John Stamos is reflecting on the moment he close the door on the possibility of romance with Lori Loughlin.
Ahead of the release of his memoir If You Would Have Told Me, the 60-year-old alum revealed that his relationship with his costar was on the “precipice of turning romantic” before he made a decision about the ultimate path his love life would take.
In his book, he described his bond with Loughlin, now 59, as a “sort of true friendship that’s supposed to be the foundation of a great, lasting relationship” and recalled feeling a sense of budding romance between them.
The costars were attending the 1994 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show after party as friends when he met his ex-wife Rebecca Romijn. In an interview with , Stamos revealed he realized he had a fateful decision to make — pursue Loughlin or start something new with the model.
“In my mind it was like … the two Sandys in !” he said.
Stamos inevitably chose Romijn, now 50, and the former couple went on to date two months later and tied the knot in September 1998. (The pair called it quits in 2004 after six years of marriage.)
“My first marriage was shattering to me. I was shattered for way too long, too,” he explained. “I mean, a year, OK, good. But it went on [for] years and years.”
Stamos added that it was “really difficult” to write the chapters about hi former marriage because of the emotional toll of revisiting his feelings from that time.
“In my mind back then, she was the Devil, and I just hated her,” he admitted. “I couldn’t believe how much I hated her, and it ruined my life.”
He continued, explaining that back then, “ One of the steps in AA, the fourth step, is you lay out all your grievances, everything that people did to you. And then I said, ‘Oh, she did this, she did that, blah, blah, she did blah, blah.’ And then my sponsor goes, ‘Now what part did you play in that?’ And I go, like, ‘None.’”
But the actor eventually recognized he had “some part” in his first marriage’s demise after his sponsor pressed him further. “You start thinking, it’s like, ‘Oh, she wasn’t the Devil. Maybe I was as much to blame as her.’”
Though his relationship with Loughlin never turned romantic, the pair have maintained a close friendship. Following her 2019 college admissions scandal, Stamos has stuck by Loughlin’s side and defended her character.
Noting that he didn’t “condone” her part in the scheme, “what she did is what she did. We all make mistakes. Some are big, some are smaller, but it’s how you take responsibility for it. … She handled it better than most.”
If You Would Have Told Me,is available Tuesday wherever books are sold.
