Peter Facinelli Says He Had to Go Through a 'Healing Process' After Divorcing Jennie Garth

Peter Facinelli and Jennie Garth have remained close since divorcing in 2013, even vacationing together with their significant others and daughters last March at Dreams Playa Mujeres Golf & Spa Resort in Cancún, Mexico.

Though they may have the whole co-parenting thing down, Facinelli told LaPalme magazine that it wasn’t always easy for the actors to navigate their post-marital life as they do now.

“Once a break up happens you need to go through the healing process first,” the 43-year-old Supergirl actor explained. “Love is blind and hindsight is 20/20.

“People come into your life for a reason and relationships can change and just because we aren’t living together, doesn’t mean you can’t love each other,” he continued. “I think once, there was a time where we had to learn that we had to be able to move forward with love and respect.”

Taking that time helped both Facinelli and Garth, who share custody of their three kids: Lola, 14, Fiona, 11, and Luca, 20. “As long as mom and dad are happy, the kids are happy,” he said. “Anyone going through a breakup should know, kids need to see mom and dad happy. As long as they know they?re happy, they know they will be okay.”

That’s made it much easier for Facinelli and Garth to spend time together with their kids and blend their families, including Garth’s husband Dave Abrams and Facinelli’s girlfriend Lily Anne Harrison.

“I get the kids one week on and one week off so we share the kids 50/50, but if they have games and events we are both there,” Facinelli said. “We talk all the time about co-parenting and the kids. I really like her husband and I think he’s a great guy.”

Elsewhere in the story, which accompanied a series of photos shot by TJ Manou and styled by creative director Derek Warburton, Facinelli opened up about the overwhelming fandom that came with playing Carlisle Cullen in the mega-popular Twilight films.

“The fans were amazing and they are incredibly generous and it was six years of my life. But the more films we did, the more alienated we became,” the Queens, New York, native said of the enthusiastic fans that would swarm the Twilight casts as they stayed in hotels, ate at restaurants and worked on film sets. “We couldn’t go out as much. By the second film we couldn’t go out at all.”

They did find creative things to do while inside, though. “One night we were in the hotel room and we were trapped. We were playing Twilight the board game because Kellen Lutz went out and bought it,’ Facinelli recalled. “If fans knew that’s how we were hanging out … Ashley Greene actually won the game too!”

LaPalme magazine is on stands now.