Jada Pinkett Smith recently talked about the dangers of placing too much emphasis on romantic gestures like getting flowers, being taken to candlelit dinners and other things that are typically associated with treating a mate well. And until she learned to place less importance on those acts, it affected her emotionally.
“I used to believe that romantic love was the highest form of love until 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 wrote on Instagram Feb 1.
“MY romantic standard of love was all that mattered,” Jada continued. “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.”
Jada also explained that after she stopped equating romance with committed, battle-tested love, she was able to take her union with husband Will Smith from a marriage to a “To a life partnership led by and steeped in ‘devotional friendship.’”
She wrote those words next to a clip that showed her visit to The Marco Lodge at Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27. The Marco Lodge holds an annual event at the Utah festival, where a host of celebrities stop by to discuss topics such as diversity in Hollywood.
In the video, Jada said she’s grateful for the people who stuck by her side as she was learning to be a better person.
“I had an epiphany the other day,” she explained. “I had to call Will and say, ‘You know what? I have to thank you for enduring my rage.’ It really made me realize how durable love must be. I learned to be very grateful to those who didn’t abandon me along the way because they could’ve.”
Last month, on her “Red Table Talk” series, Jada said she and Will don’t celebrate their wedding anniversary at all.
The couple got married on New Year’s Day 1997, and they spend each anniversary apart, because she said her marriage isn’t steeped in that one day of the ceremony.
See Jada’s video below.
