by Bailey Thomas, Cynthia,Thomas, Peter,Short, Rochelle,Saunders, Keith
Our spiritual leader, Pastor Gregory Pollard, has helped us work through a lot of our disputes. He is in our age group and has been married to the same woman for eighteen years. As a pastor, he most definitely knows about conflict resolution. He brings a spiritual element to helping us resolve disputes that a therapist probably couldn’t. I don’t want anybody telling me anything about myself who doesn’t know me. Pastor Pollard knows us and has been in our lives for the last six years.
He is always fair to both sides, and he reaches us in a way that neither feels judged. His swagger and fatherly wisdom make it easy for us to talk about what’s really going on in our home. It’s comforting to have a man of God say to us, “Okay, here is the biblical way to work through what’s happening in your marriage, but you have to do the work to fix it.”
My mind is always on how we can repair the tears in our love. If we could do it all over again, I would make sure we did the 12-step counseling thing before saying, “I do.” God knows, it would probably be more for me, than us. I wasn’t very upfront with Cynthia in the beginning. I took it upon myself to cover up and fix things. I left her in the dark more times than I can count. I didn’t handle things fairly; the right thing would have been to put it all on the table and let it do what it do.
I had more of a Captain Save ’Em mentality, when I should have been sitting my wife down and telling her, “Look, baby, here’s the situation…I’m not quite sure how I’m going to fix it, but I just want you to be in the loop and maybe we can figure the shit out together.” It’s not an excuse, but part of me knew it didn’t take much to put Cynthia in a panic. I thought keeping her in the dark would help me avoid the pressure of her feeling stressed, but all it really ever did was made a bad situation worse.
Cynthia’s Standby
I’m only a celebrity in the eyes of our viewers. On the inside, I’m just Cynthia – Peter’s wife, Noelle’s mom. Unfortunately, people are mainly interested in what’s on the outside. They’re excited to meet and have a Canon moment with the Housewives’ Cynthia. They want to hear the complete rundown on how I just got off the phone with NeNe, Peter’s in Jamaica doing his coffee gig and Noelle is preparing for her first year in high school. It’s amusing that the exchanges and questions are pretty similar to what I would get if I bumped into an old friend I grew up with. It’s an interesting and surreal dynamic.
With a faithful allegiance, viewers connect to us on so many levels. If I say blue eye shadow is hideous, women will get up in arms and stop wearing it. It only took one or two incidents for me to learn I needed to always be aware of the power of my words. Like the time I was cast for a swimsuit show during Miami Fashion Week. I was filming the day I received the call telling me I had been booked.
After hanging up the phone, I turned to Malorie and jokingly said, “Well, I gotta get this body swimsuit-ready. Guess I’ll go throw up my breakfast.” Every bulimic support organization in North America sent me letters, emails and tweets about the comment. The outrage blindsided me. People didn’t always seem to get my humor. They took things as literal statements that I merely intended as fun. It made me cognizant of making even innocent jokes. I would get so tickled filtering through all the groups I had to be careful not to offend: PETA, vegetarians, tree huggers, asphalt kissers, cornflake lovers and God knows who else. Geez!
I am dissected in every possible measure – from the words that leave my mouth, to my outfit choices and especially my hairstyles. One season, I received a letter about my side ponytail being “too messy.” There is also what I call the virtual producer criticisms, where fans tell me who I should be sharing scenes with. They give me feedback like, I’m not hanging with NeNe enough, or I’m hanging with her too much. Worst of all, are the creepy requests for romantic bedroom action between Peter and me. It’s an impossible task to satisfy every fan who watches the show, so I don’t even try.
I can honestly say I had fun shooting Season 5. I put myself out there and owned everything I said and did. I was past the disappointment of feeling hated and misunderstood. In my former career, people liked me simply because I was a decent person. My television job was the contrary, with people hating or loving me based on a three-minute scene. I never saw how three minutes could possibly give people enough insight to feel either away.
What I now know for sure is that I’m stronger than I ever thought possible. I have never believed in coincidences, and I know fate had everything to do with the path I chose. I was supposed to move to Atlanta, marry Peter Thomas, lose all my money and be on television. It was all part of God’s divine plan for me. I know what I can do, but only He knows how much I can take. When I thought I would break, he took root in me and pushed me past my biggest obstacles, but he never took me out of a situation. It’s like he was saying, “You’re going to stay right there in the darkness, Cynthia, until you find your way to complete wholeness and happiness.”
I have grown to be fearless in that I am not afraid to lose. Most people are settled into who they are or who they think they are. I am not strapped to any perception of preconceived notion about the direction I should be going. I could wake up tomorrow, quit the show and move to India. I am determined to follow my spirit, whether it makes sense to the masses or not. I just do me, and what my heart drives me to do. My new life’s mission is to figure out who I am and resist the temptation of boxing myself in. Every day I’m discovering new strands of life within me, and each sunrise is another chance for me to press toward the mark of a higher calling.
