They emphasized that the well-being of their children remained their primary concern.
At that moment, there was no public guarantee that reconciliation would follow.
The marriage appeared to be ending.
For Dempsey, however, the prospect of losing the family unit forced a reassessment.
When he eventually discussed the crisis publicly in 2016, he made clear that he did not feel ready simply to accept the marriage’s end.
“Our marriage was not something I was prepared to let go of,” Dempsey told People, in comments also reported by ABC News.
He explained that he did not believe they had done all the necessary work on their relationship.
Importantly, he described that desire as mutual.
Both of them, he said, wanted to do the work.
That distinction matters.
Their reconciliation was not simply the story of a husband “winning his wife back.” Dempsey described it as two people deciding that, before ending their marriage permanently, they wanted to confront their problems and determine whether the relationship could be rebuilt.
The possibility of the family breaking apart was frightening.
Dempsey described the experience as destabilizing—the feeling that an enormous part of his life might be ending.
So he and Fink began working on their relationship.
Couples Counseling Became Part of the Process
One of the clearest things Dempsey has said about their reconciliation is that couples counseling played an important role.
He called counseling “very important.”
The couple had three children watching how their parents handled conflict, separation and reconciliation. Dempsey said he and Fink wanted to show them that disagreements did not necessarily mean people had to give up immediately.
They wanted their children to see that differences could sometimes be worked through.
For Dempsey, that process also required a change in priorities.
“Our union has to be the priority,” he told People.
That did not mean abandoning every part of his career.
Instead, it meant recognizing that there were limits to how many demanding commitments one person could pursue simultaneously.
“You cannot do everything,” Dempsey told the Evening Standard in 2016. “Something has to be sacrificed.”
For him, one of the most significant adjustments involved racing.
He Stepped Back From Racing—He Did Not Abandon It Completely
Some retellings of Dempsey’s marriage story claim that he simply “quit racing” to save his marriage.
That description goes too far.
What Dempsey actually said was that he had “sort of stepped back.”
After competing throughout the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship season, he reduced his driving commitments. The FIA World Endurance Championship itself reported in April 2016 that Dempsey had stepped back from the cockpit because of family and filming commitments.
He remained connected to motorsport as a team owner.
The distinction is important because it makes the real story more believable and more meaningful.
Dempsey did not necessarily erase one of his passions from his identity. Instead, he reconsidered how much time that passion should consume during a crucial period in his family’s life.
He explained that time with his children was moving too quickly and that he did not want to miss it.
In 2015, circumstances had allowed him to devote himself fully to a racing season. By 2016, his priorities had shifted.
“Now it’s time to put [100 percent] into my kids,” he told the Evening Standard.
That change reveals one of the central themes of his story: priorities are not merely things people say are important. They become real through decisions about where time and attention go.
His Exit From Grey’s Anatomy Came During the Same Transformative Period
Only months after the divorce filing, another enormous change occurred.