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Lance Armstrong's ex, Kristin Richards, tried to be "perfect mother"
Filed under: Media
Kristin Richard, formerly known as Mrs. Lance Armstrong, recently spoke to Oprah Winfrey about her marriage to the world's most famous cyclist. I suppose, without having known any of the details, I just assumed that Lance had initiated the split. But it seems that it was a more thoughtful and complicated breakup than that.Richard does not place blame on Armstrong for what went wrong in their marriage. She reports being dazzled by the big diamond on her finger, and not really thinking closely about what marriage would or should be like. I can remember that when I began my first marriage, fifteen years ago, I was not really sure what came after the wedding. What was I supposed to do now? So, I thought about what I had seen my mother doing. Well, I could make dinner. I didn't yet have children. Only my husband liked to cook. I was working, but not in a career-- I had barely graduated from college. My primary occupation was that of wife.
I know how easy it is to sublimate your own personality to try to fit into some kind of mold called, "wife," or "mother." I was wearing kind of raggety shorts and a T-shirt and flip-flops soon after I married and a college student said to me, "I didn't know that married women could dress like that."At that time, I felt that I must be doing it wrong. My professor ex-husband didn't help: he wanted me to give up wearing my favorite jeans, the ones with the holes in the knees, when I went to playgroups with other faculty wives. He certainly had an image of what a perfect wife and mother should be: long hair, no makeup, no shorts, jumpers (long dresses).
Everybody warns us about post-partum depression, but what kind of vitamins should we take for post-marriage depression? I admire Kristin Richard for having enogh sense of self to realize that she had sublimated who she was in pursuit of an ideal that only existed in her head. I think that a lot of women struggle with this. Have you struggled with maintaining a sense of self and with navigating your identity after marriage and children?
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
5-10-2006 @ 12:57PM
suburban misfit said...Not after marriage, but maybe after having children. I never went into marriage thinking I was supposed to change. I was who I was and getting married didn't change that. Of course, we lived together for 18 months before we were married, so maybe the actual ceremony and license didn't change much for us. To be honest, I'm always a little confused by posts like this. Not in a bad way; I just don't have that experience. Marriage, for me, has been wonderful and amazing, and I've been not only happily married but blissfully married for nearly twelve years now.
After the kids came I sort of had to find myself again, but only because I had been caring for these little people full time and sometimes forgot to take care of myself. I never had a crisis of self, though. I can certainly see how it happens, it just never happened to me.
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5-10-2006 @ 1:50PM
thordora said...Marriage didn't affect me so much, since we weren't exactly traditional to begin with, but just like misfit, my children threw my self perception for a loop. I continually questioned who I was because of them, and what a mother and wife should be. It took some time for me to accept that who I am IS a mom and a wife. The intergration was hard, since we live in a society that either keeps them an arms length apart, or doesn't allow them to merge at all.
However, I married my husband because I love him, not because I wanted to be married. I kept my own name, and gave my children my name, because I wanted to. I've always been in control, so it's never bothered me.
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5-10-2006 @ 4:19PM
Uncle Roger said...What about men? We have great lives with a great girlfriend and then we get married and suddenly we're supposed be all responsible and everything. Then we have kids and we're supposed to be all parent-y when we really still need our own parents to tell us what to do and get us out of trouble.
For either side, if the role is assigned by oneself, then, well, it's kinda your own problem. If your new spouse expects a sudden transformation into a "wife" or "husband", then that's a real problem.
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