Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman Once Disagreed on Monogamy in a Marriage

Tom Cruise was once in a high-profile relationship with Nicole Kidman from the year 1990 to 2001. But not too long before their split, the couple shared two conflicting views about their relationship that showed they weren’t on the same page.

There hasn’t been any specific reason given for Kidman’s divorce from Cruise. When the pair officially split in 2001, they simply cited irreconcilable differences as the cause. But a couple of years before their divorce, the two shared vastly different takes on marriage, giving insight into their true feelings back then. In an old interview with Newsweek (via Today), Kidman shared that she thought it was unnatural to stick with one marital partner.

“Monogamy is not a natural way of being,” Kidman said.

But it was a concept that Cruise couldn’t have disagreed with more.

“I believe in monogamy. I want and I love relationships. I believe in the family unit. It is important, the family unit. Look at where the family unit has gone. It’s disintegrated,” he said.

This also played a part in why Cruise was distrustful about psychiatry and seeking counseling for troubled relationships. He felt traditional therapists only helped foster the idea of polygamy. Back then, Cruise would turn to Scientology to help whatever martial challenges he and his wife were experiencing.

“Look, psychiatry doesn’t work,” Cruise said. “When you talk about psychiatry, when you look at it…“

“Look, you talk about marriage counseling. They say, ‘Hey, promiscuity is a part of marriage. It’s okay.’ You have this whole thing going out there,” Cruise said. “There is marriage counseling in Scientology that we apply that actually helps to put people back in communication with one another.”

But it seems Kidman’s views on marriage have changed over the years. After her divorce from Cruise, Kidman dated country music star Keith Urban in 2005. A year later, Urban and Kidman would marry, and have remained married to this day.

Kidman believed that her age at the time played a part in her divorce from Cruise. Kidman was 23-years-old at the time, and Cruise was 28. But she felt she didn’t have enough life experience back then to make that kind of commitment.

“I was reeling with Tom. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for him…I was so impulsive and naive,” Kidman once told DuJour.

She also gave insight into what it was like recovering from the divorce, a process that didn’t happen overnight.

“I thought our life together was perfect,” Kidman added. “It took me a very long time to heal. It was a shock to my system.”

Although Kidman’s personal life reached a low point after splitting from Cruise, her career was only improving. Kidman saw acting as a way to escape real-life problems in a healthy way.

“I was running from my life at that time, I wasn’t able to handle the reality of it and as an actor you have this wonderful thing where you can go and get lost in somebody else’s life,” Kidman once told Daily Mail.