Who Is Patrick Dempsey’s Wife? He & Jillian Fink Saved Their Marriage With Therapy

Patrick Dempsey is opening up about therapy and its profound effect on his marriage. The Grey’s Anatomy alum and Disenchanted star told Fatherly about his relationship with his wife Jillian Fink, detailing how the psychological treatment helped them grow as a couple when their marriage was on the brink of ending. Fifteen years after they had wed in 1999, Fink filed for divorce from Dempsey in 2015 due to irreconcilable differences. However, the actor and celebrity makeup artist got back together the following year thanks to couples therapy and individual therapy.

“Why not utilize those tools? Have someone give you some perspective,” the 56-year-old told Fatherly. “What I have learned is that I will hear things differently in a therapist’s office just because we have a little bit of an emotional detachment. There’s room and space to come in and go, ‘Oh, OK. Now I understand where you’re coming from. OK, that’s what you’re feeling. I don’t want you to feel like that’ and then you try to work on it.”

The actor also points out that marriage, like any relationship, is work. “You’re going to have different wants and different desires as you get older, right? You’re changing, you’re evolving. Then you have to give each other space to be able to go off and do that, with the commitment to come back and continue to strive, and to become a better person as a man or as a woman, as a father, as a mother, as a son, as a daughter, all these things. We’re here to become a better person.”

The couple welcomed their first child, Talula, in 2002. Five years later, their family grew with the birth of twins Darby and Sullivan.

Months after Fink had initially filed for divorce in 2015, Dempsey and Fink were spotted out together and were working on their relationship. At the start of 2016, they called off their divorce, and Dempsey confirmed their reunion. Dempsey and Fink are vocal about their love for one another on Instagram, frequently posting about each other and their children.

Dempsey had previously spoken about the impact of couples counseling. In 2016, he told People that his marriage was something he wasn’t ready to let go of but found therapy to be a key to fixing their relationship. “I didn’t feel like we had done all the work. And we both wanted to do that work. That’s where it started ... It's always destabilizing when you're potentially breaking up a family or you have a big section of your life that’s ending.”

He also noted that their union was the priority and communication was key. After all, as Dempsey told Fatherly, “No one is perfect, right? We’re human beings. People are going to make giant mistakes.”

For more, read the full “Patrick Dempsey Breaks The Spell” cover story on Fatherly, written by author Alex French and shot by photographer Eric Ray Davidson.

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