Will and Jada Smith share what kept their 20-year marriage strong: personal growth through counseling, a shared vision, and treating each other as best friends. They say lasting love requires individual self-improvement, clear purpose, and a commitment to never quit, even in the hardest times.
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Hello, Believe Nation. My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in you what I see in you, you'll go off and change the planet. I started the Believe Love series because having a relationship can be hard, and especially hard for entrepreneurs because we are managing a child in our business and also a relationship. And I thought it'd be of great value to myself and also to you guys to share some advice, some expertise, some knowledge from people who are having successful businesses and careers and also relationships and marriages and how to make it all work together. So today we're going to learn from Jada and Will Smith and their message of don't quit.
I know who's here. After 20 years, she knows your scent.
I know the touch.
I know the scent. I know the energy, everything. I told her, we were just talking about that. I said that look of love that I saw when you all walked onto this carpet, my God.
Goodness, you know, Jack, because we've survived, you know.
Yeah, we've survived, you know.
And it's the— that's the thing that is difficult that people don't understand about love. You think it's all flowers and everything, but love gets created by making it together. Yeah, you know, it's like it is from survival. Come through some stuff. This is— this is a gangster right here in front of y'all. This little one here, gangster, ride or die. It can't be easy always to make a relationship work. You talked about recently it being a hard— the marriage being a hard thing to work on. What did you mean by that? No, everything that you do that's great is, is going to be difficult, you know. And the, the most difficult part about a relationship is that it's really not between two people that makes it work, it's between you and you, you know. It's like what, what Jada and I have learned is bettering ourselves individually is how you make a relationship work, you know. If you're going to have counseling, marriage counseling isn't always the way to go. Individual counseling, you get yourself together and present yourself to your partner in a higher spiritual and emotional state, and you'd be surprised how much better things can go. If there is a, is a secret, I would say is that we never went into working on our relationship. We only ever worked on ourselves individually and then presented ourselves to one another better than we were previously. If you don't have a goal, you know, if you don't have a purpose for your relationship, and pretty much anything, it's like, if you don't have a purpose, if you don't have a place that you're going, something that you wanna accomplish, something you wanna do, you can really get lost in the murk of the journey. There has to be a vision for— There has to be a vision, right? So why are we together, you know? I mean, you fine, you fine, you know. You know, but as an answer for why two spirits would join together and decide to travel this perilous journey of life together, uh, fine, or you can cook, or you keep the house protected. That's really not enough. There's so much more that you have to be dedicated to.
Will and I are very relaxed with one another, you know, and I think because, you know, from how I've answered questions of, girl, you know, what, what would you do if he came home and this and that and that? Or, you know, being married to a big superstar like Will, how do you deal with other other women, and my answer's always— I've always told Will, you can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay. Wow. Okay? Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I'm here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide decide who he wants to be, and that's not for me to do for him, or vice versa.
I'm a hopeless romantic, so I've made the distinction between romance and love. Real love is born of surviving with someone where you develop true love, in that have a certain understanding of what is needed.
I think that with marriages, people have to understand that you have to look at your marriage and understand what is needed in your marriage. Not what people think your marriage should be, not what people want your marriage to be, but I have to look at my husband and I have to look at him and, and look at what he needs as an individual. He has to look at me and see what I need, and then we have to look at the union and, and see what the union needs. And we have to make decisions based on that, not based on what people think marriage should be.
I gotta just ask on a personal— because you guys are such a cool couple And another anniversary, was it recently? Celebrating? That is so cool. What advice, you know, I got little kids, I've only been married a little bit. What advice could you pass on to your boy right here?
Just stay in it.
Stay in it, yeah.
Just keep on trucking. Because you got little kids, so I know what that's about. Right, exactly.
It becomes about them, but you can't forget about you either, right?
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's like marriages go through many different cycles and stages, you know. And it gets better and better and better. And you will go through some tough patches, some really bad ones that are going to make you want to quit. They're going to make you want to quit, but don't.
She's about to make me want to cry right now. Okay. Kill him.
Yes. That is real talk.
I love it. Real talk. All right.
All right.
I'm going to pray about that tonight. We've been married 20 years and, you know, we've been asking ourselves that question. And really, at the end of the day, It's just not quitting, you know? You can't expect it to be easy. It's like our marriage was the most difficult, grueling, and excruciating thing that we've ever taken on in our lives. And, you know, we're just not quitters. And by the same token, we're not apathetic. So we're not gonna sit there and let it, you know, be painful.
In those same pictures, I love seeing you and Will.
I mean, you guys have got what everybody wants.
So what is the secret?
How do you guys always look like you're on honeymoon? You know what?
It's really just friendship. I have to tell you, it's like your partner has to be your best, best friend, and he's my best friend. And how do you keep things so— I mean, I keep reading that the pair of you have this sort of fantastic sex life after 14 years of marriage. You know, and I know people get so upset about it, but for me, I don't get it. I'm getting— I get excited. Yeah, you— what I read was that wherever you go, the pair of you, you try and make love. I mean, We've made love in some interesting places. I mean, should I be concerned about my green room? You should be. You should be, you know? But the thing about it is that I feel like you have to keep spontaneity. You have to keep— you have to keep your partner on their toes, because once, you know, it starts getting into a routine, it's like— it gets very boring.
times of doubt, right? And since the dawn of time, written history, better men, better poets than me have tried to set verse to the love they knew. Dead to words, judge what I do want to give you.
Oh my love, never too much, never too much, never too much.
Uh-uh, uh-uh.
Thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know, what did you think? What was your favorite message in this video? How are you going to apply it? To your life somehow? Is this series helpful to you and do you want to see it continue or not? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really, really curious to see what you have to say. Thank you guys again so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.
