Actress Jada Pinkett Smith Reveals ‘Cheating’ Is More Devastating Than Being Cheated On, Says Cheating Taught Her How To Forgive

Marriage is hard and doubly so when you live your life in front of the spotlight, as The Smiths have come to know especially over the years. As if marriage wasn’t difficult enough already, there’s always the chance that it can go wrong and the end result can be devastating. With any relationship, there are ups and downs, celebrity or not.

Will Smith is of course married to Jada Pinkett Smith and is the father of two children with her, Willow and Jaden Smith. He also has an older son named Trey Smith, and he shares Trey with his ex-wife Sheree Zampino. Will has been very inclusive of Trey and Sheree, sporting a blended family that has been photographed together numerous times together. Will, however, still thinks that his divorce from Zampino haunts him, despite all of his successes.

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A post shared by Will & Jada Smith Family FDN (@officialwjsff) on Mar 18, 2020 at 1:13pm PDT

“Divorce was the worst thing in my adult life,” Smith candidly tells current wife Jada Pinkett Smith in a preview for a Father’s Day special of “Red Table Talk.” “Divorce was the ultimate failure for me. I’ve been hurt a lot in my adult life, but I don’t think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my 2-year-old son’s mother.”

Will married Zampino in 1992 and they were married for 3 years. He then married Jada Pinkett Smith in 1997, and the two have been together ever since.

Pinkett Smith previously admitted on another episode of Red Table Talk that she regretted dating “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star while he was still legally married to Zampino. “Because I did not understand marriage, I did not understand divorce, I probably should have fell back,” Pinkett Smith confessed while chatting with Zampino.

Zampino, 52, cracked, “You think?”

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When it came to her “entanglement” with August Alsina, Will asked Jada what she wanted out of it during their now infamous Red Table Talk, in which she admitted to having an affair with the singer. Jada responded that “I just wanted to feel good,” explaining that her codependency leads her to be drawn to people that need help and how she’s trying to break that cycle in her own life. She acknowledged there’s a childhood trauma that has led her to wanting to fix others instead of “fixing me,” she also shared.

While divorce and infidelity can be a problem for a lot of couples, their problem aren’t aired out on their own talk show for the whole world to see. It’s fitting then, that Jada and the crew had already discussed the topic in the past, even if she didn’t take to her own advice.

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A post shared by Red Table Talk (@redtabletalk) on Jun 12, 2019 at 3:01pm PDT

Back in 2019 during an episode of Red Table Talk, the topic of cheating came up and Jada revealed that before her marriage to Will, she was cheated on — and then cheated on someone else. To Jada, it was the cheating on someone else that proved to be harder than a partner cheating on her, ironically.

“I had two relationships before Will that were kind of serious to me, where I got cheated on — which really broke my heart — and then I cheated on somebody that I really cared about,” she said. “And I have to tell you, me cheating on someone was more devastating than me being cheated on. It actually taught me to forgive when I got cheated on because I understood and what I understood most was that it didn’t have anything to do with me.”

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A guest couples therapist on the show then asked Jada had she cheated on Will at that time. “I’m asked a lot about, ‘Was there infidelity in your relationship with Will?’ And it’s like, no. But there have been other betrayals of the heart that have been far bigger than I could even think in regards to an ‘infidelity situation,’” Jada said.

Fast forward to 2020 and Jada’s answers to these questions may be different. See the clip below.