If Someone Says "You Complete Me," RUN! (14 page)

I had dinner with a girlfriend the other night in New York, where we film
The View
. She said, “Here all these guys want is ‘this’”—and she pointed down to you know where—“They don’t want anything else.” I said, “You have to find a guy who is not from New York.”

But the real question then becomes: Are you going to places that are known as pickup joints? If you’re in a pickup joint, somebody is going to try to pick you up and try to have sex with you. Perhaps you need to reevaluate how you are spending your time. Perhaps you need to go bowling or volunteering instead.

If you go out and your chest is hanging out, or you’re wearing very tight pants and you have a bulge in your pants, women are going to want to touch you. If you put yourself out as an object, people are going to treat you like an object. If you put yourself out as a person, 85 percent of the time they will treat you as a person. But you have to draw that line. You have to show people how to treat you. And I have said this before: you just have to be patient.

Now let’s get to some more questions.

I
already discussed one of the biggest issues people have in relationships, and that is sex. But just as problematic and maybe even a bigger issue is money.

Talking about money can be more taboo than talking about sex. There should be no fear of talking about money in your relationship, though, and you shouldn’t be lying about it, either. You should be talking about what you’re doing and what your plans are together, since you’re not the only one, and if you have
children together, this is even more important. They need to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, and a million other things. You have to remember you can’t just go off and do whatever you want, because in a relationship you have to discuss stuff. You want a new dress, and he wants new golf clubs, but really the kids need new school shoes. If you buy a new dress and then he can’t get his golf clubs and the kids don’t get their new shoes, there is going to be a big problem. And vice versa.

I think the other thing—and this is a big one—one of the other big lies in my lifetime, or in my lifestyle and experience, is that each person in a relationship contributes what he or she can financially. It is rarely a fifty-fifty split, but for whatever reason, when you are the woman and you are the breadwinner, you want it to look like a fifty-fifty split, because otherwise your man will appear to be less of a man or will feel like less of a man. As women, we try to bolster the man’s ego. And you can’t bolster your partner’s ego by contributing on their behalf to make it look to the outside world like you’re actually in an equal relationship.

What I am talking about is how we get hung up on how things appear to other people. It was always okay for the man to be carrying the woman financially, but as a culture we still don’t accept, or we look down upon, the fact that a woman can also carry the man financially.

I think we should always be clear that things are what they are. If someone’s going to be with you, and you maybe
make more money than he does, you should not have to bolster his ego and buy him things or pretend he is doing better than he actually is so that other people outside think everything is fine. That’s a real problem. That’s something so many people do. Men and women do it, and it perpetuates bad feelings. It can perpetuate bad feelings on both sides, for the person giving away her money and for the person who is accepting the money or living off another person’s money. I know only three or four people for whom that actually works, because in their case, everybody was very clear about who they were when they came into the relationship. That’s why I always say that if you don’t know who you are when you come in, chances are it’s just not going to work as well as you’d like it to.

One thing that people forget, or go into marriage not even knowing, is that first and foremost marriage is a contract, a legal and financial agreement, and that is the way that the state and your religion, if you have one, look at it. Society sees it as your being legally bound to this person, like a business partner—except a business partner you have sex with. Too often the mythology we were raised on really affects how we go into this serious contract, giving us nothing but a bunch of romantic notions of how wonderful life is going to be. It’s called mythology for a reason, people! Believe me, Prince Charming will turn into Darth Vader once you get him into divorce court.

There are a lot of people who say money is power,
sex is power. The traditional balance of power between the sexes, whether we want to admit it or not, has been trading money and sex. Things are different nowadays, where women are more frequently the top earners in a relationship, and this messes up the balance. A relationship shouldn’t be about finding a balance of power, though. Sex, money, power, balance—these things exist, of course, but not when it comes to two people in a loving relationship. If you’re looking for balance of power, you’re screwed. You’ve already started down the wrong path.

