Emmitt Smith’s Wife Says ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Almost Ended Their Marriage [VIDEO]

Emmitt Smith and wife Patricia Smith

Pat Smith, the wife of former NFL’er Emmitt Smith is opening up about some of the struggles she experienced in her personal life. Discussing her new book, Second Chances: Finding Healing for Your Pain, Regaining Your Strength, Celebrating Your new Life, on Tuesday’s episode of Dr. Phil, she explains:

I’ve had a pretty successful life, but my life really has become challenging, dealing with a lot of losses and major disappointments.

Pat, who experienced emotional and verbal abuse during her life, recalls moving to LA in 1994 to pursue her dreams. However, it didn’t pan out the way she expected:

Immediately when I got here, I just got hit with rejection after rejection. I was always almost there but not good enough. And then I felt like I was a total failure, even in my personal life.

Martin Lawrence

She married comedian Martin Lawrence, but the marriage didn’t last.

We were both really young, volatile with one another. We just could not figure out how to make it work. I had nothing. I was ashamed, embarrassed. I was a mess.

Emmitt Smith

After divorcing, she says she took a break to focus on herself, but on a girlfriend getaway to Aruba, met Emmitt.

After my very disappointing divorce from Martin Lawrence, I met Emmitt Smith. He was just a really kind, gracious guy. I always say when I met him, it just seemed like he had this light around him.

Smith says her relationship with the Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer was going well, until he told her he had gotten his ex-girlfriend pregnant.

I was devastated. My self-esteem and self-worth had already taken major hits over the years. This just deepened the pain.

They later got through the situation and married in 2000.

Life was awesome, but as years went on, I found myself starting to lose Pat.

Of dealing with Emmitt joining Dancing With the Stars and his dance partner Cheryl Burke, she says,

I’m dealing with trust issues, self-worth. You’re dancing with this cute little 20-something-year-old. As much success as he had on the show, I really was happy for him, but I was getting more and more angry and more and more resentful because I was not fulfilling my own dreams. It caused friction.

She adds,

For years, I lived with this thought of feeling like a failure. I felt so much shame because of decisions that I made in my life, really bad decisions that I made, mistakes that I made, a lot of losses. And so, I finally got to a place and realized that things happen in life for a reason – good and bad – and I learned that the things that happened for me that were bad in my eyes, actually were the things that God was using to build me to be the woman that he really wanted me to be.

See the clip.

[Huffington Post]

Follow us: @theJasmineBRAND on Twitter | theJasmineBRAND on Facebook| theJasmineBRAND_ on Instagram