Why Jennifer Aniston Blamed Herself When Brad Pitt Traded Her For Angelina Jolie

In a tell-all interview years after his divorce from Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston admitted that there had already been problems in their marriage before Angelina Jolie came into the picture. Despite how Pitt handled their split, however, Aniston said that she blamed herself for how their marriage ended.

Aniston admitted that she was hurt to see Pitt move on so quickly with Jolie just months after their split. She said that while they were already going through a rough patch when Pitt met Jolie on the set of “Mr. And Mrs. Smith,” she was confident that they would still be able to work through their marital issues together. Apparently, that didn’t happen. Shortly after the filming for “Mr. And Mrs. Smith” ended, Pitt initiated a divorce, telling Aniston that he wanted to “figure out himself as a single man.”

According to Aniston, even without Jolie in the picture, Pitt would have still left her. While she didn’t fully comprehend what went wrong between her and Pitt, she’s convinced that she’s partly to be blamed when her husband traded her for Jolie. She said that her willingness to give over so much of herself played a huge part in the fallout of their marriage.

“It was that thing about being a nurturer; I love taking care of people, and I definitely put his needs before mine sometimes,” Aniston said. “It’s such an insidious thing, you don’t really see where it started — and where you ended. There’s no one to blame but yourself.”

She also revealed that she and Pitt failed to maintain intimacy during the final months of their marriage because of their busy work schedules. Pitt started to grow distant from her when she started to work on the final season of “Friends,” which Pitt was reportedly against. According to Aniston, they just reached a point where they started to stop growing together as a couple and their emotional intimacy just fizzled out.

“It’s just complicated,” Aniston said. “Relationships are complicated. You’re two people continually evolving, and there will be times when those changes clash. There are all these levels of growth — and when you stop growing together, that’s when the problems happen,” she added.