Sophie Cachia and her husband thought her attraction to women was just a phase

Sophie Cachia is used to people knowing the details of her life, whether it be her relationship with AFL star Jaryd Cachia, her TV career, the end of their marriage or her subsequent engagement to Maddie Garrick.

In fact she'll be detailing her life thus far in her book Then There Was Her, due out May 4.

But it won't just be Sophie we'll be hearing from. Her ex-husband Jaryd will also be sharing his side of the story. For Sophie, it was important Jaryd was a part of the telling of their experience as a family.

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"It was a great opportunity for him to speak from his side," Sophie, 31, tells 9Honey. "I almost felt like it gave it more credibility in the sense it wouldn't be fair to just tell the story from my side."

Sophie was 20 and Jaryd was 19 when they first got together.

"We were babies," she says. "Then I gave birth to our first child at 23."

The couple shares two children: Son Bobby, eight, and daughter Florence, five.

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"We'd always spoken about wanting children young," she says. "Jaryd has younger siblings and I was always naturally maternal."

Her attraction to women didn't start until much later in their relationship. She'd never even experimented with girls when she was younger, nor had she kissed a girl at a party "for fun".

"I was straight down the line and very specific on the type of boy I would crush on," she says. "He had to be tanned and have brown hair with muscles. Jaryd was my ideal person but funnily enough the first woman I was attracted to had everything I liked in a guy, but was female."

She told Jaryd about the attraction right away and remained honest about her developing attraction to women. Jaryd did his best to support her exploration however as it became clear Sophie was evolving away from him, the situation became difficult for him.

He writes in the book that he was living in a house where "her needs were being fulfilled – and I was genuinely happy that was happening for her – but mine weren't".

"For my sake, we needed to announce that we were separating," he writes. "Once we did, I started to feel better about myself in terms of where I wanted to go and I'm in a much better place now."

Jaryd has since re-partnered and he and Sophie do the best to balance their blended family.

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For Sophie, after experiencing her first attraction to a woman, she "instantly knew I'd never felt anything like that before".

She compares it now to a rebirth.

"One of the prevalent themes in the book is the idea of change in society and how scared we are of change," she says. "Change needs to be more welcomed and understood, there needs to be more sympathy and understanding that humans change throughout their lives."

Sophie began exploring relationships with women while still married to Jaryd, and after their relationship ended, she entered a series relationships, the latest of which has resulted in an engagement to WNBL star Maddie Garrick.

"I do recall my first sexual experience with a woman," she says. "I thought I'd try it out and it would go away, but that was not the case."

As she continued to evolve and date women she began to feel scared about what this would mean for her family, despite Jaryd's efforts to respect her evolution and support her through the process.

She wanted to be a good wife and mother and soon realised that wouldn't be possible if she wasn't able to live her life authentically.

These days, if she has to use labels, she describes herself as "sexually bisexually but emotionally gay".

In reality, younger generations are increasingly rejecting labels and prefer to allow their own development to be fluid, something Sophie says she is seeing in her son Bobby who oftentimes chooses to wear dresses and "sparkly earrings" with his parents' full support.

"He tells me he doesn't want to be a boy or a girl, he just wants to be Bobby," she says. At one stage Bobby chose to wear pink earrings and bracelets to school and when a teacher told Sophie Bobby's bling was "against school policy" Sophie pushed back, noticing this particular policy about not wearing earrings and bracelets to school only applied to boys.

That day Bobby made the decision to take them off himself but Sophie hopes that by living her life as truthfully as possible and by standing up to societal rules on gender and sexuality she can pave the way for her children to live their lives on their own terms, just as their mum is now doing.

She says it doesn't matter if a child is trans or if they are just going through a phase of dressing up in different clothing, the fact kids are now "free to do these things" gives her goosebumps as a parent.

"Allowing our children the freedom of discovering themselves instead of telling them who they are is exciting," she says.

Of the future, Sophie says she knows she has found her "forever" but is also well aware that life just happens.

"Yes I dream of spending my life with Maddie and having babies and living our lives in a little county farmhouse away from the city, but I also know anything can happen," she says.

"I just know that I've found my 'now'."