'It Started Off Really Messy': Jamie Lynn Sigler Details 'Toxic' Marriage to AJ Discala

Jamie Lynn Sigler is getting candid about one of the most difficult chapters of her life — her first marriage to AJ Discala — and how she’s finally made peace with it.

Looking back, the actress admitted she understands why she stayed at the time.

“I desperately needed him at that time, so I can’t be like, 'What were you thinking?’ I know what I needed, and he provided a lot of that for me,” Sigler shared with Us Weekly, explaining she was dealing with health issues that were later revealed as early signs of Multiple Sclerosis.

“As the relationship evolved, can I look back and see a young girl who was possibly being taken advantage of? Yes, but I also don’t think that he really thought that that was happening either,” she added. “I think we were both caught up in a ride, and I think our relationship was really toxic, and I think that it was really complicated, and it started off really messy.”

Sigler was just 22 when she married Discala, then 32, in 2003 — at the time, he was also her money manager. The marriage, which she now called “disastrous,” lasted three years, but its emotional impact lingered long after they split.

Now, she’s opening up even more in her upcoming memoir, And So It Is….: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope, set to be released on May 5.

In the book, she revisits some of her darkest moments, including a time when she found herself fantasizing about her own death.

"I hadn’t relived that moment until I wrote it," the actress told the outlet. "It wasn’t even really about suicide. It was a cry for help. I needed someone to know how terrified and overwhelmed I was."

She also reflected on how hard it was to walk away.

"A marriage at 20 is still a marriage," she explained. "I needed a lot of proof to leave. When I went through his phone, I knew something shady was going on. All women feel that way. I wanted to share that not to bash him, but for other women. I felt like such a failure all the time, but I understood I was not going to survive much longer if I stayed in that marriage. I think he knew that, too.”

“I knew that I didn’t want to be with him, but I was terrified to be without him. Who would protect me? I had no idea about my finances. I had no idea about anything. Could there have been things that he said back then to make me feel that I would never survive without him, sure, but I also think that I felt that whether he had said that or not, because I was so dependent on him for my survival and to protect me,” she said.

“He was the only person that could protect me. If I didn’t have him, I would be free-falling,” she added. “It was very complicated and very scary, and I think that’s what led to that incredibly painful and dark moment for me of just feeling, like, ‘I can’t feel this much pain anymore.’”

At the same time, Sigler was quietly battling serious health issues. During a TV shoot in her early 20s, she experienced a tingling sensation in her feet that quickly turned into temporary paralysis in her legs. Initially misdiagnosed as Lyme disease, she later learned in 2002 that she had multiple sclerosis.

For years, she kept everything to herself — from her diagnosis to her marriage struggles and even a past eating disorder.

“All these secrets had piled up on top that I was just suffocated and just literally just trying to survive every day,” she told the outlet. “I was constantly in fight or flight. I was constantly in survival mode, and that kind of became my new normal for the next almost decade after that.”

Sigler is currently married to professional baseball player Cutter Dykstra since 2016, with whom she has two sons.