Justin Hartley says he is carefully guarding his marriage to Sofia Pernas. On a recent appearance on the I’ve Never Said This Before podcast, Hartley said he is very protective of his wife and the relationship they have built together.
He said the couple first met on the set of The Young and the Restless in 2015, then later got together after his divorce from his second wife, Chrishell Stause. Hartley and Pernas married a little more than five years ago.
The actor said the lesson is simple: a relationship has to be protected from people around it who may not mean well. “You got to take care of your relationship and be very protective of who you surround yourself with and what relationships you surround yourself with,” he said, adding that people in your life can struggle to handle seeing a couple thrive.
Hartley did not cast those people as villains. “They’re not bad people,” he said, but he also warned that jealousy can quietly poison close circles. “I’ve certainly in my life been jealous before, no question,” he said. “It’s never once serviced me in any way positively at all — ever — to be envious or anything like that.”
The comments land in a marriage that already sits within a well-known chapter of Hartley’s personal life. Pernas is his third wife. Before Chrishell Stause, he was married to Passions star Lindsay Korman, and they share a daughter, Isabella.
For Hartley, the point was not celebrity gossip or old wounds. It was a warning about something more ordinary and more dangerous: how outside voices can fray a relationship if a couple lets them in. His answer to the headline question is plain — yes, he is protective of his justin hartley wife, and he says that vigilance is part of what keeps the marriage intact.
