"I wish we'd never got divorced. He and I both wish we'd never got divorced, but we did. I wish I could go back and be the bride again, but I can't"
About this Quote
The repetition (“I wish... we’d never... we did”) mimics a mind circling the same fact from different angles, hoping language might loosen it. It also distributes blame without litigating it: “He and I both” frames the divorce as mutual miscalculation rather than moral failure, an important move for a public figure whose personal life has long been treated as public property. There’s an implicit negotiation with the audience: you can judge, but you also have to admit the feeling is familiar.
Context matters. As a royal adjacent figure, Ferguson’s marriage was never only private; it functioned as branding, protocol, inheritance politics, and national spectacle. Divorce, in that world, isn’t just heartbreak - it’s exile from a script. The last clause, “but I can’t,” is the adult note at the end: no fairy-tale edits, no retroactive purity, only the complicated afterlife of choices made under scrutiny. The line succeeds because it refuses empowerment clichés and instead tells the truth many people avoid: sometimes you don’t miss the person as much as you miss the moment when everything still seemed possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Divorce |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ferguson, Sarah. (2026, January 15). I wish we'd never got divorced. He and I both wish we'd never got divorced, but we did. I wish I could go back and be the bride again, but I can't. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-wish-wed-never-got-divorced-he-and-i-both-wish-160870/
Chicago Style
Ferguson, Sarah. "I wish we'd never got divorced. He and I both wish we'd never got divorced, but we did. I wish I could go back and be the bride again, but I can't." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-wish-wed-never-got-divorced-he-and-i-both-wish-160870/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I wish we'd never got divorced. He and I both wish we'd never got divorced, but we did. I wish I could go back and be the bride again, but I can't." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-wish-wed-never-got-divorced-he-and-i-both-wish-160870/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.





