Will Smith says that there's no one who can make him or Jada Pinkett Smith happy, and they both know that
- Will Smith said that there's no one who can make him or Jada Pinkett Smith happy, and they know it.
- He said their journey is about finding contentment with themselves, not "external stimuli."
Will Smith said that he and Jada Pinkett Smith know that there's no partner who can make either of them happy.
"Let's just talk about it, Oprah. No woman can make me happy, so I don't need to go look for one to try to make me happy. No man can make Jada happy, so she don't need to go look for one to make her happy. We both know that," Smith told Oprah Winfrey in a new episode of season one of her Apple TV+ show "The Oprah Conversation," released on Friday.
"There is no person that will fill your hole," the actor, who's been married to Pinkett Smith since December 1997, continued. "That was probably not the best way to say that. Y'all know what I mean though, right?"
Smith was first married to Sheree Zampino, with whom he shares a son named Trey.
After meeting Pinkett Smith and connecting with her, the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" star realized he was with the wrong person. On an episode of Pinkett Smith's Facebook Watch show "Red Table Talk," Smith recalled crying uncontrollably" in a bathroom stall one evening while out having dinner with Zampino.
Smith and Zampino divorced in 1995 and he and Pinkett Smith began dating. They wed in December 1997 and welcomed their first child together, Jaden Smith, in 1998. Pinkett Smith gave birth to their daughter, Willow Smith, in October 2000.
After being together for more than two decades, Smith and Pinkett Smith no longer use the term "married" to define their relationship. Instead, they consider themselves ride or die "life partners."
Smith explained to Winfrey that he and Pinkett Smith choose to "love in freedom," which he described as "friendship versus marital prison."
The actor's comment followed his recent GQ cover story, in which he said that he and Jada aren't monogamous.
"We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way," he told GQ. "And marriage for us can't be a prison."
Smith told Winfrey that his and Pinkett Smith's dynamic is about them finding contentment within themselves, rather than externally.
"The spiritual journey is finding your joy and bliss without vampirically using others," he said. "So, the Will journey and the Jada journey is finding that joy without medication. Finding that joy without distraction. It's about being able to find that contentment with yourself, not with external stimuli."
He continued: "The spiritual process is detoxing all of those things, not leaving your marriage so you can go get some chocolate cake. It's no chocolate cake, it's no alcohol, it's no sexual stimulation and all of that."
"It's insatiable," Smith reiterated. "The spiritual process is more a process of detox than it is [of] going to get more. I haven't talked about that publicly."