One idea that should work for everyone: open a joint bank account and separate individual accounts. You should have the one account together where you’re both working hard and contributing, and that’s how you pay the bills: food, shelter, car, transportation, utilities, the children, and so on. Then you should have your own little money on the side for you to do whatever you want with. Once you’ve both agreed to this setup, you don’t have to discuss it again. If you want to put a chandelier in your car, fine, and you’ll avoid problems if you’re buying, say, seven hundred glass elephants in various colors with their trunks raised.

Don’t even ask…

Okay, you asked, so here it is. This is a true story. A woman I have known for years had a thing for glass elephants with their trunks raised, and every time she saw one she would buy it. She bought so many of them
that she had to start hiding them from her husband, and by the time he found them, there were at least seven hundred. (Although, if you asked me, I would say there were about a thousand of them, but nobody would believe that, so I will go with the seven hundred.)

One day, her husband stumbled upon them in the garage, where they were hidden. He started counting them, and by the seventieth elephant, he got a little upset. He said to her, “What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this? This is crazy. How much have you spent?” I won’t tell you anymore, because then she will know whom I’m talking about. Let’s just say you don’t want to be that person who comes across seven hundred glass elephants in the garage, and you don’t want to be the wife hiding them. It requires a lot of explaining, and that is just glass elephants.

So you need to let people know when you’re spending the joint money. (Not “smoke a joint” money, but money from your joint account.) Part of it is you may actually need help if you’re spending all your and your partner’s money, so the other person has to know what’s going on. Which is why it’s better to agree to each have your own money on the side, not spend your partner’s money. Besides, you don’t want to have to answer to him every time you want to buy a handbag or something. You don’t need to be fighting over “Why did you spend that?” Now you can answer, “Because I earned it and I have the
right to spend it as I choose.” And then you can buy all the glass elephants you want and not have to hide them.

P.S. This is why I live alone. I don’t want to talk about anything to anyone. But if you’re thinking about taking a bigger step, you should not be afraid to discuss money.

Earlier I mentioned how marriage is a contract. I am a big believer in checking in every five years with your partner on that contract, and see if you want to stay. Sit down and discuss whether you want to renew, so that you are making a conscious decision to get a new contract every five years. A lot of people think that’s ridiculous, but I don’t. You should ask, “Are you good? Is this still good? Is this relationship still working for you?” If it isn’t working for either one of you, for whatever reason, it gives you the opportunity to discuss why and resolve the issues in a rational way. If it’s not working and you don’t renew the contract, part amicably so that the lawyers don’t get all your money, and you can keep it to raise the kids and get on with your life without years of drama and expense and bullshit.

A book came out earlier this year called
Primates of Park Avenue
. It was fantastic. I listened to the audiobook and just loved it because it is totally clear that these women in New York City’s Upper East Side entered into marriage as a business arrangement. The women treat their household, their children, their appearance, and their marriage as if they were part of a business. They don’t make any money themselves, despite being extremely smart and
well educated. They go to yoga and Pilates. They even get bonuses from their husbands for things like their kids getting into the right preschool.

Everybody goes into it knowing exactly what’s at stake. As the wife, you have to look a certain way. If you put on some pounds, you do not receive your jewelry bonus. If you take the pounds off, then you’ll get it. You’ll get a bonus for having a baby, too.

Now,
Primates of Park Avenue
is about people with lots of money who are well educated, smart. I find it incredibly frightening that this is what they consider marriage.

But, see, this is the thing. It
works
for them. So I’m not judging.

If it works for you, okay. It ain’t my cup of tea, though.

When someone buys you, they buy you lock, stock, and barrel. If you marry for money, be prepared to give up everything for money.

A friend of mine has a friend whose husband wanted her to augment her chest. She asked my friend what he thought. What did my friend say? That she shouldn’t have to do that for a man. He also concluded that she was going to do it anyway. She wanted the money, she wanted somebody to take care of her. It was worth it to her to look like what he wanted to see in his wife.

Now, my question is: What happens when she gets older? I have never seen an eighty-year-old lady with perfectly perky plastic breasts.

