There's a new book out about Jackie and JFK.
Apparently Marilyn Monroe called Jackie to tell her about the A and how JFK was planning on leaving the familyfor her.
I love Jackie's response: 'that's great, I'll move out and you have all the problems'. She told Marilyn she could deal with being first lady and all it's headaches.
I'm saddened by the fact that Jackie must have felt she had to live with repeated infidelity. Supposedly she accepted the cheating as long as JFK didn't humiliate her, but I seriously wonder. I know it was a different time, but a source close to the couple stated that Jackie knew everything about all the OW in her M. Just like all of us who (sometimes obsessively) research the OW that caught our WH's attentions, I'm sure.
That she blamed herself in part is so typical of a BS, reportedly saying that she feared her own sexual inadequacies were pushing JFK into the arms of other women. I did find it amusing that she had confided in someone that (sexually) 'he just goes too fast and falls asleep.' Apparently there might have been a drug dependency also. To me, this reads like an active WS, acting selfishly and (self) medicating to deal with their own issues. Too bad that there wasn't anything anonymous like SI back then for Jackie to learn that it wasn't her problem and he was acting straight from the WS script.
And Marilyn, adored by so many of the public even now, was seeking something more. Something to make her feel wanted I suppose. She must have found it for a time in JFK, or she wouldn't have had the guts to call Jackie and brag about the A.
I can see shades of all of our stories in this. No matter how rich, famous, revered you are, you're still human. You still have a story, and usually that story connects you to others like you. You're never alone. Kind of like the SI intro, share...you're safe. There are others besides you.
'he just goes too fast and falls asleep.' Apparently there might have been a drug dependency also. To me, this reads like an active WS, acting selfishly and (self) medicating to deal with their own issues.
Marilyn must have been the typical OW, low self esteem, after power and settling with her conquest.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis did not go into her first marriage all dewy-eyed and naive. Her father had been a philandering rogue, who put the family's finances in peril while her mother cried and made the children feel as they were "not enough" for their mother or important to her. Jackie was described as having a big eye-roll over her mother when she reached her late teens.
I guess that wasn't out of lack of empathy, but more out of frustration of living with a weeping mother for decades who didn't just detach and find joy in her life on her own, and made her kids when little feel guilty for not being enough and failing to cheer up mama, and later resenting her for it. "If she doesn't really love us, we don't have to love her either' attitude.
Jackie didn't want to become like her mother one day, and all of her future choices were based on that. She was traumatized by financial insecurity and being in a family living above its means. Financial security meant a lot to her. She didn't date poor boys, or at least seriously with an eye to marriage. Not a virgin when she met JFK.
Then when she married and he cheated to sex addict levels, the stakes were too high in a Catholic marriage and a presidency to do anything about it, not that there was help for it in the Don Draper "Mad Men" era.
She smartly detached rather than cried, threw herself into her children's lives, her role as first lady and historical image of creating the 'Camelot' White House image. She went back into publishing.
The second time she married for money: a man who would adore HER and provide her children means for constant physical security, since Kennedy threats and kidnapping plots weren't unheard of. He cheated on Jackie with his longtime mistress from time to time, but seems to have treated Jackie well, and the kids, until she had her own mid-life crisis being a club-hopping socialite with her sister, getting divorced, before settling down again later into a less public social life and back into publishing.
Her big mistake was interfering in her son's love life. Darryl Hannah, the actress, in her skater and hippie clothes wasn't a political kind of asset. But she was probably the best choice for her son, after all, because she did love him, and Hannah is still politically active and doing OK. Jackie approved of Carolyn Bessett, who never loved JFK Jr. all that much, cheated with a male model before the marriage had an abortion or two by male model, saw male model after marriage, had a drug habit and, of course, JFK Jr. would have never had been flying in that plane beyond his skill level that night had he not met and married her.
A horrible lesson in that. Don't interfere with your kids' boyfriends/girlfriends unless the person is abusive and toxic. Appearances aren't everything.
Another: Give yourself no more than a year to cry before you detach and move on, or your kids will think they're not enough, and make their choices in life based upon who YOU WERE, rather than what might have been best for them.
Jackie K. might have been happier if she had fallen in love with a guy in publishing when she was young, not been jaded, and had love in her life rather than image to uphold.
[This message edited by Heavy Sigh at 9:11 AM, August 6th (Tuesday)]
No wonder she later married a man who not only could more than take care of her (and she was his trophy wife...something for everyone!), but that she didn't really love. No hurt there (or at least as much).
Reconciled
Jackie obviously was a woman with options. She didn't have to worry about finances and raising her children at the poverty level.
But I believe that she made choices based on what was best for her children. I don't think she gave a shit what people thought about her or her husband. I think she thought that divorcing their father during his presidency would have harmfully affected her children long term due to the scandal and she wasn't about to do that to them. I also think she probably felt a responsibility to stay with him for the good of the country.
After his presidency was over I bet she would have divorced his sorry ass.
JFK Jr. would have never had been flying in that plane beyond his skill level that night had he not met and married her.
Okay, that's just not at all true. lol
Affairs are as old as the Bible. Society has gone through many changes...and yet adultery is still very much alive and well...and could actually be increasing.
Much has been mentioned, both within this post and main stream media as to how American society has changed...and specifically how women are viewed. Leading me to assume what is meant is that we are evolving to higher and better standings.
I don't think I agree with that assumption. I think at one point the Romans (or any now dead society) thought they were so very evolved and took too much pride in what they had accomplished. Maybe this shouldn't even be a part of this...maybe how women are viewed, how adultery is accepted or not accepted by society is a distraction that is easier to focus on then the actual problem.
If we were truly evolving, getting to a better spot as a society we would not spend so much time on figuring out how a particular societal view has changed and how that enables or prohibits a given gender to have more or less choices on how to deal with it..and more time figuring out why human selfishness is not changing...why, even with more societal options, is adultery as present today as I believe it has been throughout time.
I myself have not evolved to this level either...I honestly thought adultery was a male only problem. I don't know who I thought these men were sleeping with...but I never put much responsibility onto women. And by some of the responses to this post I am not alone. I have a front row seat to see just how engaged women can be in adultery...absolute equals.
I am sad when I think about Jackie. I am also sad for JFK. They, like all of us, were broken people. But I don't feel sorry for them. They did the best they both could do....maybe that was society, but much of what they subjected themselves too was born out of their own selfishness.
I, too, have selfishness. If I allow that natural urge to control me...I will effectively reject evolving.
I don't have any great aspirations of becoming Yoda...but I try hard to recognize that, while my selfish feelings can be INDICATORS that a change of course is needed I will work hard at keeping my selfish feelings from becoming my NAVIGATOR.
I am actively seeking healthy solutions to problems within myself and my marriage that my feelings indicate need solved. I am not, at this time, selfishly doing what feels right....doing that is what got us to the spot we are in. I want to evolve past this spot.
God be with us all.
[This message edited by blakesteele at 11:08 AM, August 6th (Tuesday)]
It may have been a different time but what I'm seeing is what I see in stories here on SI all the time. An entitled OP, selfish WS and a BS vacillating between feeling strong towards the OP and insecure when it comes to the WS.
Even Marilyn, she learned that she was just another OW. Some accounts say she was passed to his brother like an object, others present her as an opportunist, moving on to the next one. I think the truth is somewhere in between. She was obviously a very damaged person...they all were.
Famous, Camelot, rich, notorious, part of our culture and history...when it comes down to it, their story is just like so many here.
