Sophia Bush and Anna Faris are dishing on dating deal breakers.
The One Tree Hill alum is a guest on the latest episode of the Anna Faris Is Unqualified podcast, during which she and the Mom star talk about how past experiences have changed the way they look at relationships. Bush also reveals what she's learned over the years and what she now knows she deserves out of a partner.
"I've been single for years," Bush tells Faris. "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? And, I think about this as I've sat with all of this stuff for the last years, and I sort of have a highlight reel where I go, OK, when I started speaking, I spoke in full sentences. I have been environmentally engaged since I was a little kid, I've been political for as long as I can remember, I went to USC for the BFA acting program."
"I transferred into the journalism school and I did an emphasis in political science, and I am so into the world and into people and into music and like, I am a lot," she continues. "And the change, in the same way that I'm trying to learn how to take a compliment and be thankful for it and let it resonate, is I'm no longer—my old story was, 'I'm too much.' F--k that, I'm not too much. I'm actually really fun, a great friend...I give a s--t about people, even when they're not all that nice to me."
"I will sit and really talk about issues with people who believe very different things than I do, because I think it's the only way forward," Bush says. "I have been, for many years, told that I'm intimidating. And for many years, my old story was, 'I'm a lot for people then.' Or, 'I'm a lot for guys. As a woman who operates in the world the way that I do, I must be too much.' And, no, not true."
Bush shares that what she realized is that when someone, especially a man, tells a woman she's "intimidating," it really means he's "intimidated."
"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--ked up so bad—and I've had a handful," Bush says. "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 adds. "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--ked 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,'" Bush shares. "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 2 a.m., like good humans."
"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 says. "That's OK, I f--ked up giving it to you when you didn't deserve it...and I don't deserve to treat myself that way either."
You can listen to the complete episode with Bush and Faris HERE!