Emma Heming Willis has opened up about the personal struggle she faced in her marriage to Bruce Willis before his dementia diagnosis. The model and author shared that the actor’s unexplained behavioral changes led her to a point where she seriously contemplated divorce, a period she describes as feeling like her marriage was “crumbling.”
Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming considered divorcing him
Emma Heming admitted that years before Willis’ 2022 dementia diagnosis, she believed her marriage was falling apart.
“I felt like my marriage was crumbling,” she told Vanity Fair, explaining how she noticed sudden and unexplained changes in her husband’s behavior. At the time, Heming recalled thinking, “What is going on? This is not the person that I married. Something is just so off.”
Heming said she couldn’t make sense of what was happening. She described her marriage to the Die Hard star as a “romantic, beautiful story” but admitted that by 2020, she was really alarmed. For a while, she even considered divorce after more than a decade of marriage.
Only later did she discover that Willis’ behavior changes were symptoms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a degenerative brain disease that affects personality, language, and decision-making.
The couple went public with his aphasia diagnosis in 2022 and later confirmed his dementia condition in 2023. By that point, Heming had already taken on the role of full-time caregiver. “It doesn’t even feel like this ‘husband and wife’ thing,” she reflected. “We’re almost past that… It’s just deeper. He’s my person.”
Today, Bruce Willis lives separately from Emma Heming and their daughters under professional care. She explained the decision on Good Morning America, saying, “It was a hard decision for us, but that was the safest and best decision, not just for Bruce but also for our two young girls.” They share two daughters, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11.
While the transition has been painful, Heming has chosen to share her journey publicly. In her book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Hope and Purpose on the Caregiving Path, she details how she learned to balance caregiving with her own identity.
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on ComingSoon.net.
