Picture
Courtesy of LoveMyBlack.com
After following the mega-couple Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith throughout their 16 year marital journey, we've remained enamored with what appears to be a loving, trusting and outright gorgeous family. It's like we've grown up with them, like they are our family, and we only want them to stay together and keep that ideal blazing as a sterling example of what we want our love to be. Except there are rumors.

For years, while we admiringly gazed upon shots of them at premiers or on the Oprah Show, there has been rumor after rumor surrounding the couple. First, that they were swingers, and both bi-sexual, now, that Jada had an affair with Hawthorne co-star, Marc Anthony (we all know how well he respects marriage), that they are getting a divorce, and with her latest interview that Jada unwittingly "confirms" that Will is gay.

Instead, what I derive from Jada Pinkett-Smith's interview with Marc Lamont Hill on HuffPost Live which most recently pushed the couple under a microscope is that the Smiths have a trusting relationship. After being asked about speculations that the Smiths have an open marriage, Mrs. Pinkett-Smith confidently asserts, "I've always told Will, 'You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay, because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I'm here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that's not for me to do for him. Or vice versa." Does it sound like they have the perfect, monogamous relationship?--No. From this, does it sound like they have a trusting relationship?--Yes.

What I've come to learn is that not every relationship is based on our personal ideals of how it should be. I prefer a monogamous relationship and was raised in a time where that was the basis of a solid family structure. Today, however, polyandrous, open, homosexual and other romantic classifications exist, and that may be another family's truth and normalcy. The Smiths may value openness or not, but they may still be very happy.

I don't believe that Jada's statements made any clear attestation to what the Smith family model is, but it appears that it works for them, at least thus far. Jada has gone on record here publicly affirming that she gives her man enough room to do what he wants, allows his conscious to guide him, rather than behaving as an insecure, untrusting spouse. That may mean she gives him enough room to hang himself, or it may mean that if he enjoys extramarital affairs, she'll be cool--as she walks out the door and moves on with her life.

There's a certain confidence that must come with that. She has confidence that her man will have good judgment, confidence that if he doesn't, he'll live with the consequences, and confidence that she'll be okay with however things turns out. That seems to make for a more grounded approach to a lasting love.  After all, when did being paranoid prevent a man from doing what he wanted to do?

My hat’s off to them and their relationship. Whether the divorce rumors are true, we'll stand to see. However, let's hope like the good old days, they value fighting to the end as their tradition.





Leave a Reply.