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Angelina Jolie once had a devoted admirer of hers while she was involved in a high-profile marriage. Although she didn’t end up in an official relationship with this mystery suitor, she eventually agreed to keep him around as a lover.

Angelina Jolie once didn’t believe fidelity was always essential in a relationship

Angelina Jolie at the 21st Annual Hollywood Film Awards
Angelina Jolie | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

When it came to relationships, Jolie had strict standards she upheld to maintain integrity. She shared that affairs were especially a sore spot for her considering the relationship of her own parents. It was why Jolie was adamant about not sleeping with ex-husband Brad Pitt while he was still married to Jennifer Aniston.

“To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive,” Jolie once said according to People. “I could not, could not look at myself in the morning if I did that.”

When it came to being in a relationship, however, Jolie didn’t believe that certain restrictions were needed. Whereas some saw transgressions like infidelity to be the end of relationships, Jolie felt that wasn’t the worst that could happen in a relationship.

“I doubt that fidelity is absolutely essential for a relationship. It’s worse to leave your partner and talk badly about him afterwards,” she once said in an interview with Das Neue (via Radar Online). “Neither Brad nor I have ever claimed that living together means to be chained together. We make sure that we never restrict each other.”

Angelina Jolie made a lover out of someone who proposed to her when she was already married

Jolie has only had a few official partners during her time in the spotlight. Before Pitt, she was married to Johnny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton respectively. Jolie asserted that all of her lovers had a place in her heart no matter how their relationship ended.

“Well, I’ve had great loves in my life, and whether or not they worked out in the end, they remain the great loves of my life and great friends. And I knew when I met them that they were going to be very important people to me,” Jolie once said on Interview.

One of those great loves might have appeared during her second marriage with Thornton. Considering she was off the market, Jolie didn’t initially respond to the unknown suitor’s advances at the time.

“I met a man I never slept with. We had dinner once, and it ended up being, ‘Look, I’m married. I can’t sleep with you. I can’t even finish dinner ’cause it’s uncomfortable,’” she once told Vanity Fair (via Female First).

Once her relationship status changed, Jolie decided to give her admirer a shot. But only as lovers with no strings attached.

“Three years later I called him and asked if he wanted to be lovers, and it was one of these phone calls of just, you know, a single mom sleeping with a baby and just, I’ll call a man up and ask if he wants to be my lover. We spent a few dinners kind of discussing the details of how this was going to happen. It was actually fascinating,” she said. “I even think with that man it took about two months until he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you’re really serious, you’re OK with this, you’re really fine to just have a lover.’”

Angelina Jolie wondered if it was time to go back to her old ways after her divorce with Brad Pitt

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Jolie and Pitt ended their marriage in 2016, citing irreconcilable differences. A year later, she was very open about the challenges she faced afterwards and how she coped with the separation.

“It’s been difficult,” she told The Telegraph. “I don’t enjoy being single. It’s not something I wanted. There’s nothing nice about it. It’s just hard. Sometimes maybe it appears I am pulling it all together, but really I am just trying to get through my days. Emotionally it’s been a very difficult year and I have had some other health issues. So my health is something I have to monitor.”

But she also saw an opportunity to get in touch with a side of herself she might have suppressed in the wake of motherhood.

“I think now I need to rediscover a little bit of the old me,” she said. “I think we lose our way a bit. I have had a lot happen in my life, from certain people passing to health issues to raising the children. And it’s been a very good time to absorb and develop and grow. But maybe now that my kids are growing up I am starting to realize that my own sense of play has been put on hold for a while.”