Kate Mansi Opens up About Her Divorce

During the height of the global pandemic, GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Kate Mansi (Kristina) was one of the many brides who had to postpone or rearrange her wedding plans. During a chat with her GH co-star Maurice Benard (Sonny) on his State of Mind YouTube series, the actress revealed that not only did she secretly tie the knot during that time, but she and her husband also split up shortly after.

As Mansi explained, she was playing DAYS OF OUR LIVES’ Abigail when she met her ex at the commissary at The Burbank Studios, where he was working on THE JAY LENO SHOW. After dating for six or seven years, the couple got engaged — but their wedding plans were continually interrupted due to quarantine restrictions. “Our wedding was canceled five times,” she confessed, adding that they legally married right before their original wedding date. “We signed the papers, but we didn’t tell anyone. We figured we’re going to have a destination wedding, so we’ll just sign the papers.”

Hoping that they could still go through with their destination wedding, the couple kept rearranging their plans several times to no avail. Finally, when things started opening up in April 2021, Mansi shared that she thought that the time had finally come for her to be the bride. But, as it turned out, her ex was having second thoughts about the state of their union. “Six weeks before, he had a crisis of conscience and didn’t want to go through with it,” Mansi revealed.

Since they were already legally married, Mansi couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to walk down the aisle. “At this point, it’s just a party, really. We’re already married,” she pointed out, adding that instead of having a destination wedding, the couple separated. “Why would you not walk down the aisle?”

For a year, the couple worked on their relationship. But unfortunately, they couldn’t reclaim what they once had and a year later, her ex asked for a divorce. “I was broken,” she admitted. “It was brutal. I felt a lot of shame; I felt like I was a failure. And I really, for a year, was just trying to avoid the inevitable. I guess to his credit, I never would have left him.”

Looking back at that traumatic time in her life, Mansi says that she’s still left with unanswered questions. But she also discovered just how strong she really was. “This is now my story, so I better own it,” she declared, sharing that her epiphany came one day while she was sitting on the floor of her shower. “Not only was I grieving the marriage I thought I was going to have, but the future that I thought I was going to have.  In that moment, there was so much peace and so much freedom. No one’s coming to save me. I’ve got to pick myself up from this. And that was the first moment of me really reclaiming myself.”