The End of Marriage as They Knew It

Throughout the book from the time Smith enters the narrative, Pinkett Smith describes a mutual failure to dig beneath the surface and really work through their differences, the couple communicating more respectfully than productively.

They put off difficult conversations, she writes, and she admittedly made the mistake of thinking he should be able to read her mind. “He should already know,” she recalls thinking.

And by 2016, with their kids, including her stepson Trey, forging their own paths, it became more obvious she and Smith “had pictures in our mind of what a happily married couple was,” she writes. “And our pictures didn’t match.”

Pinkett Smith shares that she did consider divorce, but ultimately never even met with a lawyer. Any lawyer, despite rumors that she did, she added.

Their solution, she writes, was to “separate in every way except legally.”