Ashley Jones and Bariki Smith’s honeymoon phase wasn’t exactly what they expected. It wasn’t smooth sailing for the Teen Mom 2 couple after tying the knot privately, and Season 11 kicked off with Jones and Smith between a rock and a hard place as the newlyweds dealt with Smith’s legal issues and lack of motivation. Jones opened up to PopCulture.com about working through those problems in her marriage ahead of Tuesday’s premieres, revealing that she and her husband were determined to “work straight through” all their struggles.
“I think that just like having a kid, getting married sounds wonderful. It sounds amazing. It sounds theoretically like a beautiful life,” the MTV star said, “but in practice, it’s a lot of work and there’s a lot of conversations that you don’t even think you need to have and then all of a sudden they become very important, very heavy conversations.”
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Joking that she and Smith “never do anything the right way,” having daughter Holly before their families even met, Jones said that she and her high school sweetheart are “really trying to not do any runaround in this marriage,” explaining, “We really want to work straight through it, and so I think we do that this season.”
The “biggest issue” Jones was dealing with before working through things in Teen Mom: Family Reunion was feeling unheard or misunderstood by Smith. The takeaway lesson from Coach B, however, was “that you have to talk to people in the language that they can digest,” which means learning the language of the people you love. “We’re not speaking the same language, and a lot of things would get lost in translation,” the reality personality revealed.
Going ahead on their “crazy journey” together, Jones said she and Smith have “moved on” from that difficult time in their life. “I think the reality of it is that there are some things maybe I could have handled better, or should have handled better, or shouldn’t have handled it all, but isn’t that the reality for everybody?” she asked. Teen Mom 2 airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.
