And yes, even the occasional dustup. “We do fight,” admits Aniston, a self-confessed “conflict avoider.” Then she clarifies, “Well, we have discussions. I am not a fan of fighting when it is screaming. I like accomplishing something. But I don’t trust a couple that says they don’t fight.” Nevertheless, she remains in awe of what she refers to as her husband’s general kindness. “He’ll hate me for saying that,” she chuckles, “but when you grow up in a family where people are not always very kind to each other, you realize how important that is.”
Asked how it feels to have found the love of her life, Aniston offers a rather cryptic answer: “Is he the love of my life? I think you’re always sort of wondering, ‘Are you the love of my life?’ I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never been someone who says, ‘He’s the love of my life.’ He’s certainly a big love in my life.” She pauses. “And I know that we have something special, especially in all this chaos. In this nutty, brilliant, wonderful, hard business that we have, it’s nice to have somebody who’s anchored and knows you, really knows all of you.”
That sort of unconditional acceptance, Aniston adds, seems gradually to be helping her to come to terms with herself as well. “If there’s one thing I’m proud of, it’s that I’ve finally gotten over not liking myself,” she says. “It’s took me 10 years to really notice, Wow, you’re not really nice to yourself, are you? You really don’t like yourself very much. And then it took a long time to get to the point where I do like myself, but I actually do now. I’m a pretty happy person these days.” She smiles that sad, beautiful smile. “I think too much, but otherwise, I’m happy.”
