Stop Asking Heterosexual Women About Their Romantic Life
As Isabella Rosellini says, ‘Men do not give women their identity’
A few years ago, I came upon an interview with Isabella Rossellini in The Guardian. Then 68, the model, actor, writer, filmmaker, animal behaviorist, and farmer — daughter of two movie legends, actor Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini — made it clear that she was embracing being an older woman.
She also made it clear that after two marriages — to director Martin Scorsese and former model Jonathan Wiedemann—plus a six-year relationship with David Lynch and a two-year engagement to Gary Oldman, she didn’t have much interest in having another husband or life partner, at least not while her children were young and she lost her modeling contract with Lancôme.
Husbands, she said, “…are time-consuming”. Yes, they are.
And so I was surprised when she was asked in a recent interview in the New York Times why she doesn’t have a partner.
Of course, it made me think of what singles advocate Bella DePaulo does in her latest book, Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life — flips the script. Because a good answer to “Why did you decide not to have a partner?” is “Why did you decide to have a husband?” (The…
