For 19 years Louise and Jamie Redknapp appeared to have one of the most solid marriages in showbusiness, leaving many shocked when they divorced in 2018.
But behind the scenes, trouble had been brewing for some time, as Louise reveals with brave honestly in her new autobiography, You've Got This.
The former Eternal star has been open about how her 2016 stint on Strictly Come Dancing reignited her passion for performing and made her realise she couldn't go back to being a 'Stepford Wife'.
However, there was so much more to it than that, with Louise, 46, admitting that as Jamie's career as a footballer and then a pundit soared, she felt insignificant and alone.
She writes: "For a long time, I ticked all the boxes of being the 'picture-perfect' wife. The truth? For a lot of that time, I actually felt lonely, anxious and unimportant."
As well as struggling with OCD which started in her days with Eternal, Louise also battled with self-doubt, depression and an unshakable feeling that she wasn't 'good enough'.
Women would throw themselves at her husband in front of her, while cruel online comments about Louise's appearance chipped away at her self-esteem.
"When I was married I honestly got to the stage that when I walked into a room with Jamie, I felt like other people were surprised that he had chosen me and was still with me," she writes.
Lifting the lid on what it's really like to be married to a footballer, the mother-of-two tells how the demands of the job mean you are on your own most of the time.
That's on top of uprooting lives and children at the drop of a hat if a player gets transferred, or spending months or even years supporting a partner struggling to come to terms with injury or the end of their career at 35.
For Jamie, the transition into TV work was almost seamless, but for primary caregiver Louise, she felt like the 'lesser party' in the marriage and desperately wanted to be 'equal'.
The book - which is part autobiography, part self-help tips - advises readers to always 'hold back a little bit of something, just for you' to ensure that a balance is maintained and both people in the couple can maintain their identities and passions.
For stage school graduate Louise, performing was her passion and she describes how her marriage collapsed after Strictly gave her a 'false sense of security' and made her feel 'invincible'.
Frightened of losing her confidence again, she told how she started 'running away' from her old life, but before she knew it, it had got to the point where she 'couldn't put it back together'.
And to this day, that's something Louise regrets. She said: "Looking back, I wish I'd sat down and really tried to explain how much I was struggling, how unimportant I felt in our lives together and how depressed this made me feel. I wish I'd been honest and said I felt unloved. I never spoke about how things were at home to a single soul.
"The loneliness has just ebbed into my life , but I ran away from it, refused to face it until it was too late to try and sort it out."
What's more, she believes that if she had done Strictly four years earlier, she probably wouldn't have walked out on her marriage.
Not only because she would have been 'too scared', but also because at that point, she didn't want it to end.
* You've Got This And Other Things I Wish I Had Known is on sale tomorrow online from major bookstores.
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