Peter’s Standby
Cynthia once told me that a close friend of mine said she may not get the better end of the deal if she got involved with me. Cynthia didn’t tell me about the conversation until months after it happened. It hurt me that she waited so long to share it. I never confronted the asshole who made the comment, but I held on to the hateration and used it as a weapon to fight off my critics.
I was stupid in thinking our marriage would be a pact between just the two of us and our kids. I didn’t know a lot of other side deals were laced with Cynthia becoming my other half. She has strong relationships with influential friends, and she allows their opinions to offset hers. Life in Atlanta with me meant no more summers in Martha’s Vineyard or weekends in the Hamptons. I represented only a simple life with a mediocre restaurateur (whose time had probably already come and gone).
Her people saw me in a light that I had never viewed myself. I thought I had beaten the odds when I left the streets of Brooklyn to better my life. I thought I was making a difference when I created a music conference to show kids how they could be down with the industry. I thought I had made a new lane for myself when I went to L.A. (having never worked in television) and executive produced a syndicated awards show. I thought my name spoke for itself when I went to London and took over Rush Management, but my achievements still didn’t cut it in her circles. I had stuff to prove to people I didn’t even know. I had never dealt with anything like it, because my friends didn’t have the power to sway my decisions.
Marriage is a union that is for the betterment of the couple and the next generation they create. Even going into holy matrimony madly in love with Cynthia, I knew I wouldn’t wake up every morning liking her. I didn’t take an oath to like her every second of the day. That’s a childish mindset. My commitment before God and our families was to love her solemnly, through thick and thin; ’til death do us part. She knows as long as she wants it, I will always do everything in my power to make us work.
Beyoncé’s “Love on Top” song is one of my favorite lyrical flows of all time; the words resonate. She has one hell of a grip on what real love looks like. Even at her young age, she already has it down to a science. The song made me fall in love with her! If I am ever in the same room with Beyoncé for even five minutes, Jay gon have some serious problems with me.
One day I was driving and the song came on the radio. The words hit me in my chest so strong that
I stopped and texted Cynthia, “You need to put my love on top.” She texted me back, “I will.” I read her response and replied, “You’re whacked!” What the hell? I tell my woman to put my damn love on top and she sends me back a dry ass “I will.” I set it up for her, but she fell right through the cracks. She didn’t get it!
The purest thing on the planet is sweet, true love. When a couple loves like the words Beyoncé wrote, they will go through hell and back to preserve it. Sometimes, I just need to hear Cynthia say, “Peter Thomas will never turn his back on me, and nobody in this world can hold me down like he does.”
Cynthia was at a major turning point her life when she decided to move to Georgia. Twenty years of gracing magazine covers and being the face of countless brands hadn’t made her the star I knew she could be. I didn’t know how big she could become, I just knew the situation would be better. If nothing else, she would be closer to her mom, living in cleaner air and free from a $5,000 monthly lease on an 800-square-foot apartment.
She took the risk and it made me love her even more. A woman is supposed to feel safe with her man, and a man is supposed to provide for his woman. Losing Uptown was a blessing and I didn’t even realize it. I thank God that at the age of forty-nine, I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. I am grateful for all the painful lessons that made me a better, stronger, wiser man. If not for them, I would never have known the DNA and true character of the person I live with, and she wouldn’t know mine.
I wouldn’t change anything about how Cynthia and I came to be. If there had been a different set of circumstances, we probably wouldn’t have ended up with same results. I love my wife, my life, my kids and Noelle (my special number six). What it boils down to is that everything in life can be defined in the context of mathematics. Life is no different than a math problem. If you change one single variable, the outcome will be totally different. Knowing that, I live a life free of regrets.
I can’t change anything that happened yesterday, all I can do is make improvements on the day that follows. One of life’s most beautiful qualities is that we are all given the same number of hours in a day to make a difference. Money, good looks or fame can’t add a second of credit to anyone’s pot. From Bill Gates to Peter Thomas, we all have only twenty-four hours in a day to make it happen. Yeah, Bill is sitting on about seventy billion more bills than me, but even if he wrote a check for every penny he has in the bank, it still wouldn’t buy him a minute more in his day than I have in mine.
Cynthia’s Please Remain Seated
Before Noelle was born, I would pick a country and go there to soul search for a month, without a lover or travel companion. I used it as an annual thirty-day excursion to clear my head. I want Noelle to have the freedom and privilege to live that same life. If she takes nothing else from me, I pray that she possesses my spirit of adventure and inquisitiveness about the world.
She’s very strong and will be a more phenomenal woman than I could ever be. At her age, I didn’t have her sense of awareness or the advanced thought processes she has. It wasn’t ingrained in me that I could be, or do, anything I wanted. I didn’t have that rite of passage until adulthood. At thirteen, when most kids are just starting to gain their independence, Noelle already knows exactly what she wants to do in life. She is focused on being an actress and singer. She would rather do nothing, than something she isn’t passionate about.
She got it honest, because her father is the same way. His hunger to be an actor flows like blood through his veins. Leon has always had a bold confidence about him. Back when we dated, it would blow me away. I asked him on many occasions how he came to be that way. I wanted to know what had led him to believe he was so great. He told me he had been raised to believe such. No one ever challenged whether he could or would become an actor. It was treated as something that was inevitable.
