If Brad Pitt had not left his marriage to Jennifer Aniston and reunited with Angelina Jolie in 2005, the couple would have marked their 20th wedding anniversary this month.
Instead, Jen was left with a broken heart and her judgment only diminished when Brad and Ange conceived daughter Shiloh, now 14, before the ink even dried on the divorce papers.
Rumors that Brad, 56, and Jennifer, 51, are now back together are swirling, though both deny it.
But at the SAG Awards earlier this year, they made it clear that the past is a thing of the past, packing on the PDA on the red carpet and stroking over each other.
And according to pals, their renewed closeness came after they ‘realized what’s important in life’ and learned to ‘trust each other’.
(Image: Getty Images for Turner)
Their path to recovery is said to have begun when Brad reached out to Jen after his 2016 divorce from Angelina and after report ‘apologized’ for his part in the split.
“Brad is in a different place than he was when they were together. Brad is really an introspective man who has worked hard on himself,” an insider told Entertainment Tonight.
“He apologized to her for many things he felt were his problems in their relationship. He really takes ownership for his mistakes and that has changed their relationship with each other today. They have both gone on.
“Right now they just love and love each other and they’ve been much closer friends since their divorce. Brad has grown so big in his life since he and Jen broke up.”
(Image: Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Despite Brad’s good intentions, his words were apparently not easy for Jen to hear given everything she was going through.
After all, in 2005, when a Vanity Fair interviewer asked her about Angelina’s then-rumored pregnancy, she cried for a few minutes in silence and could not answer.
“I have to think there’s some reason I’ve mentioned this in my life,” she said of her divorce. “I have to believe that – otherwise it’s just cruel.”
She also shared her grief over a W magazine shoot Brad and Angelina, 44, did the title Domestic Bliss, which showed her as husband and wife surrounded by an army of mini-Brads, months after his split.
“Is it early timing? Yes. But it’s not my life,” she said at the time. “He’s making his choices. He can do – whatever. We’re divorced, and you can see why.
(Image: REUTERS)
“Brad is not mean; he would never deliberately try to rub anything in my face. But I know Brad. Brad would say, ‘That’s art!’ … A sensitivity chip is missing. “
Brad also took the rare step of issuing a public statement in 2011 after revealing his marriage to Jen marked ‘boring’ in an interview with Parade magazine.
“I spent the ’90s trying to hide, trying to dive the whole cacophony of celebrity,” he said.
“I started to get sick of myself sitting on a bench, holding a joint, hiding. It started to get pathetic. It became very clear to me that I was aiming to try a movie about an interesting life, but I was not.” t live an interesting life yourself.
“I think my marriage had something to do with it. Trying to pretend that marriage was something it was not.”
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He later prosecuted him, apologizing that he was to blame for his own boredom and he greeted his ex ‘an incredibly giving, loving and hilarious woman’.
He explained: “The point I’m trying to make is not that Jen was dull, but that I became dull myself – and that, I’m responsible for.
So when the 12 Monkeys actor reportedly met with Jen to apologize for everything that went on before, a source in InTouch magazine told that it brought back a lot of old pain.
‘Jen was overcome with emotion. “All the hurt feelings and resentment that she had suppressed for years came flooding to the surface, and she broke down in tears,” the insider claimed.
“He apologized to Jen for being an absent man. He also made amends for leaving her Angelina, ‘the source added.
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