Lauren Akins is opening up about some of the tougher times in her marriage to Thomas Rhett. The two tied the knot on October 12, 2012, and are now the parents of four girls, While their marriage is now better than ever, there was a time when that wasn’t the case.
The couple adopted their daughter Willa Gray from Uganda in 2017, welcoming Ada James three months later. Akins suddenly found herself at home with two small children, while Rhett continued touring and being away from home for large periods of time.
“I began touring with my husband, and I was running myself ragged, just chasing him all over the place, trying to make it feel like it used to,” Akins shares on I Am Second. “His life went on, and I felt like mine stopped. I felt like we weren’t doing it together anymore. There was a lot of miscommunication, there was a lot of resentment I was holding onto, I think even through the adoption and after. I just hit a breaking point where I didn’t like him, and I resented him.”
Things came to a head one day, when Akins realized she had reached her breaking point in her relationship with Rhett.
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“I remember looking at him in the closet, after we had just screamed at each other,” Akins recalls. “I said, ‘I hate you. I hate you, and I feel alone, and I feel lost, and I hate your career, and I hate the pressure that it puts on us, and I hate that we brought two little girls in this.’ I just dropped a bomb on him. He’s like, ‘Do you want me to quit? What do you want me to do? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’
“I remember thinking, ‘Goodness, I’m not trying to get you to quit your job,” she continues. “I’m not trying to get you to pull away from what you love and what you’re good at, and where I feel like the Lord has you, but I’ve got to figure whatever this is out, because it’s not working.'”
The couple did an intensive two-and-a-half day counseling session, in an attempt to get their marriage back on solid ground again.
“We really just did a restart, and that was when I feel like our marriage took off,” Akins says.
Their relationship is now so strong that Rhett’s next album, About A Woman, is all songs that were in some way inspired by Akins.
“I feel like if you were to ask me what this record is about, the answer would be it’s about one woman, my wife, and it gave me an opportunity to say ‘I love you’ in a lot of different ways,” Rhett says.
About A Woman will be released on August 23. Pre-order the project at ThomasRhett.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the CMA