Prince Harry sought counseling after “cruelly” speaking to Meghan Markle after a disagreement, he reveals in his explosive new memoir Spare.
According to US Weekly, the Duke of Sussex recounts an argument with the former “Suits” star took a turn for the worse:
“Maybe the wine went to my head. Maybe the weeks of battling the press had worn me down. For some reason, when the conversation took an unexpected turn, I became touchy. Then angry. Disproportionately, sloppily angry. I was also just over-sensitive that night. I thought: ‘Why’s she having a go at me?’ I snapped at her, spoke to her harshly [and] cruelly.”
According to Prince Harry, after the fight, Markle had been gone for “a full 15 minutes” before he discovered her sitting by herself in their bedroom.
Markle said that she would not “tolerate” Harry’s behavior. “She wasn’t going to raise children in an atmosphere of anger or disrespect. She laid it all out, super-clear,” wrote Harry.
When the former actress went on to ask where the royal’s outburst “came from” and whether he “overhear[d] adults speak that way … growing up,” the prince replied, “Yes.”
“It came from somewhere deep inside, somewhere that needed to be excavated, and it was obvious that I could use some help with the job,” Harry recounts. “‘I’ve tried therapy,’ I told her. ‘Willy told me to go. Never found the right person.’ [It] didn’t work.”
Markle replied, “No. … Try again.”
Harry has referenced this discussion with Markle in the past. In the 2021 Apple TV+ docuseries “The Me You Can’t See”, he admits Markle told him he needed therapy early on in their relationship.
“I quickly established that if this relationship was gonna work, that I was gonna have to deal with my past,” Harry says in the doc. “Because there was anger there. And it wasn’t anger at her, it was just anger. And she recognized it, she saw it.”
Speaking at The Masters of Scale Summit last October, Harry opened up about the way therapy has “opened my eyes.”
“I was moving through life thinking there was only one way to live. And therapy burst that bubble,” he said.
Harry and Markle share two children together — Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 19 months.
Spare is set to release on Jan. 10.