SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Thursday night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) finally let curiosity get the best of her in Thursday night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, but her long-anticipated tryst with Cass Beckman (Sophia Bush) might not have gone the way audiences expected.

Last week, Teddy and Owen (Kevin McKidd) agreed to open up their marriage, which has been on the rocks lately, as both of them have also had their eye on other people. In Episode 613, titled “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” Teddy is presented with an opportunity to act on her lingering chemistry with Cass earlier than she anticipated when she runs into her at a medical conference.

But once she does, she quickly realizes that this won’t help her save her marriage. Cass takes the rejection surprisingly well, which Bush tells Deadline is “really refreshing to just see mature relationships and healthy communication be modeled” adding that “not everything has to be like a knock down, drag out drama fight.”

In fact, she’s not sure the point of the story was ever to introduce a new, long-term love interest for Teddy in the first place, but rather to ask some tough questions about desire and fulfillment, especially for women, later in life.

“I think there’s a reason that so many women in midlife are saying, ‘Hold on, I bought the farm. I did the thing. I checked everything off the list that some book told me to, and I’m not happy. I don’t actually want this. I don’t feel joy in this iteration of this life that I’ve built,’” Bush says. “It does feel really cool to be able to have conversations about that in the space of a series like this.”

Grey’s Anatomy previously revealed that Teddy is bisexual, and she had a romantic relationship with her friend Allison well before her time at Grey Sloan. However, this is the first time that Teddy is really evaluating her marriage with Owen by asking herself whether a monogamous, heterosexual relationship is enough.

And, in order to find an answer, she needed someone like Cass, who approached their connection with clear boundaries but no judgment or expectation, Bush explains.

“I think that the length of time the fans of this show have been with [Teddy] on this journey enables this story to be bigger. In a way, it enables the questions to be so much deeper. It’s not just about two people being attracted to each other,” Bush says. “It’s about where does your ultimate fulfillment lie? And is love enough?”

As for what this might mean for future appearances from Bush, she tells Deadline: “I don’t really know.”

She continued: “But one of the things that I love about it is there’s no judgment between them, and I think there’s such a genuine fondness there…so who knows.”