It’s kind of crazy, but ask yourself, “What am I willing to do for money?”

So, in some cases, money and sex and the relationship are intertwined, whether you like it or not. As with everything else, you should know going in what you’re walking into, whether you’re a guy or a girl. People should be up front about what they want from you. The people in
Primates of Park Avenue
are very clear. The women say, “I’m willing to do this for that.” That’s the exchange. And everybody is groovy because there’s no lying. Do the men and the women have this conversation, or is this just the culture they live in? No, I think the conversation does happen.

The author and her husband—who did make a lot of money as a finance guy—initially made their lives together downtown. But once they moved uptown, she started to fall into the right pocketbook, the right this and the right that. It’s really funny to hear her talk about the journey.

The great thing is her and her husband’s relationship never changes. It doesn’t shift—they are solid. They know what they are walking into, and they are walking in together.

You might think these so-called Park Avenue primates get divorced a lot, but it’s the opposite. Divorce is actually very rare, unless the lifestyle becomes too stressful and somebody has a nervous breakdown. If the guy loses his job, there is no divorce, at least not from each other. Instead, they become divorced from society, and society
shuns them. Any change in your status shifts you from one rung on the ladder to another.

So even though many of us wouldn’t want to be one of these Park Avenue people—though, hey, maybe some of you do—my point is that it’s important to have these discussions about money, how it’s going to be made, how it’s going to be spent, and what happens if the marriage ends. It will prevent a lot of fights, but more important, it will balance the power. In a relationship where there’s a sole breadwinner, or where one person makes much more than the other, the one with the money is the one with the power, and as I said, a power struggle isn’t a healthy way to be in a relationship. Being out of balance as a couple, where you either have all the power or not enough, creates a lot of resentment on both sides.

Power in a relationship is enticing, whether it’s having it or getting someone who has it. Do you realize when you meet someone and he is “powerful”—
power
has many definitions, so just think about what power means to you—that you’re swept up into it. Is it real? Does it take you down a road that maybe you shouldn’t go down because it’s a false one? People do all kinds of things for different reasons. If you’re a very, very, very, very, very, very, very rich person, your money can make you powerful. If you’re somebody who has a really high-powered job, that makes you powerful. If you’re somebody who is a big personality, that can make you
powerful. The question becomes: When do you give up yourself to another person?

It goes beyond the “It” thing. It’s about self-esteem. Chances are if you’re rolling with a really wealthy man, you’re not there because you fell in love. Not necessarily. For some people, yes. If the wealthy person is wealthy when you meet him, though, chances are you may be suffering from
Pretty Woman
syndrome: you think this man is going to change your life. You have to look at your motivations for being with him.

I’m watching
Empire
—spoiler alert if you’re catching up on the series. Naomi Campbell plays a cool woman who is dating this eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy. I understand as a viewer that her character’s intention is to get to the father, the man who really holds the power and the money and all that. She wants to wangle her way in, so she’s made very clear decisions. She knows exactly what she’s doing and how she’s going to do it. She’s being honest with herself about why she’s there, and that’s how you should be, too.

You know how sometimes you look over and see a really old lady or really old man with a really young person, and your mind says, “Well, she must be with him for the money” or “He’s just with her for the money”? Oftentimes that’s just the way it is. Sometimes folks are willing to spend the money to have exactly as much time with a person as they want to have, and then they go away when they’re done.

So don’t judge. Let the old people get what they need.
Let the young people get what they need, as long as nobody is getting hurt. The minute somebody gets hurt, you have an issue. If it’s true to say, “I’m with you for your money,” don’t lie about it. Because if somebody is looking for love and you’re not on the same page, it’s a little shitty. (FYI, if he’s 106 and you’re 34, you might give him a heart attack. So be careful.)

Sometimes when you’re with a very wealthy person, he will want you to do stuff to make him happy, stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise do. He may want you to change your body. Sometimes he may want you to ditch your friends. Remember a while ago I talked about the line in the sand? What are you prepared to do for this type of relationship? Know where your line is.