B00AEDDPVE EBOK (5 page)

There are probably hundreds of theories on the psychological significance of intimacy. Women of all ages have talked to me about how hopeless they feel when it comes to having a relationship with a man, especially when physical intimacy preceded getting to really know the other person. I’ve never met a woman who was truly emotionally immune to feeling regret or to wishing for a more personal relationship, in spite of what the current
Friends with Benefits
types of movies portray as the great life. Interestingly, a LiveScience study from 2008 revealed that young men who had one-night stands felt they had “lowered their standards” regarding their own moral sense of right and wrong for a casual physical experience. Quite a few of the young men who have talked to me about dating tell me some version of “I just want a girlfriend who will be loyal to me, who I can feel emotionally connected with.”

Every week I hear from single female friends and fans in their forties and fifties that they would rather be alone than go
through one more dating relationship where they feel used and then discarded as the man goes on to his next conquest. What’s disheartening to me now is that I see our young women taking on this same “If you don’t care, then I don’t care” attitude.

I’ve also had a number of middle-aged single men tell me that they feel that women have become hardened and it’s nearly impossible to meet one who doesn’t have a lot of anger issues. I think there was wisdom in my mother’s sage advice: If the physical supersedes the emotional, then there is no starting point for a true attachment to another person.

In one of the final entries into her journals, before she was no longer able to write, I found this from my mother:
“Women are the moral compass in life. If women lose their self-respect, their beauty, creativity, knowledge, compassion and nurturing qualities, then we will all lose our humanity.”

What I wish for my own children is that they enjoy their dating years. As my mother wrote to me in my journal:
“All too soon the world will intrude, and life will become complicated with mortgages, bills, jobs, children and all that adulthood encompasses.”
If and when that “adulthood” includes marriage, I want my children to know that they are partnered with a person who is, first, their friend, and second, truly committed to a relationship that will survive all the complications of life—like taking turns when your two-week-old baby wakes you up for a feeding every two hours or your 192-month-old baby makes you lie awake for two hours, waiting for her or him to come home.

The best we can do as parents is to be the example of a
healthy relationship in our own homes. My grandmother never “spoke of such things” to my mother and my mother wrote them in a note to me, then spoke out loud a bit more in her growing concern for the challenges her grandchildren faced in dating in our rapidly redefined social world. Three generations later, in today’s world, I think we have to open up the discussion with our kids, probably before junior high school. We need to hear what’s going on with them and give them some boundaries, guidelines, and especially encouragement to figure out who they are individually, before they become a pair. And we need to be vocal in our school systems, especially when it comes to teaching about aspects of adulthood that might have a permanent effect on our child’s perspective. Practical sex-ed classes don’t take moral values into consideration. I’ve had to make sure my children weren’t getting mixed messages. As a parent, that’s my responsibility. When I look at the ways my brothers treat their wives and the moral codes they strive to live by, I know that their own children have also learned by example, the same way my brothers and I learned from our parents. I know my own children have been witness to my unhappiness in my past marriage, but they have also watched me make a choice for change. Young children set their moral values according to that of their parents. I hope my life can be an example to my kids of how nothing counts more toward the success of a healthy and happy relationship than abiding respect and a lasting friendship based on the same values. Even when you think your teenagers no longer listen to you, they do. It does sink in. One afternoon I had a “discussion” with my
fourteen-year-old daughter about her choice of outfits for a school party because I felt the skirt was too short. It was tough, considering that clothing advertised for teenagers consists mainly of tight dresses with little fabric or short shorts and camisoles. Even prom dresses now have minimal tops and cutouts along the stomach. My son came home from his high school dance recently and said, “I know you expect me to treat girls respectfully, but when they are basically wearing bathing suits to prom, it’s hard to know where to look!” I know it’s tough on my girls, who want to wear what is current and trendy, like most girls their age. I really do understand. At age fifteen, I had to listen in total disbelief as my mother told award-winning fashion designer Bob Mackie that the clothes he had picked out for my photo shoot weren’t “modest enough for a girl her age.” I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t believe my mother was editing the clothing choices of a top designer. I pretended I needed to use the restroom, and I hid out in there until I was sure my face was no longer red.

As I could have predicted, my fourteen-year-old daughter didn’t want to hear that story from her mother’s youth! To her, that’s ancient history. But later that night, as I happened to be nonchalantly nearby, her twenty-one-year-old sister said to her, “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but listen to Mom. She’s right, especially about dating. If you don’t respect yourself, don’t expect a boy to respect you, either.”

