Jennie Garth says her 10-month separation from her husband Dave Abrams saved their marriage.
The ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ star and the 38-year-old actor married in July 2015 but split in August 2017 with Dave originally filing for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences" in April 2018 before asking for the proceedings to be dismissed.
Jennie has now opened up on the time the pair spent apart and insists that break brought her and Dave closer together and made them realise how much they loved one another.
Speaking to PEOPLE, she said: "We both had separate learning to do, and then coming back and sharing that growth was kind of the fibre that connected us back together. We definitely had to part ways completely. We needed that time to grow."
Jennie and Dave met on a blind date in 2014 and they went on to tie the knot within a year at a ceremony at her ranch in Los Olivos, California.
In hindsight, the 47-year-old actress admits she and Dave should have spent more time getting to know each other before marrying.
She said: "We rushed it too much, and we had individual things we needed to work out. Maybe it was a mistake and we’ve all had to learn and grow from that. When everything wasn’t shiny and pretty and fun – like it had been initially, when things got challenging, he didn’t know how to handle it as much."
Jennie discovered that Dave had filed for divorce from the news and after getting over her initial shock she and her ‘90210’ castmates decided to incorporate a marriage split storyline into their new spin-off series ‘BH90210’.
She explained: "I found out that he filed for divorce from TMZ … The [possibility of a third divorce] really devastated me. I was in a really bad mindset for a good five or six months. It was just embarrassing. And it made the accepting of it so much harder.
"But when I finally did accept, like, we’re breaking up, I had to tell myself, Dave is not an option. Because I kept wanting it. And then, just when I felt whole again, we started hanging out.
"We used it in the show, because why not use the things that hurt us most and then take the power out of them and make them funny."
Jennie was previously married to musician Daniel B. Clark from 1994 to 1996.
After meeting ‘Twilight Saga’ actor Peter Facinelli in 1995, whilst shooting the movie ‘An Unfinished Affair’, they went on to marry in January 2001 and have three daughters, Luca, 22, Lola, 16, and Fiona, 12, together.
The pair split in 2012 after 11 years of marriage and divorced in 2013. She has no children with Dave.
Jennie Garth says separation saved her marriage
