Jennifer Aniston Was Lonely and Confused After Brad Pitt’s Affair With Angelina Jolie

Jennifer Aniston recalls feeling lonely, confused, and vulnerable after Brad Pitt’s affair with Angelina Jolie led to their high-profile divorce.

Jennifer Aniston’s world came crumbling down years ago, when Brad Pitt’s reported affair with Angelina Jolie while they were still married drove a wedge between them, eventually leading to their divorce after five years of marriage.

The talk of the town, as the tabloids exploded about the messy love triangle drama she was involved in, Aniston revealed in an interview soon after how lonely and confused she was with the turn of events.

Talking to Vanity Fair in an interview titled The Unsinkable Jennifer Aniston, she cried multiple times while talking about it and revealed,

Am I lonely? Yes.

Am I upset? Yes.

Am I confused? Yes.

Do I have my days when I’ve thrown a little pity party for myself? Absolutely.

And yet, she also maintained alternatively that she was “doing really well” following the former couple’s split.

Notably enough, Jennifer Aniston began dating Pitt in 1998 before tying the knot with him two years later, in 2000.

Unfortunately, seven years after their love started blooming, the pair ended up parting ways in 2005, until which time Pitt and Jolie kept on denying romance rumors.

Jennifer Anistonʼs First Interview After the Brad Pitt Drama Was “Jarring”

Jennifer Aniston on The Morning Show. | Credit: Apple TV+.

Twenty years after that 2005 interview with Vanity Fair, Aniston mused that she hadn’t looked back at that interview “in forever” but still remembered just how much of a “kind of jarring” experience it was for her to do that interview in the first place – especially since she was still reeling from the trauma and loss of that entire thing.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, reflecting on the same, she said,

I haven’t looked at that article in forever.

I just remember the experience of doing it—which was kind of jarring.

It was also such a vulnerable time.

But yeah, that was one for the memoirs.

Continuing, she admitted that, during that interview, she couldn’t really contain her emotions, still reeling from heartache and public betrayal.

Her words:

I didn’t have a strong enough constitution to not get affected by it.

We’re human beings, even though some people don’t want to believe we are.

They think, ‘You signed up for it, so you take it.’ But we really didn’t sign up for that.

A decade after her first divorce, Aniston found love again with her Wanderlust co-star Justin Theroux, though this doomed union couldn’t last for too long, either.

After marrying in 2015, the two ended up with a divorce in 2018.

Pitt, meanwhile, went on to marry Jolie in 2014 after years of dating, though their marriage came to an end in 2016 as well, with their legal divorce battle stretching on for more than just a few years to come, finalizing in 2024.

Jennifer Aniston Called the Media Frenzy Around the Love Triangle “A Shame”

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. | Credit: 20th Century Studios.

Of course, being involved in a love triangle that ruined her marriage and pulled the rug from underneath Jennifer Aniston’s feet so abruptly had “Poor Jen” narratives making their way to the tabloids for years to come.

But to move on from that sticky situation herself, as her ex moved on so publicly, the FRIENDS alum repeated a mantra to herself.

As she shared in her Vanity Fair interview,

Just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and keep on walking, girl.

She then addressed the tabloids and new headlines that kept on making their way to her after the public breakup, saying,

It was such juicy reading for people.

If they didn’t have their soap operas, they had their tabloids.

[Of the media frenzy, Aniston said,] It’s a shame that it had to happen, but it happened.

And boy, did I take it personally.

Well, at least she got to swap stories with her ex-husband’s former fiancée, Gwyneth Paltrow, about their time with the heartthrob, over the years (as she admitted to Vanity Fair), so that’s that too!