with my best friend after years when I knew it was a bad idea… I finally, years ago, when I got off a roller-coaster in my last relationship with a person who I love but who like, the relationship was so bad for me, I finally went, ‘Enough! Just enough! I’m good, I’m done.’”

For the moment, Bush is happy – totally, completely, entirely so – on her own.

But, she stressed, this doesn’t mean that she is alone or even lonely. “I have companionship because I have the most tremendous community. My friends are so special and amazing, they are like ride-or-die, travel the world, show up at 2AM good humans,” she said.

“And I realized that if I wasn’t as patient with myself or as loving to myself as I’ve been with partners who just didn’t, at the end of the day, deserve it…and again that’s not a hateful thing, it’s just to say like, ‘You don’t deserve this piece of me,’” Bush said. “That’s OK, I f*cked up giving it to you when you didn’t deserve it…and I don’t deserve to treat myself that way either.”

Thank you, Sophia. This is the advice we needed to hear today. 

Images: Getty