Tom Hanks married his first wife, Samantha Lewes, the mother of his two oldest kids, after their son Colin was born.
Many people advise that marriage is not something we should embark on hastily. It's important to find the right reason for getting married because the wrong one causes unnecessary heartache. Some people confuse friendship or attraction with love. They may have other reasons too, like not wanting to be alone and having someone to fill the void. While that is one of the primary reasons why people marry, companionship without love may not be enough.
Actor Tom Hanks, 64, has been married to Rita Wilson for 32 years now and is a father to four kids. Before that, he was married to Samantha Lewes, and as he admitted, he married her for the wrong reasons. Hanks struggled with loneliness in his early years after living a nomadic life. His father was a chef and they moved around a lot, living in 10 houses in five years, as per INews. His parents divorced when the actor was only five.
Understanding his emotional requirements helped him be a better artist and explore his interests, he said. "This was the ‘wow’ moment of my life going from kid trying to figure out what’s interesting in this life to young man yearning to be an artist. I started asking myself…how do I find the vocabulary for what’s rattling around in my head. Not long after I started going to the American Conservatory Theatre by myself to see plays I had no idea even existed," he said.
He continued to be affected by the "loneliness" that started early in his life. The Cast Away actor also revealed that his first marriage, which took place when he was 21, had been to "quell the loneliness."
"Having a kid at 21 was the greatest thing that ever happened to me because I didn’t smoke pot. I didn’t do drugs, I was not a party boy. I didn't drink too much, I went to bed at 10 minutes after 10 p.m," he told BBC. He became a dad to Colin and Elizabeth from his first marriage, and by the age of 27, he met Wilson. For him, Wilson is the person who understands him best. "I don’t think I’ll ever be lonely any more, that’s how I felt when I met my wife," he said.
After his divorce from Lewes, the Forrest Gump actor feared that his kids would think he was "abandoning" them. "I felt like I was a complete, abject, total failure and everything I thought was working was actually not working. It's a place that everybody comes to in their life for one reason or another," he said while speaking on In Depth with Graham Bensinger podcast, as per Honey9.
He started seeing a therapist at the time to understand what he did wrong. "I'd go off and talk to somebody and say, 'What... What have I done wrong?' And they would say, 'Well, what do you think you've done wrong?' 'Why am I so unhappy?' 'Well, tell me about your unhappiness.' And you work through that till you figure out that, you know, number one, you have been an idiot, but number two, you're no longer an idiot," he said.
Looking back, he realizes that he could have been a better father. "I start thinking about mistakes I made with my own kids and not explaining things or not being there for them. Or being so preoccupied with other things that are going on in our adult world," he told the New York Times.
After the divorce in 1987, the Saving Private Ryan actor realized that his children might have the same experience as him when he was a child. "A broken marriage meant I was sentencing my own kids to the sort of feelings I had at their age. I was just too young and insecure for marriage. I was 23 and my son Colin was already 2 when I married for the first time. I was not really ready to take on those responsibilities," he said.
However, when parents are unhappy, children pick up on that. With him finding love again and being in a stable and happy relationship thereon, his kids probably saw that part of him as their role model.
References:
https://inews.co.uk/news/entertainment/tom-hanks-reveals-struggle-loneliness-young-man-6024
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079m78n
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/movies/tom-hanks-mister-rogers.html
