This article is in partnership with Netflix.
Knowing what you will and will not tolerate in a relationship is essential to securing your sanity. And although this is big facts, Stephen Bishop, the star of Netflix's hit psychological thriller, Fatal Affair begs to differ. In the film, the 49-year-old retired baseball player turned actor portrays Marcus Warren, husband to Nia Long's unfaithful protaganist, Ellie Warren.
BETH DUBBER/NETFLIX
However, just like with Ellie, Marcus and David (Omar Epps) in the film, Stephen says when it comes to being in a committed relationship, the concept of deal-breakers is not that simple.
In an exclusive interview for xoNecole's recurring Instagram Live series, xoMan Live, Stephen opened up about how being in a six-year relationship with the mother of his two children has changed his perspective (or lack thereof) on deal-breakers in relationships, and according to him, everything changes when kids are involved:
Stephen Bishop Talks Relationship Deal Breakers & Obsessionwww.youtube.com
"I don't even really think about that kind of stuff. I guess you would say cheating, but let's say somebody...I'm in a six-year relationship now and something happened like David and Ellie [in the film], I'm not gonna immediately say, 'That's it, I'm out!' We got a lot invested here, so it might be something worth trying to salvage."
Stephen, who shares two children with his long-time girlfriend Jesiree Dizon, explained that although in the early stages, it's important to look out for red flags, when you've invested enough time and energy into a relationship, it's important to nurture the bond you've created, even in times of anger or disappointment.
"I can't really imagine a deal-breaker, one-time thing right now. Like I said, it's so much invested, I would want to be with my daughter. I want to be in these children's lives, I want to be with my son, and I want to be there. You put up with a lot of things that, if you were single or didn't have children that you might not, but those aren't deal-breakers. Those are adult things that you have to be mature enough to work by or work out and get on with it."
While tolerance is a much-needed trait when it comes to building a life with someone, tolerating a toxic relationship is never OK. In the interview, Stephen suggested that relationships don't just spoil suddenly, they expire over time, and like most things with an expiration date, are impossible to salvage.
"There's just so much you invested, it would take more of an evolution of the relationship to go bad. It would have to be a bad evolution for me to really say, 'OK, this is it.'"
To watch Stephen's full interview, click here!
Fatal Affair is now streaming on Netflix.
Featured image by BETH DUBBER/NETFLIX.
Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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