Sexyat40

There’s been much talk on the Internet about Will Smith’s ”confession” of having an open marriage with wife Jada Pinkett. Read more here 

 I’m sure Will is going to take alot of heat for his admission, but I’m not really sure what type of admission it is. While many of his fans seem up in arms that the straight laced, happily married celebrity now turns out to be a kinkster, it’s a shame that they are missing a few larger points.

 I understand that celebrity brings it’s own set of challenges, and therefore a completely different set of coping skills than most of us need. Celebrities do live with hype, pressure and temptations that we will, most likely, never understand. To be surrounded by people on a daily basis that prop you up and feed your ego will, sooner or later, allowing people to believe their own hype. So to develop some sort of system, or boundary line, to cope with temptation actually seems practical as well as realistic.

The actual statement was  

 “In our marriage vows, we didn’t say ‘forsaking all others.’ The vow that we made was that you will never hear that I did something after the fact … If it came down to it, then one spouse can say to the other, ‘Look, I need to have sex with somebody. I’m not going to if you don’t approve of it – but please approve of it.‘”

For me, the above statement is far removed from the comments and statements of most open relationship couples. It’s completely theoretical, based off of what might happen. It’s just not the same type of comment I would expect to hear. In other interviews, Will & Jada have said that they follow other celebrity marriages, especially breakups, ask questions, and put lessons learned into practice in their own relationship.  It seems that all they did was to look at the celebrity world around them, its pitfalls and temptations, and develop a practical agreement that says, “This happens all around us. If these things start to happen to us, we will discuss it before anything happens.”  

Rather than being vilified, or made a poster child for open relationships, I hope his comments are taken for what they are, a couple who communicate, talk about their future and how they might handle issues, and work at making their relationship work. The fact that they are able to discuss these things is a positive element, and hopefully that is the message people will hear, (but I’m skeptical of that.)

 But of course, the media hype will turn this into more than it is.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS