Lisa Edelstein Reveals How Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce Helps Her Marriage

For happily married Lisa Edelstein, shooting a show about divorce was eye-opening.

The 50-year-old is opening up about filming the Bravo show Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce one day after her 2014 wedding to Robert Russell, telling PEOPLE that the show is a “cautionary tale.”

“I really paid attention to that because when you get married you’re so wide open to wanting it to last and work … You’re really at the most romantic moment in your life,” Edelstein says.

Edelstein stars as Abby McCarthy in the dramedy about a recently divorced author who takes advice from her divorced friends. She and Russell tied the knot in Los Angeles, with a source telling PEOPLE then that the two were “very happy” and “very loving.”

Now, nearly three years later, Edelstein says understanding her character’s situation was important to her as a new wife and mother.

“I’ve never been married before, I got married when I was 48. It wasn’t like I’d been waiting to get married, because I actually didn’t care. But I wanted to marry my husband and I wanted to be the official step mother to my kids. All that was very important to me,” she said. “So to start a show where these two people who loved each other very much couldn’t make it work, it was very important to me to understand that story and hear those words and know that love is not enough.”

She added: “You have to communicate. You have to show up for each other. You have to deal with stuff you don’t wanna deal with all the time. And that’s where you get the rewards of this amazing relationship and this partner like none other.”

Season 3 of Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on Bravo.