Unmistakable Warning Signs in Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s Marriage

Before marrying Keith Urban, Nicole Kidman was in a very highly profile romance with Tom Cruise. The former supercouple married in 1990 but announced their split in 2001. Five years after going their separate ways, Kidman shocked the world when she admitted she still loved the “Top Gun” actor. She told Ladies’ Home Journal (via CBS News), “He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him.” She added of their divorce, “That was a major shock.” The interview was published in May 2006 — the same month Kidman confirmed her engagement to Keith Urban.

Though Kidman was likely referring to a platonic love for Cruise, we can’t imagine the “Making Memories Of Us” hitmaker was too happy to read her interview. Kidman’s admission may be a red flag she wasn’t fully healed from their romance. “If they talk about their ex often, bring up their ex in conversation, or get emotional about their ex [they may not be over them],” Trina Leckie, host of the “Breakup Boost” podcast, told Elite Daily. Someone who still has unresolved feelings for their former partner is unlikely to be able to give their best in a new relationship until they’ve dealt with their outstanding emotions.

It’s common in many relationships to keep in touch through text messages. It’s a quick and easy way to let your partner know you’re thinking of them without the pressure or time constraints of a phone call. But Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban don’t text each other and never have. “We call … we’ve never texted. That is so not our relationship, which is interesting right? We call. We’ve done this since the very beginning,” she explained to Parade in 2018, admitting their no messaging relationship began when they started dating because she wasn’t familiar with texting. “We talk all the time and we FaceTime but we just don’t text because I feel like texting can be misrepresentative at times,” she added.

Of course, texting can have its positives and negatives. “We text to check in with our spouse during the work day and to stay connected with friends far away, but we also text to avoid dealing with relatives at the family party and to break up with someone,” Pace University’s Leora Trub, Ph.D., explained to HuffPost. And, of course, it’s true that too much texting can be just as detrimental as none. “Texting can become a crutch and eventually become a barrier to creating meaningful interactions. Texting all the time can also come from being lonely or bored, and that can lead to isolation and alienation,” Trub explained. However, Kidman and Urban never sending even one quick message to check in amid their super busy schedules is eyebrow raising. It’s likely they’re in different time zones often and aren’t always be available for a call, which makes us question why they don’t make use of a sweet and simple “I love you” text.

To have a career as successful as Nicole Kidman’s, it takes dedication. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the “A Family Affair” star raised eyebrows in 2016 when she was noticeably absent from her father-in-law’s funeral. Kidman wasn’t there in person to support Keith Urban and his family for the sombre event in Australia, as she was filming a movie in England. A source told Closer, “[Urban] would have liked to have had his wife by his side.” However, they claimed he wasn’t chastising his wife. “She is committed to her work. Keith loves that about her. He is very forgiving,” they claimed. Though Kidman’s professionalism is admirable, sometimes it’s okay to say ‘no’ at work.

In contrast, it’s hard to ignore the important part Urban played in Kidman’s father’s funeral. When she said goodbye to her late dad two years earlier, Daily Mail photos confirmed the “Blue Ain’t Your Color” hitmaker served as a pallbearer and supported his grieving wife with a kiss.

Though it may not be possible for the A-List couple to attend everything the other has going on, Urban needs to feel as supported by Kidman as she does by him. If he doesn’t, that could result in an imbalanced relationship full of resentment.

Though opposites may attract, couples with very different personalities are sometimes too different to make it work. In the case of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, they have conflicting personality traits that could make seeing eye-to-eye difficult. Speaking to Marie Claire, Kidman explained, “We have an interesting balance because I’m an introvert and he’s an extrovert.” She added, “I’m deeply introverted. Not when I’m with a small number of people, but I’m not comfortable in crowds. I have trouble public speaking.” On the flipside, Urban has admitted to having a highly excitable side. “I’ve got a dutiful, responsible, reliable side. And I’ve got this animalistic, wild, reckless, irresponsible, ‘What does this button do?,'” he told Associated Press. “The spirit of those two things is very much a part of who I am.”

But while Kidman shared her husband helped her feel comfortable being more extroverted, there’s a chance the duo being on opposite ends of the personality scale could be detrimental. “Couples who have an introvert and extrovert partner can often get into disagreements about going out versus staying in, socializing and attending events, and eventually the big differences in introversion versus extroversion start to really wear a couple down,” celebrity love coach and body language expert Nicole Moore told Women while pointing out the red flags between exes Channing Tatum and Zoe Kravitz.

Public cheating allegations, whether they’re true or not, can be difficult and embarrassing. In 2006, the same year Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban married, model Amanda Wyatt claimed she’d been intimate with the singer during his and Kidman’s engagement. “I guess I knew he was seeing her but he was also seeing me,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “He wasn’t married so I still held out hope that they were just having some kind of publicity relationship,” she added. “I tried not to fall in love with him but we were together throughout the whole time he was dating Nicole and engaged to her, right through 2005 and to around May 2006,” Wyatt added. Urban’s rep denied the claims.

Wyatt made the allegations two months after Urban entered rehab and, in 2016, he told Rolling Stone his relationship with Kidman almost ended around that time. “I caused the implosion of my fresh marriage. It survived, but it’s a miracle it did,” he said.

The timing of the cheating claims and Urban’s rehabilitation had to be rough. To make it through, Kidman needed to trust, and potentially forgive, her husband implicitly. If not, staying with him could cause serious problems later in their marriage. “Everyone has the right to decide what they are comfortable with in a relationship… Staying with someone [you] don’t trust or haven’t forgiven will only build more distrust and resentment,” Kalley Hartman, LMFT at Ocean Recovery, told us of trusting someone who’s cheated before.