Jada Pinkett Smith "lost" herself whilst supporting her husband Will Smith.
The ‘Girls Trip’ star admitted she had "relinquished a lot of her power" to her famous spouse earlier on in their marriage but she soon realised she could be her own person too.
She explained: "We do relinquish a lot of our power to our men that we’ve given our lives to. And at first, I gave it all over. And then I realised, ‘Oh this is not working.’ And you get just a little disappointed because you feel like, ‘I gave it all to you and you took it and you misused it – you stopped listening to me.’"
Speaking on an episode of Red Table Talk, her mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones, added: "She felt like she lost herself in supporting Will and his dreams and his career, and the idea that he had of what their relationship was gonna be."
Meanwhile, Jada previously insisted she doesn’t have a "conventional marriage".
She explained: "I knew that I was not built for conventional marriage. Even the word ‘wife’: it’s a golden cage, swallow the key. Even before I was married, I was like, ‘That’ll kill me.’ And it damn near did! So why wouldn’t you share what you’ve been through, when you see that other people are out there, trying to figure this crap out? We decided to make it public because it’s part of the healing. I feel like if we don’t have real understanding about it, I don’t know if interpersonal relationships are possible."
The 48-year-old actress considers Will to be her "life partner" rather than a husband.
She added: "Will is my life partner and I could not ask for a better one. I adore him, I never want people to think it was Will I didn’t want to marry – he and I were talking about this the other day. But I can assure you that some of the most powerful women in the world feel caged and tied, because of the sacrifices they have to make to be in that position. So I wanted to talk about how we really feel about marriage. How do we really feel about different, unconventional relationships? How do we really feel about raising children? Honestly."