Melanie Lynskey is “so grateful” to her husband, Jason Ritter, for getting sober.
In a touching post via Instagram on Thursday, October 16, Lynskey, 48, commended Ritter, 45, for being 12 years sober after a battle with alcohol addiction.
Alongside a photo of the actor camping with their 6-year-old daughter, Lynskey wrote, “12 years of accountability, of showing up, of answering the phone, of driving home safely, of quiet nights, of loud fun nights, of laughing and laughing, of being able to talk things through, of finding solutions, of me being able to sleep when you’re away and not be up all night worrying, of building this life together.”
She continued, “And six years of you being the dad who gets up to make her lunch, knows how to do her hair, is there to cuddle and be steady and listen, is able to be present in an emergency, and is always the one who gets asked to play with all the kids or push our daughter and her cousins in the hammock. I’m so grateful for the choice you made twelve years ago, because we’d have none of this without it. And I’m in awe of your strength dring. I love you.”
Ritter reacted to his wife’s post in the comments section, sharing that the thought of losing her was the ultimate motivator to get sober.
“Dring this made me so emotional!!” he shared. “Thank you for being so good with your boundaries! The only thing scarier and more confronting than giving up drinking was the thought I could lose you, and I’m so glad I made the choice I did. You and smoosh have allowed me to experience a joy and a love that 12 years ago I would not have believed was possible for me. Alcohol had me believing that my flaws were too big to coexist with anyone, meanwhile, turns out it’s easier to work on yourself and your flaws when alcohol isn’t magnifying them all exponentially.”
Ritter added that he’s “so grateful to be where I am now” but that he has “further to go.”
“Thank you for your patience, your empathy, your kindness, and your strength, and the room you gave me to grow,” he concluded. “I love you forever, thank you for all you’ve done and for who you are. Most incredible person in the world.”
Lynskey and Ritter met in 2013, welcomed their daughter in 2018 and tied the knot in a small ceremony in 2020. Ritter said he was struggling with alcoholism when he met Lynskey, and soon realized that he needed to straighten out his act if he wanted to be the man who deserved her.
“At a point, I knew how amazing she was and I thought she would be incredible for someone who deserved her, basically. And I didn’t feel like I was that person. I felt a little bit too crazy,” Ritter told Drew Barrymore in 2023 during a joint appearance with his wife.
“It was only after, like, maybe a year into not drinking where I started to go, ‘Oh, maybe I can promise some things to someone else. Maybe I can be this person.’ It’s been like a slow burn. I knew that she was incredible. It was working on myself enough to feel like maybe I could be the one for her, too,” Ritter added, getting emotional.
“He worked so hard,” Lynskey tearfully chimed in. “He did so much work on himself, I’m so proud of him.”
Their story led Barrymore, 50, to open up about her own yearslong sobriety and share that alcohol was her “poison.”
“The narrative that one creates is that, ‘I can’t be with someone,’” she told the couple. “And I haven’t been in a relationship since I stopped drinking, and I’m really looking forward to one day not having that bad girl narrative, the instability, the ‘I’m not someone who’s right to be with anyone, for their sake.’”
Ritter later thanked Barrymore for providing “the space to talk about things like this.”
The Matlock star, whose parents are actors Nancy Morgan and the late John Ritter, has been open about his journey with addiction, recently telling recovery advocate Rich Walters in June that “the more time that goes by, the easier [staying sober] is.”
“All that stuff that was fun — that is all within you. It’s not like alcohol’s some magic potion that brings something out of you that’s not there. For better or for worse,” he said of rediscovering who he was in sobriety. “But yeah, you start to get that back and start to feel more like yourself.”
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