Nia Long: Marriage Is “Not A Priority”

Nia Long and Ime Udoka may have recently welcomed their first child together, but the actress says that she and her longtime boyfriend aren’t in a hurry to get hitched.

In Essence‘s August issue, Long said that marriage is “not a priority” for her, but she didn’t discount the possibility of marriage entirely. For now, though, Long says that her family is content with things as they are. Besides, Long says that, as far as she has seen, marriage doesn’t work.

“I’ll be at home with my man, having a perfectly loving time, and I’ll see all these comments on some site about how wrong I am for not being married,” Long added in the interview. “I don’t feel less loved or less loving because I’m not married.”

Long, who once starred in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Will Smith’s girlfriend, went on to say in the interview that she recently was able to reconcile with Massai Z. Dorsey, the father of her first child.

“Massai’s dad and I have had the most challenging times, and I wasn’t always sure we wouldn’t end like my mother and father,’ she explained. ‘But we’ve arrived at a place where I can truly say he’s not a baby daddy, he’s my friend, finally. He is an amazing father.”

Long credits the recent birth of her second child, Kez, as a big contributor to her change in outlook.

“I’m a lot calmer. Less clingy and demanding. When Ime has to be gone for long stretches at a time, as he had to the first few months after Kez was born, I took it as an opportunity to nest,” she said.

Do you agree with Nia Long’s perspective on marriage?