#18

Some actor was interviewed on TV today, and he said that the hardest thing about working (on several movies in succession) was maintaining a personal relationship, which I thought was very perceptive of him.  Then the reporter said that the woman the actor had been dating is an interior decorator.  And then I thought "Oh, good.  Has a chance of succeeding.  She probably has more control over her time, not like another actor ("actress" seems to be no longer "PC").  That's why relationships between two Hollywood-types never seems to last.  Neither of them is able or available to work full time on the relationship.  I'm not convinced they ever had the time to learn how to work on it, anyway."  

Then I had the feeling that what I thought was somehow not right, that I had, in thinking that, betrayed some feminist rule.  "There's something wrong there.  I'm uncomfortable thinking that."

Well, I was right.  You both need to be available to each other, not on a schedule, but as needed.  When it's celebrity+celebrity it's awfully hard even to know when you're needed, let alone be available.  When it's celebrity+noncelebrity, if the noncelebrity is willing and able to take a bit more of the load, to be more sensitive to needs, more willing to communicate needs, and able to make the availability happen, then it has a better chance of succeeding.  Doesn't matter which is male or female.  So I wasn't thinking that her career was less important than his, only that she might be in a better position to give more.

Where my disconnect came in was from my old resentment against an ex-husband who informed me something like two months after the 1970 wedding that field experience in his division would enhance his career, so we were moving.  It didn't matter that I liked my job, or that I was on a fast track where I was, or that my division had no positions "out there".  It also didn't matter whether I wanted to go or not.  In the early 1970s, if a husband accepted a work transfer and left for another city, and the woman refused to relocate with him, she was guilty of desertion, not him.  The family home traveled with the man.  Not just legally, also socially.  It was a way of thinking.  Women didn't really have careers.  So I comforted myself with the thought that our marriage was already showing signs of very big trouble, and it was up to me to make this sacrifice and maybe save it.

So when I was uncomfortable with my thought about the actor/decorator, I think I was actually afraid I was thinking that I wanted her to do what I did.

No.  Not at all.  She doesn't have to give anything up.  I just thought she'd have a better ability to be aware.