I’m very lucky. I have a wonderful marriage. Not everyone does.
Rightfully Mine came about during a time when suddenly marriages that once appeared solid seemed to be crumbling. I had several friends who were getting divorced. Some initiated the break up. Others were caught by surprise. Either way, the women came out on the short end. Their unhappiness, their sense of failure, their fear of “what’s next” and their struggle to readjust deeply affected me.
I don’t profess to have any answers as to why a marriage works or doesn’t, but then, as now, the most common explanation is “we grew apart”. That’s a PC way of saying something that clicked in the beginning stopped clicking. It’s not always sexual attraction. It’s goals. And roles. And expectations.
When I got married the unspoken agreement was that the husband was the breadwinner, the wife was the homemaker. Whatever talents, aspirations, dreams or ambitions she had were secondary to her roles as wife and mother. Then came Ms. Magazine and the Equal Rights Amendment. Women were encouraged to buck societal mores about women choosing home over career, but no one was talking to men. They weren’t being told how to react, how to adapt, how to deal with this cataclysmic change. Not only were women’s roles being challenged, but men’s were as well.
I remember meeting a woman on my book tour who described herself as a Corporate Geisha. She decorated the marital home, her husband’s arm, hosted dinner parties to entertain his clients and suffered through endless evenings during which they discussed business and she was ignored. Then he dumped her. And screwed her financially, throwing her into the ignominious category of displaced homemaker – government speak for a women impoverished via divorce.
Rightfully Mine was for and about those women.