Jada Pinkett Smith Shares How Friendship Is Key to a Marriage’s Survival

Jada Pinkett Smith is very honest and open about her private life,
whether it’s on social media or her Facebook Watch series, Red Table
Talk. She sometimes touches on topics a lot of celebrities are
uncomfortable opening up about, such as recent video she posted about why it was wrong of her to prioritizing romantic love in her marriage to Will Smith.

"I had an epiphany the other day," Jada said in the post. "I had to
call Will and say, ‘You know what? I have to thank you for enduring my
rage.’ It made me realize how durable love must be because we don’t
have all the answers at the beginning. We go through life and we get
the answers as we go, and we can break things as we’re finding the
answer."

This couple has been together a very long time, by Hollywood
standards. They wed New Years Eve of 1997, and have had their shares of ups and downs along the way.

"I realized how unmet standards of romantic love often justified it to
turn into a cold heart that many times can fuel hateful and brutal
actions of revenge and manipulation towards someone you say or said
you loved," she captioned the video on Instagram. "It actually may be
the only form of love you can fall OUT of.

It takes more than romantic love

She added: "At one point, my romantic standard of love was all that
mattered and if it wasn’t met…there was more than hell to pay. My
romantic standards were feeding my ego whether they were met or unmet. I experienced some very hard lessons (and continue to do so) that formed the decision that my ego and my heart could not share the same space.”

For her, it was not romance, but kinship and friendship that made
their marriage work. "It was the deciding factor to transform my union
to @willsmith from a marriage (contaminated with all the above) to a
life partnership led by and steeped in 'devotional friendship,'" she
ended the caption. "The only thing to do in life is to find the form
of love where we can give the best of ourselves AND...it’s not always
going to look like you thought."