Most people today know Ryan Reynolds is married to Blake Lively. The couple has been married for ten years, and share three kids. However, did you know the actor was once engaged to Canadian singer Alanis Morisette?
They Were Engaged From 2004 To 2007
The Canadian stars met in 2002 at Drew Barrymore’s birthday party. They started dating and quickly fell in love. “We have the perfect combination of compatibility and incompatibility that makes the relationship very passionate,” the singer told People at the time. “It’s perfect. I think it’s about stretching each other.”
The pair got engaged in 2004 and continued to speak lovingly of each other. “He’s just such a supportive creature. I feel so loved by him, in a trampoline kind of way. He’s always very happy for me,” Morissette said of her then-fiancé.
Reynolds was equally complimentary, saying, “I love her music…“We just want to be in the same room as much as possible.” However, the relationship ultimately came to an end in 2007 after a temporary split and reconciliation earlier that year.
Why Did They Break Up?
According to their reps, “Ryan Reynolds and Alanis Morissette have mutually decided to end their engagement. They remain close friends and continue to have the utmost love and admiration for each other. They ask that their privacy be respected surrounding this personal matter.”
The pair have not spoken in detail about their split, but Morissette has talked vaguely about the reasoning behind the breakup. ”Public romance? I’m going to be avoiding that in the future,” Morissette told Entertainment Weekly after the split. ”I think the only time I’ll talk about any guy I’m with will be when I’m married with six kids. ‘That guy who’s with me all the time? Yeah. He’s my husband.”’
In an interview with Women’s Health, the singer appeared to be making another statement about her romance with Reynolds, saying, “I get angry at myself for staying in relationships way too long.”
Morissette’s ‘Flavors of Entanglement’ (2008) Was Inspired By Their Breakup
However, all the heartbreak was good for something: album material. Morissette’s 2008 album, Flavors of Entanglement, is about her split from Reynolds. “It was cathartic,” Alanis told Access Hollywood. “Someone said very wisely to me the other day that catharsis doesn’t mean healing necessarily, and I thought, ‘Damn! It’s true.’ But catharsis is good to get it out of my system, for me to see with some clarity what’s going on.”
Speaking about the song “Torch,” the artist shared, “Yeah, it’s really about my grief. I think the most painful, sort of suffering oriented moments in my life [are] when I’m resisting something… If I just say, ‘It’s true. I’m unbelievably insecure, really broken, devastated,’ then I can move through it, toward the next place. But if I keep resisting it, I’ll stay there forever.”
Around the same time, Morissette told the Los Angeles Times that her break-up with Reynolds caused her to hit rock bottom and ultimately shake her addiction to romance.
“I think it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Morissette explained. “I was a full-blown love addict, so it was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this, my body can’t take it.’ For someone who is a love addict, [breakups are] debilitating.”
“I’ve been on a constant journey toward finally surrendering and hitting the rock bottom that I’ve been avoiding my whole life,” she continued. “So this was a huge, critical juncture for me,” she continued. “Everything broke, and it was an amazing and horrifying time.”
While the split definitely caused heartbreak for Morissette and Reynolds, both have moved on—Reynolds with Lively, and Morissette with her husband Mario Treadway. Fans of the pair are sad the two couldn’t make it work, but glad both have found happiness in their new relationships.