Thomas Rhett‘s wife Lauren Akins is opening up about one of the most difficult times in their marriage.

After welcoming two children in a three-month period — one through adoption, and a second through birth — Akins says her relationship with her country star husband took a dark turn.

In a new interview with Christian media not-for-profit I Am Second, Akins recalls how they made the decision to adopt an orphaned Ugandan child — the now-8-year-old Willa Gray — and unexpectedly got pregnant during the adoption process. During that time, she had to juggle international travel and adoption paperwork with extreme pregnancy symptoms.

“A lot of the adoption process really fell on me because I was the one who was able to travel and be with her and foster-to-adopt her for those 13 months. There were so many road blocks,” Akins remembers. “And I became pregnant. I was getting sick and throwing up, like, 50-something times a day.”

Through the stress, Akins says, her marriage began to fracture.

“The whole time I was missing my husband, and I started to resent him a little bit, because he was back in America touring,” she says.

That resentment grew after both babies arrived, and Rhett continued to tour and grow his career while Akins worked to adapt as a mom to two daughters.

“It felt like we went zero to two pretty quick, as parents,” she explains. “I was touring with my husband and I was running myself ragged just chasing him all over the place, trying to make it feel like it used to.”

“His life went on, and it felt like mine stopped. It felt like we weren’t doing it together anymore. There was a lot of miscommunication. There was a lot of resentment I was holding onto, I think even through the adoption and after. I just hit a breaking point.”

All those emotions eventually came out in arguments. Akins points to one particular moment when both she and Rhett knew they needed to make a change.

Read More: Thomas Rhett Has Learned a Valuable Lesson From Raising His Daughters

“I remember looking at him in the closet after we had just screamed at each other, and I said, ‘I hate you. I hate you. And I feel alone and I feel lost and I hate your career and the pressure it puts on us, and I hate that we’ve brought two little girls into this.'”

“He was like, ‘Do you want me to quit? What do you want me to do? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it,'” Akins went on to say. In that moment, she knew she didn’t want to ask him to step down from his career — and that point, he’d finally hit his stride as a mainstream country star, after years of work and career-building.

Instead, she says, they enrolled in a “mini-intensive counseling session,” where they learned valuable communication skills and were able to say some difficult things to each other. Meanwhile, they also hit their stride as parents and even welcomed another daughter, Lennon, in early 2020.

That wasn’t the end of hard times for the couple, but the communication skills they learned during this rough patch prepared them to navigate the challenges that laid ahead, such as Akins’ struggle with postpartum depression after their fourth child, Lillie Carolina, was born in November 2021.

Now parents of four, Rhett and Akins are open to the idea of having more children one day, and even adopting again — but not quite yet.

“We have come up for air. We are going to let the air ride for a little bit longer. I haven’t ruled it out,” Rhett told Taste of Country Nights‘ Evan Paul earlier this year.

Carena Liptak is an Associate Editor and staff writer at Taste of Country. She specializes in breaking country music news, interviews and lists. In particular, she’s got a soft spot for sad songs — check out her roundup of the 50 Saddest Country Songs of All Time!