Couples are finding themselves learning more about their partners while under quarantine. Even couples who have been married for decades like Jada Pinkett-Smith and husband Will Smith, this quarantine is showing them that there are still untouched layers that they don’t know about one another. During an episode of Red Table Talk that aired on Wednesday (April 29), Jada spoke candidly about her marriage and admitted that being under lockdown with her husband gave her a new perspective. “I gotta be honest. I think one of the things that I’ve realized is that I don’t know Will at all,” she said.
Jesse Grant / Stringer / Getty Images
“Let me tell you, that’s been something: To be married to someone for 20-some odd years and then realize, ‘I don’t know you and you don’t know me.’ But also realizing there’s an aspect of yourself you don’t know either.” Jada Pinkett-Smith added, “The thing that Will and I are learning to do is be friends, because you get into all of these ideas about what intimate relationships are supposed to look like, what marriages are supposed to be. So Will and I are in the process of him taking the time to learn to love himself, me taking the time to learn to love myself, right? And us building a friendship along the way.”
She went on to explain that after being with someone for a while, you construct in your mind the person you think they are. “I feel like there’s a layer that you get to, life gets busy and you create these stories in your head and then you hold onto these stories and that is your idea of your partner, that’s not who your partner is,” she said. “This is intimacy, just being able to get to who our loved ones are beyond that which we have perceived.” Watch the episode of Red Table Talk below.