Jada Pinkett Smith and Toni Braxton discussed marriage and divorce during a recent episode of Red Table Talk. This conversation was followed up in a Facebook Live version of the show on Wednesday. Jada, along with her mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones invited a psychotherapist for the occasion. The interaction with Stacy Kaiser led to the issue of Jada's relationship with her husband's ex-wife, Sheree Fletcher.
Kaiser explained that children should become the priority within the difficult dynamics of mixed families and co-parenting: “You need to find a way to get along with them because you wouldn’t be dating that person if it weren’t for the person who they broke up with.”
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Jada agreed, recalling how her relationship with Trey Smith laid the foundation for the positive evolution of her relationship with his mother, Sheree.
“One of the coping mechanisms with me with Sheree was really, like, ‘Hey, she gifted me.’ She really did. She gifted me. I started to put that into my psychology. She’s not an enemy. She did me a favor. But then on top of that I had to go into an even deeper psychology of, ‘She’s Trey’s mother,’ as my relationship with Trey deepened.”
“Until that relationship develops and you start to see the importance, and you really have a care for that child, that does become your primary [concern]—I’ve had to go through many different stages of getting to good places,” she said. “It’s a process. It’s very difficult coming into a dynamic like that, and it doesn’t stop.”