'They are the best communicators ever.'
Emma Watson is opening up about her views on relationships. In a conversation with Valerie Hudson for Teen Vogue, the 29-year-old actress gets candid about how she believes communication and consent play a role in romantic relationships.
"A lot of the healthiest relationships I’ve seen have been between same-sex couples because, I think, they have to sit down and agree [on] things," she says. "They agree [on] things between them as opposed to [accepting] certain sets of assumptions and expectations that are made."
"I’ve also kind of become slightly fascinated by kink culture because they are the best communicators ever. They know all about consent," Watson continues. "They smash that stuff because they really have to get it -- but we could all use those models; they’re actually really helpful models."
Watson further explains that she believes relationships that "don’t necessarily follow traditional models do require more communication and consent."
"It requires an actual conversation and agreement about the delegation of tasks and labor and responsibilities that maybe you don’t feel that you need to have or should have if you follow those traditional stereotypes," she says. "The idea that relationships are supposed to be easy and it’s all supposed to be implicitly understood, and you’re just meant to get each other, it’s bulls**t! It’s impossible!"
During the conversation, Watson also discusses the criticism she faced after describing herself as "self-partnered" in an interview last November.
"I did an interview with Vogue magazine a couple of months ago, and I talked about how, in the run up to my 30s, [I felt] this incredible, sudden anxiety and pressure that I had to be married or have a baby or moving into a house," she says. "And there was no word for this kind of subliminal messaging and anxiety and pressure that I felt building up, but I couldn’t really name, and so I used the word 'self-partnered.'"
"For me it wasn’t so much about coining a word; it was more that I needed to create a definition for something that I didn’t feel there was language for," Watson continues. "And it was really interesting because it really riled some people up! It was less for me about the word but more about what it meant -- just this idea that we need to reclaim language and space in order to express ourselves because sometimes it’s really not there."
Watch the video below for more on Watson's Vogue interview.
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