Tina Knowles is opening up about just how difficult her first marriage was, revealing why she stayed so long and what made her finally get the courage to leave.
Source: Jim Smeal
In her new memoir, Matriarch, Knowles opens up about her first marriage to Mathew Knowles, with whom she shares daughters Beyoncé, 43, and Solange, 38. The former couple tied in 1980, and even though they were together for decades, serious problems appeared in their relationship very early on.
“There were already problems in our marriage that first year,” Knowles admits in the pages of her book, admitting Mathew had a continuous cheating problem. “But the suspicions I had would get washed away by the fact that our love was stronger than a misstep…It was us against the world, taking on what life brought us.”
Tina went on to explain that she reached a breaking point once when she was pregnant with Solange.
“The marriage was deteriorating faster than I could possibly find ways or even reasons to make it work — even with the pregnancy,” she writes. “I had gotten used to these extremes — incredibly joyous half the time as we shared life’s adventure, then being disgusted and heartsick over how brazen his cheating could get.”
“I was caught in this dance with him, each doing the same steps over and over: He would cheat or act up, and I would say I’d had enough,” Knowles wrote. “He would beg for forgiveness, crying and promising to get better… But this is what married people did, I told myself.”
But, in 2009, news came to light that absolutely gutted her. Knowles learned through the press that her husband had fathered a child outside of their marriage during an 18-month affair, which ended up being her real breaking point. When Mathew tried to talk to her later that day, Tina said, “I screamed, ‘Get out! Get out!’ like he was some demon. ‘I hate you!’ … my world had exploded.”
After 31 years of marriage, Tina divorced Mathew in 2011.
“I was deeply sad, not about him but about the marriage,” she writes. “I felt like I failed. I failed us, my kids — myself.”
The entrepreneur went on to marry actor Richard Lawson in 2015, but they called it quits in 2023.
“It’s been a rollercoaster,” she says of her life thus far. “My journey has been filled with, Oh God, so many obstacles, so many hardships, but it’s also been filled with tremendous amounts of joy…It’s been an amazing ride. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”
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