If you don’t have Instagram post notifications turned on for Will Smith’s feed, you’re missing out on a lot of relationship gems. The veteran actor just keep dropping one gem after another.
This time, the Philadelphia native took to the ‘Gram to share a lesson he’s learned about love, which was taught to him by none other than his wife of 20 years, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. The actress expressed to him that her biggest revelation about love has been that the pursuit of happiness isn’t found in what your partner can do for you but what you can do for yourself to better your relationship.
“You cannot make a person happy,” he began. “You can make a person smile, you can make a person feel good, you can make a person laugh but whether or not a person is happy deeply, totally and utterly out of your control.”
He continued, “I remember the day I retired. I said to Jada, ‘I retire, I retire from trying to make you happy. I need you to go make yourself happy and just prove to me that it’s even possible.’ After we cracked the hell up, we started talking about it and we came into this false romantic concept that somehow when we got married, we would become one. We realized that we were two completely separate people on two completely separate, individual journeys and that we were choosing to walk separate journeys, together.”
“Her happiness was her responsibility and my happiness was my responsibility and we decided that we were going to find our individual internal, private joy and then we were going to present ourselves to the relationship and to each other, already happy. Not coming to each other, begging without empty cups out demanding that she fill my cups and demanding that she meet my needs. It’s unfair and it’s kind of unrealistic and can be destructive to place the responsibility for your happiness on anybody other than yourself.”
Now that’s a word.