As we all know, Smith has been married to Jada Pinkett Smith for the past 11 years. You always hear that these two have a great marriage, but you can never really trust if that's the truth. It is Hollywood, after all.
But Barbara addresses this in her interview with Smith, when she talks about the difference between his previous marriage with Sheree Zampino, which ended badly, and his current marriage with Jada...
Barbara: You've said now that divorce is not an option.
Will: Yeah. If divorce is not an option, we MIGHT wanna figure out how we could, like, have some fun together? Since we're gonna be here.
Barbara: Rather than, "Gee, if it doesn't work out, we'll get divorced."
Will: Yeah. Being married is the most difficult thing you're ever gonna do in your life, EVER! Anybody who's married, and divorce is an option? You're gettin' divorced.
Love it!
This kind of mimics the Kyra Sedgwick quote I wrote about a while back. It's the brilliant (yet basic) idea that you have to go into a marriage knowing that it's never, ever going to end. That's the only way it will work, or else you're... well... screwed.
The only problem is, how do you adopt the divorce-is-not-an-option mentality? And not only adopt it, but maintain it year after year after year?
If anyone has the secret, please lemme know before I get married. (Which, at this rate, won't be happening for a while, so take your time.)
Also, I have to say that I think parenting is "the most difficult thing you're ever gonna do in your life, EVER!" So either marriage is even more difficult (Lord, help me), or the fact that I've survived parenting (so far!) means that I'll be able to survive marriage? Perhaps?
Here's the full interview with Will Smith. Let me know what you think of it!
2 comments:
The best advice I've ever received on this is from my buddy Michael, a triathlete that set me on the ironman path.
He told me "whatever your relationship is, marriage will make it more of that. If it's rocky, it's gonna get rockier. If you fight a lot, you'll fight more. But if you've got a great, really solid relationship, it's going to be very, very good."
On the Will Smith thing, his first "date" with Jada was to a counselor. His thought was "let's get the junk out of the way first." Admirable, if you ask me. But then again, I'm a 26 year old available male who's sitting at home listening to Counting Crows & blogging on a Saturday night...
My wife and I took divorce off the table during our engagement. It was a conscious effort on both of our parts to work everything out, no matter how bad it was. While that may seem like a personal choice for the two of us, we told everyone that witnessed our wedding that when we read our vows. It was sad that we even had to have that conversation, it just shows how America's respect for marriage has dwindled to almost nothing.
Our faith is very important to us, and standing there in the church in front of God making a promise just wasn't something we took lightly. Marriage is a ton of hard work, and it's a ton of sacrifice and compromise, I think it's harder than parenting (not that I think parenting is easy).
I have a checkered past and one of the things we did when we were dating was empty out the closet. We were getting serious, talking about marriage, and I said look there's a lot of things in my past that I feel would be better to get out now. There's nothing that can be brought up about me now that will catch her off guard. It gave her an out to break up with me if there were things she didn't want to live with.
Long story short, if you are fully committed to your spouse, have reverence for what you promised to do at the church, you are going to work your problems out and not harbor any resentment.
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