Brian Austin Green is looking back at his marriage to Megan Fox with a blunt assessment: the relationship began with physical chemistry, and he built everything else around it.
Speaking on the I Do, Part 2 podcast, Green said his nearly 15-year relationship with Fox began in a way he now recognizes as incomplete. “We were married for almost 10 years, and I led with physical attraction,” he told hosts T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach.
Green explained that his old dating pattern was to become “physically attracted to somebody and then sort of build a relationship around that.” In hindsight, he said that approach left him without the deeper foundation he later realized he needed.
Green and Fox began dating in 2004 after meeting on the set of Hope & Faith. He was 30, while Fox was 18. The pair married in Hawaii in June 2010 and went on to welcome three sons: Noah, Bodhi, and Journey. After separating and reconciling once before, they split again in 2020. Their divorce was finalized in 2021.
“I was divorced, which I didn’t expect,” Green said. “I had three kids. I was a single parent.”
That outcome pushed the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum into therapy. Green said he wanted to understand what he contributed to the failure of the marriage and identify the behavior he considered “toxic” or unhelpful. One major takeaway was that friendship needed to come before romance.
“I think when you start from a place of a genuine connection with someone, then you’re not so concerned about whether they are truly into you or not,” Green said. He added that beginning with honesty and friendship creates space for more transparent communication.
Green said he used that approach with his current fiancée, Dancing with the Stars alum Sharna Burgess. The two began dating in 2020, welcomed their son Zane in 2022, and announced their engagement the following year.
“Sharna and I talked about our best qualities and our worst qualities together,” he said. “We sort of put it all out on the table.”
His latest comments also add context to earlier remarks about his dating life during the 1990s. Green previously revealed that he dated Martin star Tichina Arnold while working on 90210. He said Arnold initially wanted the relationship to remain secret, which triggered his existing insecurities and led him to question whether their connection was real.
Green and Arnold later cleared the air and remained on good terms. His relationship with Fox, however, became the experience that forced him to reconsider how he chose partners.
“Your approach to a relationship is the best way to know if it’s just a purely physical connection,” Green said. “That’s only going to last for so long.”
