Jada and Will Smith have been in the news for quite some time now, following a statement from August Alsina that he had an affair with Jada. He told the interviewer that he had gotten Will Smith’s permission to have a relationship with Jada.
The couple has finally addressed those claims via Jada’s ‘Red Table Talk’ and they are baring it all out. It turns out, that it wasn’t exactly an affair since Jada and Will were separated at the time and Will Smith never expressly gave August permission to get in a relationship with his wife.
Despite how messy the story sounds, there are a few lessons to be learned from Jada and Will Smith’s marriage and how they’ve handled things. Here are six lessons to take home:
1. Keep your business out of the press as much as possible.
Jada and Will Smith went through a period of separation and barely anybody knew about it until they were ready to share. They handled it well until August Alsina’s interview forced them to have a candid conversation about it in public.
2. You can only ever find true happiness in yourself.
Jada accepted during the Red Table Talk that she had been looking for happiness in other places but herself. She was trying to fix herself by fixing other people but she learned the hard way that true happiness can only be found within. She said, ‘In the process of that relationship, I definitely realised that you can’t find happiness outside of yourself’.
3. Every marriage/ relationship works differently.
There’s no blueprint for how a marriage should work because there are different individuals in every marriage. The most important thing to do is that you find a system that works best for you and your partner and work with that system.
4. Taking a step back from your partner is not necessarily a bad thing.
They often say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sometimes, it takes being away or separated from someone to appreciate what you already had with them. It could be a valuable experience and help you be more tolerable of the things that used to put you off about them.
5. If you are willing to work at it, everything will work out just fine.
A lot of broken marriages can be salvaged if both partners are willing to put in the work. At the end of the day, the most important questions to ask and answer are: ‘do I love my partner? And do I want to be with them forever?’ If the answers to these questions are ‘Yes’, then putting in work to fix the marriage should come more naturally. The only times trying to fix your marriage may be unadvisable is if there’s abuse or serial cheating.
6. Forgiveness will heal a lot of wounds.
Forgiveness is not an easy thing to do but if you can get to that point, then it may be easy to redeem whatever was once broken. As Will Smith said, ‘it ain’t for the weak at heart. There’s just certain things that you have to go through.’
