Sometimes in life, you find yourself in a spot that you didn’t expect to be in. For example, you’re at a wedding party and you meet someone you’ve always known you were meant to be with. You make plans for a future together and end up getting engaged. It’s then that you realize there’s more than one kind of happiness. You’ve found your soul mate, and they happen to be the person you were already meant to be with all along.
For actor Robert Pattinson, his whirlwind romance with Twilight actress Kristen Stewart was just such a moment. After nearly a decade of starring in dramas, he finally found the love of his life and proposed on Valentine’s Day in 2016. The couple’s engagement was the stuff of Hollywood stars’ dreams, and their wedding in December was attended by A-list guests including Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and more. Although the marriage didn’t last, it was an incredibly happy ending for both parties involved. A few months after getting engaged, they announced that they were working together on new projects, and in early 2018, Stewart gave birth to their son, River.
But as good as their romance was, it wasn’t without its challenges. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Stewart opened up about some of the pressures that came with being Robert Pattinson’s wife. “I definitely think a lot about what people think about me and my husband,” she said. “People are curious. They want to know what kind of wedding it’s going to be like. Are we going to get along? Are we going to fight? What’s going to happen?” It’s a fair question; after all, they are, in fact, getting married. But it’s also one that she’s asked herself many times.
From the early days of their relationship, when she was still filming Twilight, to the present day, Stewart has been open about their issues. In fact, in 2015, she even wrote a book about their relationship experiences called Letters to Twilight. And although she’s always been vocal about the trials and tribulations of being in a celebrity relationship, she’s never been more frank than she was in her March 2019 Facebook post. Let’s take a look.
The Early Days
In an early interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Stewart said that the early days of their relationship were “really hard.” While she knew that Rob was “the one,” she was still navigating the professional and personal pressures of being a famous woman in a very public partnership. Though she was only 24 years old, she had already accomplished so much. Being the daughter of actors Carol King and Tony Randall and the sister of actress Elke, she had already established herself as an actress in numerous television shows and films. But as she told Harper’s Bazaar, “I was petrified of making a mistake.”
While Stewart was confident enough in her own talent to feel comfortable being in a senior role opposite Robert Pattinson in the drama Clouds of Sils Maria, she was also aware of the immense pressure that came with the part. “I wasn’t sure how he would react to a 24-year-old woman,” she said. “I was always worried about screwing up.”
But even as she started to feel more comfortable in her own skin and started to believe in her own talent, Stewart was still dealing with the pressures of being in a celebrity couple. While she was used to people being curious about her personal life, she said that she had never been interviewed about her relationships before. And it was certainly a whirlwind romance that captured the imagination of audiences. After meeting on the set of Clouds of Sils Maria, which they both starred in, Stewart and Robert Pattinson decided to take a break from working and began exploring the London nightlife. They also began working on Stewart’s directorial debut, Tilda Swinton, which they both starred in, and began making plans for a future together.
Rough Patch
Things soon began to go wrong. In an interview with Vogue, Stewart described an episode in which she went to a dinner party with Robert Pattinson and his family. During the meal, he began acting “weird,” and she started feeling anxious. She then remembered a conversation she’d had with a friend about how men can be “manipulative,” and how she didn’t want to put up with that. So she left the dinner party and went home. But as she told Vogue, she wasn’t ready to give up on the relationship. Luckily, she didn’t have to. Soon after, she received a phone call from Rob’s mother, Lois, who invited her over for lunch the next day. During the meal, Lois began to express her concerns about Stewart’s past relationships, and Stewart assured her that she was now ready to commit to Robert. Lois then gave her a bag filled with all of Robert’s mother’s famous canning recipes, and the two have been inseparable ever since.
Despite their problems, which stemmed from both sides, Stewart and Rob still loved each other and were committed to working things out. But as she told Entertainment Tonight, the challenge of being in a celebrity relationship is that “you don’t really feel like you can just be yourself.” This can sometimes lead to clashes between the couple. “I think there was a period where we were arguing a lot,” she said. “I was really unhappy, and I think he was too.”
In one of their fights, which occurred in a bar, Stewart accused Rob of not loving her and not wanting to commit to their relationship. She then stormed off and went to the apartment they were sharing. As she wrote in her letters to Twilight, “I had to break down and admit to myself that I wasn’t feeling the same way about him as he was about me.” After a few tense hours, the two decided to take a break and went for a walk. As Stewart told Entertainment Tonight, “I think that we both realized that we had to step back and re-evaluate things.” They then decided to take a trip to Italy together and began working on their relationship. But as she wrote in her book, they both realized that they needed “space” to figure things out. So they came back from Italy and took a vacation in the French Riviera. This was all well and good, but as Rob told Entertainment Tonight, “We were both still figuring out what this was all about.”
Learning To Love Yourself
Although they had finally decided to work things out, Stewart’s road to recovery was still a long one. In her book, Stewart described how she had to learn to love herself first. She wrote that she felt “worthless” and wanted to “hide” from the world because she didn’t feel that she could give anyone else the love that she felt for Rob. But, she said, she had to learn to let go of the “bad feelings” that she had about herself. Then, once she was able to love herself, she could start to feel love for others.
It was during this time that Stewart began to feel “secure enough” to tell the truth about how she was feeling. In an interview with Vogue, she said that it wasn’t until she started learning to love herself that she began to feel comfortable being honest with Rob. “I was always hiding things from him,” she said. “Even though we were together, it was still really hard to be yourself.”
The Wedding Plans
As for the wedding plans, Stewart said that she didn’t want to “overshare” on social media. But she did confirm that she and Rob were planning to get married in London in December and go on an “early honeymoon” to Italy. In an interview with Hello! Magazine, Stewart said that she and Rob had been “thinking about this for a while” and that the proposal was “such a romantic gesture” that it “touched everyone.” And what’s more is that she wanted to “keep the surprise” and didn’t want to “joke around” about getting married. According to People, the proposal occurred in an “amazing” setting that was “perfect” for two people who wanted to keep their engagement a secret. The couple chose Cipriani, an Italian restaurant in London, for the proposal because, as Stewart wrote in her book, “it would be romantic to pop the question there.” And, sure enough, on February 14, 2016, they had their engagement photo-op at the top of the London Bridge. With one of the city’s famous landmarks as a backdrop and the Thames River in the distance, the photo taken by Katie Floyd was truly romantic.