Leon and I used that same blueprint to raise Noelle. Consequently, if something does not hinge on the core of who she is, she becomes disinterested. It is a kind of greatness that she doesn’t even realize is great. It’s such a fundamental strength to have in a child that it has even taught me not to apologize for how I am or change who I am. As aggravating and annoying as it is to raise such an unyielding child, I respect the hell out of her. If I had a third of her gumption at the same age, I would have been out of this world awesome.
It seems like I’ve lived at the fork in the road my whole existence. I have never been content in any set place, because my instinct always told me there was more or something else I should be doing. Some people are alive but they aren’t living. I don’t want to look back on my life and feel like I lived stuck in a box. I want to be free, happy, at peace and in love. I want to look back at the fourth quarter of my life and say, “I did that.”
I know without any question that Peter Thomas loves me, and he knows I completely love him. We have a commonality and a spiritual connection that speaks without using words. If our journey ends, it won’t be over infidelity. It’ll be because we both decided that we’ve gone as far as we were supposed to go together. Our marriage is about loving each other enough to be fully committed, but also letting go if it doesn’t work anymore. We live our lives day to day. It’s hard to predict what’s next for us. I’ve never been one to try and forecast what will happen next month or next year. All I know is that we are supposed to be making this voyage together.
Peter and I still disagree on a lot of things and we don’t wake up every morning singing, “Oh Happy Day.” Since we are still very much individuals, we do not always go about things in a harmonious fashion. I’ve gotten to know every part of him. I have seen his loveable and not so nice places. I’ve seen him up in his balcony and down in the basement. I know him wholly and what I’m working with. Understating his heart allows me to genuinely love him for who he is.
When our run on the show is done, I want to take some time off and intensely focus on us. The utopia afterlife would be Peter and I settling into marital happiness, me being able to enjoy the remainder of Noelle’s teenage years and continuing to change lives through my work at The Bailey Agency. I can’t wait to have unscheduled, unstructured Cynthia time to discover where my destiny will take me.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta is an opportunity of a lifetime! I only have to show up and be me – the script is whatever’s going on in my life. Not everyone gets to wake up and play themselves on national television. Opening myself up allowed for so much to happen that would have never occurred, had I not placed my life under a microscope. I want to leave the series having changed my life in every way – spiritually, physically and financially.
As raw as my growth process has been, I am grateful that I was able to uncover who I really am and what I’m made of. I don’t have to wonder about what would have happened had I not moved from New York to Atlanta or married the man of dreams – I already know. I don’t want to just live my life; I want to understand it. I hope to never stop hitting those crossroads in my life. It’s what has kept me going.
Whatever my claim to fame will be, it still hasn’t happened yet. My intuition tells me that when people recall the life of Cynthia Bailey, I won’t be remembered for my occupation as a model or an Atlanta Housewife. I think my biggest moment and thickest chapter will be my next one. I’m no longer afraid of the unknown; I receive it. Every time I make a choice, I know it only leads me closer to where I’m going.
My story is still being written.
Peter’s Please Remain Seated
The Real Housewives of Atlanta made Cynthia and me somewhat of an “it” black couple. Cynthia was revealed as a down woman who had her man’s back, even in the face of extreme opposition. People saw me standing tall through our trials but they also witnessed my wrath. Once I released all the anger that had been suffocating me, people began to see me as a relatable, ordinary guy.
In the past year, I’ve been approached by hundreds of black men w
ho commend me on how I have conducted myself in recent seasons. They see me as strong and positive – not extra. It feels good to be appreciated and understood. Hearing the generous words of encouragement from so many black males makes me careful about every scene I step into. I’m now more aware of how my actions might create an effect I don’t want.
God put Cynthia and me on the same track to come together and shine in a way that we couldn’t without the other. I want us to fight to stay centered and in love. As recently as May of 2013, I called Pastor Pollard for marital support. Cynthia and I had a big blow up, and I was having one of the hardest weeks of our marriage. I didn’t know if we would make it through it. I don’t mind yelling and screaming to reach a better place, but it’s a problem when a disagreement leaves my wife viewing me differently from how I really am.
It messed with my head bad, and I had a mini-breakdown. I didn’t know how to fix what had happened or how to file away all the painful shit that had been said. We needed an old-school, third-party intervention. I wanted us to get out the hostility that had been breeding inside of us. We couldn’t move beyond the issue until we could figure out a way to agree, or agree to disagree. Our schedules kept getting in the way of us sitting down with Pastor Pollard, but by God’s grace, we managed to work through it without him.
With all we have faced, I’m happy and surprised that my wife and I are still together. The Housewives franchise has had a lot of marital casualties – a total of eighteen to be exact. The reality scene is not for everyone. It will truly test a marriage to see what it can endure. I credit our spirituality and faith for holding us down. Every couple should sit down with a counselor or spiritual advisor at least twice a year, if for no other reason than to check in with each other.