The real reason Scarlett divorced Ryan Reynolds

Remember when Ryan Reynolds was married to Scarlett Johansson for a blink of an eye? We almost didn't either: they began dating in 2007, tied the knot in 2008, and split in December 2010…and they were both so private and secretive about the whole thing that there's very little photographic evidence that they were ever even together at all. So what went wrong?

In April 2016, Johansson indicated to Cosmopolitan that the career competition between herself and Reynolds may have played a role in their split. "The logistics of being with another actor are challenging," she said. "There has to be a real understanding of how you share your time, especially when two people's careers are going at the same rate. Or even if one person is more successful than
the other, that also proves challenging. There may be a competitive thing.

That echoes her sentiments from almost exactly a year earlier, when she hinted to Parade magazine in April 2015 that Reynolds' box office bombs may have played a role in their divorce. "Acting is a very strange world to be co-existing in," she said. "It's very volatile. There's always going to be the more successful person. It's related to rejection. Because actors, if they're not having success, connect it directly to unpopularity—to the fact that nobody wants them." Ouch! She added, "[Marriage] takes a lot of work. It takes a man who's not only confident in the love that you have for one another, but confident in what he has going on in his own career. He has to be in a field that's completely different from yours."

Ryan Reynolds was engaged to Alanis Morisette from 2003 to 2007. Almost immediately after his split from the "Ironic" singer was announced, rumblings of a romance with Scarlett Johansson emerged. If there was some overlap there, it couldn't have boded well for their long term prospects. According to The Daily Mail (and common sense), studies show that relationships that begin with one or both partners cheating don't last long.

After their divorce, Johansson hinted that she may not have known how to handle such a serious relationship. They got together when she was just 23 to Reynolds' 31. She explained to Glamour in 2014, "I feel I know now more of what I need in a relationship, what I want in a relationship. And I know I have more tools to communicate, not just with my partner, but with myself. That's not necessarily any reflection of who I was married to or what was happening in my marriage, but really where I was in my life." Considering Reynolds had ended his prior engagement in order to be with Johansson, he may have been too eager to pick up where his previous relationship had left off, resulting in him and Johansson marrying before she was truly ready.

Sources told InTouch that Johansson and Reynolds started as a case of opposites attract—and that in the end, they realized opposites are actually incompatible. "He's more traditional and she's more independent," an insider said. "They're both strong-willed and stubborn people. There was a lack of warmth between them, that was troubling…He said it sounded like she was yelling at him every time she talked to him. When Scarlett visited Ryan on the set of The Proposal (2009), she was screaming at him in his trailer—going nuts."

There are hardly any photographs of Johansson and Reynolds together at all. That seems to be more of Johansson's doing: you never really see her parading her paramours (not even current husband Romain Dauriac) around, but you see Ryan Reynolds working red carpets with Blake Lively constantly (and with Morissette before her).

"He can be an overbearing control freak. When he wanted her there, he expected her to drop everything and come to him. She got tired of the double standard," a source told InTouch. Sources also told InTouch that Reynolds was often jealous of Johansson's friendships with male musicians.

When Reynolds filmed Green Lantern (2011), sources told The Daily Mail that he got awfully close with co-star Blake Lively…when he was still married to Johansson. One witness saw Reynolds and Lively getting close over dinner before he and Johansson split. "It was just the two of them, and they were laughing and flirting," the spy said. "It looked like a date. If you didn't know who they were, you would definitely assume they were a couple." The Daily Mail reports that Johansson was uncomfortable with how close Reynolds and Lively had become on set before any rumors swirled about their offscreen romance, and considering that Reynolds and Lively married in 2012, it looks like Johansson's intuition may have been right.