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Sean Penn Implies Marriage to Robin Wright Was a "Fraud"

They say time heals all wounds, but apparently two years is not enough to mend Sean Penn's heart. The actor, who divorced Robin Wright after fourteen years in 2010, recently opened up about marriage in an interview with Esquire.

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Sadie Gennis

They say time heals all wounds, but apparently two years is not enough to mend Sean Penn's heart. The actor, who divorced Robin Wright after fourteen years in 2010, recently opened up about marriage in an interview with Esquire.
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"There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved by someone," Penn said. "As I look back over my life in romance, I don't feel I've ever had that. I have been the only one that was unaware of the fraud in a few of these circumstances blindly."
Though Penn did not mention Wright by name, he acknowledged that divorce tends to expose the truth in relationships. "When you get divorced, all the truths that come out, you sit there and you go, What the f---was I doing?" Penn explained. "What was I doing believing that this person was invested in this way? Which is a fantastically strong humiliation in the best sense. It can make somebody very bitter and very hard and closed off, but I find it does the opposite to me."
Penn was able to find the silver lining in the situation. Thanks to being single and having bad luck dating, Penn invested his energy in charity. "And so I go out and I strike out four nights in a row, drinking at a bar and ending up home, you know, drunk," Penn said. "And on the fourth day I said, 'I could just go sit in the middle of the bed and watch TV at four in the afternoon, too. I don't have anything.' My daughter's eighteen and she's doing her thing, my son's with his mother. So I turned on the TV and there was this earthquake in Haiti."
The actor went on to spend the next two years traveling to Haiti to help with the relief effort and even set up an organization to help rebuild homes, schools and hospitals.