Don't cry too much for Jackie - just a little.
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)]