Trust, Transparency, and Fresh Starts: Brian Austin Green on Healthy Relationships

There’s a moment in every relationship where trust either becomes the foundation or the cracks start showing. For Brian Austin Green, 52, that moment arrived after nearly a decade and a half with his ex-wife Megan Fox taught him some hard lessons about what doesn’t work. Now engaged to Sharna Burgess, 41, the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum is speaking openly about how he’s rebuilt his approach to love—and why he’s comfortable with his fiancée having complete access to his phone.

On the Saturday, July 11 episode of the I Do, Part 2 podcast, Green didn’t shy away from the deeper philosophy behind that openness. He made a clear distinction: early-stage relationships characterized by suspicion and phone-checking are red flags pointing inward, not outward. When you’re newly coupled and already feeling the urge to investigate, he argued, that’s worth examining within yourself first. People carry baggage from past heartbreak, and those wounds shouldn’t become the blueprint for the next chapter. But Green also acknowledged the reality—it’s hard to break those toxic patterns once they’ve taken root.

What sets his current dynamic with Burgess apart is intentionality. Green and Burgess began dating in late 2020, made things Instagram official in January 2021, welcomed their son Zane in June 2022, and got engaged in September 2023. But before that timeline could unfold, something foundational had to shift. After his marriage to Fox ended with their divorce finalized in 2021, Green found himself a single parent to three children. He made a choice: therapy, self-examination, and deliberate change. He came to understand that his old pattern—leading with physical attraction and building a relationship around it—wasn’t sustainable.

With Burgess, he tried something radically different: friendship first. Green and Burgess laid everything on the table early—their best qualities and their worst ones. That transparency from day one created a dynamic where neither person was performing or hiding. In that context, phone access isn’t about surveillance; it’s about the absence of anything that needs hiding. He put it plainly:“I make very clear in my life that I’m not gonna make any choices that would hurt her feelings or negatively affect her.”That’s not restriction—it’s respect made tangible.

The journey from a 10-year marriage built on attraction to an engagement rooted in genuine connection and mutual vulnerability is the real story here. Green’s willingness to do the interior work—to identify what he brought into relationships that was toxic—mirrors a larger shift happening in how people approach commitment. The phone transparency is just the visible symbol of something deeper: a relationship built on choices that serve the partnership, not the individual ego.