When I woke up this morning, I did not to expect to spend 20 minutes in bed watching a nuanced and enlightening conversation on Facebook in which Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield Norris (Jada’s mom/Willow’s grandma) casually chatted about queerness, polyamory, and their experiences with it — but here we are! 2019! What a time! In the most recent Red Table Talk, called “Unconventional Relationships: Can Multiple Partners Work?,” the three women opened up to each other about the challenges and rewards of longterm relationships, the difference between emotional and sexual connections in their own lives, and their ideal partnership situations in the future.
Willow told her family:
I love men and women equally and so I would definitely want one man, one woman. I feel like I could be polyfidelitous with those two people. I’m not the kind of person who is constantly looking for new sexual experiences. I focus a lot on the emotional connection and I feel like if I were to find two people of the different genders that I really connected with and we had a romantic and sexual connection, I don’t feel like I would feel the need to try to go find more… I really couldn’t see myself in a quadruple, I mean anything can happen, but personally, male and female, that’s all I need.
As for Jada, she feels “hell yeah” that she could be in a romantic but not sexual throuple (and thinks like that actually defines her relationship with her and Will Smith and his ex-wife): “I’ve had a non-sexual throuple for years with Sheree [Fletcher]. When you have your husband that is taking care of another woman, that is spending time with another woman, it’s the same thing.” She also had a threesome in her 20s, but she wasn’t super into it because it was just about the sex.
The whole conversation is so chill and supportive, and it kicks off with Jada and her mom quoting Outkast at each other about monogamy. (Forever? Forever ever?) It’s the nicest way I’ve spent a half hour on social media in a very long time.
“but here we are! 2019! What a time!”
Indeed!! I can’t imagine sitting down talking to my parents and grandma about this topic and having it be chill and lovely. Looking forward to watching this.
#20biteen keeps delivering! This was such an awesome conversation. My crush on Jada Pinkett Smith just keeps on growing, shes an amazing human!
This was so heartwarming! I will definitely be keeping it bookmarked for if/when I’m ever in a position where I need to bring up non-monogamy with my friends and family.
It’s a conversation that I’ve debated about having with my parents, but so far have not. I’m glad there are resources like this out there.
I loved this. Jada Pinkett Smith is a babe.
Being bisexual and poly myself, at this point in my life I have spent a lot of time around (and been in relationships with) non-monogamous people of all sorts, but I’ve yet to meet anyone/couple who refers to themselves as ‘swingers’. I’m sure maybe some people exist who still say they ‘swing’ but part of me has a poor knee-jerk reaction to that idea. Like it’s a very dated term for neighborhood sex perverts or something? It also denotes a fairly specific style of non-monogamy that implies ‘partner trading’, which is something I’ve never encountered. Or maybe it’s a straight people thing which is why I have never met them 😂
It’s deffo largely a straight person thing ( in the UK anyway!) and most people who use the term are 50plus ( it’s a hangover from the 70’s for sure)
Hopefully all this will make Will Smith rethink his previously homophobic comments!