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Mo’Nique Upset At Hollywood’s Double Standards When It Comes To Open Marriages

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 03:01 PST, Jul 30, 2016

Mo’Nique, the Oscar-winning actress best known for her role in Precious as the abusive Mary Lee Johnston, has no qualms about talking candidly about her open marriage. According to Essence, Mo’Nique went on the record to say that it was her idea to have an open marriage with her husband of almost 10 years, Sidney Hicks.

Mo’Nique and Sidney run a podcast entitled “Open Relationship” where they have candidly discuss their marriage and clarified Mo’Nique’s past comments when she made headlines for labeling their marriage as an open one. In the past, her revelation that she and her husband had an open relationship led to speculations that the couple were either swingers or were having marital problems.

In 2006, Mo’Nique stated in an article in Essence magazine that she was in an open relationship. She has now said that back then, people were dumbfounded over the revelation and even her husband Sidney thought it was a bad idea to reveal details of their relationship. Mo’Nique spoke on who had the idea to have an open relationship in the first place and how unfair she finds Hollywood’s double standards about open relationships. Speaking of famous couples who are reportedly in open marriages, such as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, she noted that people seem to have no problem accepting the open status of their relationships because they are all beautiful people.

But when it came to her relationship with her husband, Mo’Nique says that people instantly assumed that she was being taken advantage of by her husband.

“The moment it got to my dam* picture with my husband they said, ‘Oh, we hope Mo’Nique not gon’ let him just use her like that,’ because society looks at me and they see a woman that looks like [she] couldn’t possibly have a man that looks like that.”

She took the opportunity to boldly state that the open marriage was her idea and that just because she’s rich and famous, she has no intention of letting anyone “use her and abuse her.”

“No one knew it wasn’t Sidney’s idea to have an open marriage. It was mine. I want to say that again. It was not Sidney’s idea to have an open marriage; it was mine.”

Eventually, she also revealed that her ego had gotten the best of her. Mo’Nique had initially thought that she would be seeing more people than her husband because she was the more famous one of the two, but she eventually learned the idea of reciprocity in the relationship. Mo’Nique and Sidney both revealed that online comments by people have hurt them and that some of the comments in particular seriously affected Mo’Nique’s self-esteem, especially when some people included God in their arguments.

Despite the comments and other people’s opinions of the relationship, Mo’Nique and Sidney maintain that they are very happy with each other and that no amount of extra-marital partners can change how intense the love is between them. For the past 33 years, Mo’Nique and her husband can safely say that they are the only ones they have truly felt that kind of love for.

The future looks very bright for Mo’Nique as she has recently been signed by ICM Partners, according to Deadline.

In addition, Mo’Nique and her husband have become the executive producers of a new drama film Interwoven, which deals with hard-hitting themes including homosexuality, depression, race issues, abuse, and alcoholism, according to News Fix.

Watch the trailer for the new movie here.

Mo’Nique has proven herself as a veteran stand-up comic and an accomplished actress through her Oscar win and for having toured with the Original Queens of Comedy.

[Photo by Dan Steinberg/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images]

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