General Hospital Exclusive: Laura Wright on Nine Years of Love with Wes Ramsey
General Hospital star Laura Wright (Carly) was not looking for love when she ran into former Guiding Light co-star Wes Ramsey at a reception for Daytime Emmy nominees in April 2017. But that night, he asked for her number, and two days later, on April 28, he took her out on their first date. Now, as the couple marks their ninth anniversary, Wright reflected on the milestone and doled out her best relationship advice in a candid conversation with Soap Opera Digest.
Starting Over
“I was in a very different mindset when we first got together,” says the GH star of the origins of her romance with Ramsey, which came on the heels of her divorce from John Wright after 20 years of marriage. “My whole life had shifted,” she notes. “I went from married to divorced, playing Carly and also having young children that were graduating high school and going to college. I wasn’t thinking about long-term, you know? I was just trying to get through the day, quite frankly!”
At the time, she adds, “I was still living half the time up in Santa Ynez, near Santa Barbara, where I raised my kids. I really only saw Wes when I came down [to Los Angeles, where GH tapes].” Nine years later, “Our life is extremely different,” she marvels. “We live together in a home we bought together, we have a dog… The two people we have become, the couple that we have become in the past nine years, is very different than who we were when we went on our first date.”
Wright credits the inner work she did in the wake of her divorce — “leaning into feelings, having hard conversations, really doing the work within yourself on who you are and what you want” — with preparing her to enter into a new partnership, which came with realizing that “looking for someone else to give me all the things that I want is not possible.
“Getting to know myself and really having a loving, kind, generous relationship with myself allows me to have that with Wes,” she continues. “If I allow myself to beat myself up all the time, I’m going to turn around and be an ass to him.”
Another thing she has learned? “I have to take care of my side of the street before anything,” she declares. ” really try to take inventory and responsibility; I want to make sure that I don’t own other people’s stuff, but I also want to make sure I’m not dumping on other people.” That has not only made her relationship more peaceful, but helped her life her best life. “I don’t like being unhappy — life is too short! My internal home base is fun and joy. Maybe my divorce has helped me even more in this area, but I don’t like to get stuck in negative feelings.”
Going the Distance
When it comes to the longevity of her relationship with Ramsey and how they’ve managed to grow together over the years, Wright says “honest conversations, great communication” and “allowing the other person to have transformational space” as key factors.
Her best advice to other couples? “To be really good friends and really love and like the person beside you. Have hard conversations. If someone’s quiet, ask, ‘How are you?’ Wes will always say, ‘What’s going on?’ A lot of times, when we walk the dog, I’m like, ‘I have some downloads; I need to download,’ which means, ‘I just need to talk, I don’t need you to fix anything, I just want to get it out.’ He’s like, ‘Great!’ And I’ll just share and then afterwards, I’ll say, ‘What do you think?'”
Wright subscribes to the theory that relationships aren’t always 50/50. “If I’m in the middle of something or I’m too tired, he takes the dog for the 40- minute walk after dinner,” she says. “Sometimes it’s 80/20, sometimes it’s 70/30 — and sometimes you’ve both got 20 and you’ve got to somehow make up the rest and you just push through it!”
To stay connected and joyful, “We do a lot of things together that we enjoy,” Wright adds. “We watch funny, stupid TV shows at night and laugh. We go on long walks almost daily. That’s what works for us. Some people like to cook together; other people like to go on adventures together and deep sea dive and they find their connection there. Everyone has their own magic that they find in their own relationship,” she concludes. “I’m just grateful we found ours.”
Conversation
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