When you start dating someone new, there are a few things that come with the territory. Learning their likes and dislikes, figuring out how to communicate with them, navigating living your lives together, those are all normal things that couples must do as they get more serious.
In most instances, the worst case scenario when dating someone is that maybe their family won’t like you and you’ll marry your way into awkward Christmas dinners for the rest of your life. What you don’t expect is that your choice to follow your heart will lead to lies being printed about you in major publications and people scrutinizing you for absolutely everything.
But that’s exactly what happened to Meghan Markle once she married Prince Harry and though her friends warned her prior to the wedding, there was still one thing that surprised the Duchess about the whole tabloid process.
Meghan Markle’s friends’ warnings
When Markle started getting serious about Prince Harry, her friends had mixed reactions. Some were excited for her but others tried to warn her about how relentlessly critical the British tabloids could be.
“In all fairness I had no idea, which probably sounds difficult to understand and hear,” Markle said in the recent documentary, Harry & Meghan: An African Journey. “But when I first met my now-husband, my friends were really happy because I was so happy but my British friends said to me, ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.’”
Though Markle heard her friends’ warnings, she didn’t realize how serious they should be taken.
“And I very naively — I’m American,” she continued. “We don’t have that there — [I said], ‘What are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense. I’m not in any tabloids.’ I didn’t get it. So it’s been, yeah, it’s been complicated.”
What was the one thing Markle didn’t expect?
After being warned, Markle knew that she would be in the tabloids, but she had no idea what exactly the press would say about her or how they would go about obtaining their info.
“The biggest thing that I know is that I never thought that this would be easy but I thought it would be fair,” she said. “And that’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile but, I don’t know, just take each day as it comes.”
Markle went on to say that she understands that she is going to be in the press but doesn’t approve of the alleged lies that are being spread.
“If I do something wrong I’d be the first one to go, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I would never do that,’ but when people are saying things that are just untrue and they’re being told they’re untrue but they’re allowed to still say them, I don’t know anybody in the world who would feel that that’s okay. And that’s different than just scrutiny. That’s, what would you call that? That’s a different beast. It’s really a different beast.”
And one of the saddest things about the whole situation for the Duchess is that no one seems to understand what she’s going through.
“And I think the grass is always greener,” Markle said. “You have no idea. It’s really hard to understand what it’s like. I know what it seems like it should be. It’s a very different thing. That’s okay. The good thing is I’ve got my baby and I’ve got my husband and they’re the best.”
