Jada Pinkett Smith Talks the 'Deteriorating' of 'Fantasies' After Being Married to Will Smith for 21 Years
Jada Pinkett Smith is once again getting brutally honest when it comes to her marriage with Will Smith.
On Monday's brand new episode of the actress' Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk, her guests are Jane the Virgin star Justin Baldoni and rapper Wale. The two men candidly discuss love and relationships, and Pinkett Smith says her view of love has definitely changed after being married to Smith for 21 years.
"Let me tell you, nobody talks about the sacrifice, the deteriorating and dissolving of fantasies," she says bluntly, addressing Wale, who's currently single and actively looking for a long-term relationship. "You right now, have in your mind, your perfect woman. And when you find that woman, she will be a goddess to you. We fall in love with the goddess, or the god, within that person, and then when we actually meet the human being, then we gotta learn how to love that one. The reason why it is so important to me to be able to stick it out, to really get to the true meaning of love, in my opinion, it is unconditional. It has to be, because we are all too flawed. No matter how much work we do! It never ends."
The actress admits part of her problems with Smith stemmed from her coming into their relationship with a lot of personal issues, and that her expectations of him were too high.
"I grew up in a single parent home, I didn’t see all the time healthy relationships," she explains. "I had to figure it out too. I came to the table with a lot of pain and a lot of brokenness. And most of all, I came to the table with some hardcore daddy issues. It made me really angry towards men. I had very high expectations. I was hard. I could’ve ended up with all kinds of dudes. The way I ended up with Will, I had to change my whole perspective, because I want you to know something, he was not the dude! But I had to change that. I can’t ask somebody to be for me, what I am not willing to be for them. And what I realized in my partnership with Will, was I was asking him to be a lot of things for me that I wasn’t willing to do for me."
Pinkett Smith acknowledges there have been moments when both she and Will wanted to walk away from the marriage.
"There have been several occasions where you just had enough and you want to leave and I just couldn’t. Or Will just couldn’t," she admits. "Because we knew this was what was meant to be -- this partnership. No matter what the form is. We had to redefine it. We don’t call ourselves married anymore. We’re in a life partnership."
Still, she stresses that all the hard work the couple has put into their marriage has definitely been worth it.
"At the end of the day, to know that you have another person that can love you for all that you are ... Will has loved me through the worst of myself," she shares. "And I have done the same. When somebody can love you in that way, it makes your faith in the world come together. ... I am 47 years old and I want you to know, that this is probably the first year of my life that I can say, 'I am happy,' because that’s how long the journey has been."
ET spoke to Pinkett Smith earlier this month, when she revealed who we won't be seeing on Red Table Talk anytime soon. Watch the video below:
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