Interesting: Will Smith Speaks About His Marriage

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Married Life

Interesting: Will Smith Speaks About His Marriage

By Denis ⋅ September 9, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

People are fascinating, I love that everyone has their own approach to marriage… in particular Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith. This is an old clip, but a good one if you’ve never seen it. They speak about managing their marriage/family as a business plan; at first glance this sound manufactured, cold and boring but as you look further into the concept it makes complete sense!

“What we discovered is if you don’t have a goal, if you don’t have a purpose for your relationship – and pretty much anything – if you don’t have a place for where you’re going something that you want to accomplish, something that you want to do you can really get lost in the murk of the journey. There has to be a vision,” says Will at the 2:58 mark.

A business plan = set goals, targets, and take action. In high school my accounting teacher used to drill into us, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” Makes sense in business, but what about a relationship?

There’s definitely no romance to a plan, spontaneity = fun and carefree and that just oozes love. It’s easy to find the fun in the beginning of a relationship, this is where everything else gets put to the side, work, friends and family all take a back step because all you want is to spend time with your new plaything.

As the relationship develops, spontaneity becomes chaotic and chaos is not good. It’s time to get serious again, you must focus on work, and there are commitments you needs to address – fun starts to fall to the wayside, maybe it’s time for a plan? The irony here is that while it’s hard to build a life together without structure or routine, you can actually plan for the fun bits and schedule in your spontaneous moments!

I believe planning your relationship makes perfect sense. Emma and I plan date night, there’s a better chance to having even more fun this way. We always thought that $30 Date Night should be spontaneous, click the red button until something pops up and at the spur of the moment we’ll go and do whatever pops up. But these days we’re into sharing new experiences, often if you leave a new experience to chance, you’ll be disappointed.

How well do you manage your relationship? Do you coast along or do you have an action plan? It would be interesting to see how many couples are happy coasting vs those who are more regimented and planned.