I can hear my mother saying, “Isn’t that worth the dark circles under your eyes, no matter how much cover stick you have to apply?”

My mother’s advice always began with a kind word, which is probably why I still remember it today.

My oldest daughter, Jessica, and me in 2011.

I
’ve got pictures to prove it. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my four older children in the pool, playing games, at birthday parties, at school functions, camping, boating, riding bikes and skateboards, gathered around the Christmas tree, eating out together, and on and on. Whenever there was family time, a photo or two were usually taken as well. I remember almost all these occasions with fondness, but when Jessica, my oldest daughter, was a teenager, she was certain that I wasn’t present for most of them.

At about age fourteen, she started saying, “You were never there for me, Mom.”

Her declarations about my bad mothering skills arose around the same time I was starting to realize for myself that my marriage, following a six-month separation, was not working out. Somehow I rationalized that if I could only find a way to deal with it all that my kids wouldn’t have to live without two parents in the home. I didn’t want my babies to come from a broken family. No mother does. But even worse, it seemed at that time that my relationship with my daughter might have been permanently damaged as well.

I was absolutely heartbroken to say the least by the thought of losing the affection of one of my kids.

Jessica has always been a very “mothering” child. As soon as she had younger siblings, she became a mini-adult. My oldest son, Stephen, always had his own father, from my first marriage to my husband, Steve, and would go spend quality time with him, which made Jessica the oldest of the children who were living with me full-time. Perhaps it’s because she was the oldest, but when it came to organizing the younger brood, Jessica could handle almost any task. She became a mini-mommy.

For example, when I was performing on
Dancing with the Stars
and in the process of getting divorced, I had to be in LA two days during the week. Jessica, who by this time had her own apartment, would come over to the house and get the four younger kids up and through their morning routines, serve them breakfast, pack their lunches, get their homework organized, and drive them off to school and preschool on time. Then she would go to her own job as a media technician, helping to set up for events and parties. Employers always speak well of Jessica because she is a no-fuss, efficient, practical young woman. She is much like her grandma, my mother, and the two of them had a deep and unbreakable connection. My mother was also a very “mothering” child to her younger brother, born when she was in fifth grade. She and Jessica shared a wry sense of humor and a love for a good home-cooked meal. I had always wished that I could communicate with Jessica as well as my mother was able to, especially during those transition years when she was going from a little girl to
an adolescent. Even when my mother was hospitalized in the last years of her life after her stroke, she would always hug Jessica to her chest and give her words of praise and encouragement. The most heartbreaking pain for me to see at my mother’s funeral was on the face of my oldest daughter. She loved her grandma.

I gave Jessica my middle name as her middle name, Jessica Marie, but for most of her teenage years, I’m sure she would have said that our name was the only thing we had in common. Everything that I am, she seemed to be by nature the opposite. I never leave home without putting on at least some makeup; she thinks a lip balm is plenty. Dressing up makes me feel good; she feels that a shirt that buttons up the front is pretty formal. I would line my shelves with my collectible porcelain dolls; her collection of choice was
Star Wars
figures,
Biker Mice from Mars
figures, GI Joes, and retro T-shirts. (She did have one Betty Boop doll that sat on a motorcycle, a gift from her grandma.) I love to sing; she has a beautiful voice and loves to listen to music but performing isn’t anywhere on her list of things to achieve. I almost always run late; she has never missed the beginning of anything, not even a movie, unless she’s with me. I’m not the most organized woman on the planet; Jes could tell you where every possession she owns can be found and can often tell me where my stuff is as well. Jessica is technically savvy; I sometimes forget which button on the remote closes the garage door. If I have any technical problems, she is my first phone call. She can usually solve any electronic issue over the phone in forty-five seconds. My day-to-day life moves at
such a fast pace, and I meet so many new people every week that I can only concentrate on what needs to happen next. Jessica is more present in the moment, she’s reserved with people she doesn’t know, and she is always observant, leaving nothing unnoticed.

It’s probably this final trait of Jessica’s that made me wake up to my true feelings about my marriage. She was not fooled by my attempts to justify staying in it. She knew it wasn’t right for me and tried to point it out to me over and over. Even very young children can see to the heart of an issue and often have clear insights into what we, as adults, complicate. In 2010, at age twenty-two, Jessica legally changed her last name to Osmond. Looking back, I can now understand how Jessica could have felt that I wasn’t there for her. I couldn’t hear her perceptions about the marriage.