Just a brief disclaimer: I do have a couch in my office, but my clients don’t lie down on it. I don’t do old school psychoanalysis. But I do like to read and speculate about the motives of people I’ve never met, and I must not be alone since they say the pictures of Brangelina’s baby might score upwards of $10 million dollars.
What caught my eye on this particular day was the item about Uma Thurman getting engaged to Arpad (”Arki”) Busson. And of course, I’ll be calling him Arki from here on out because having read an article about his engagement, I’m now in his inner circle. The article said that Arki was formerly engaged to Elle McPherson, with whom he has two children, and intimated that the reason for their 2005 split was that Arki’s a devout Catholic and decided he couldn’t marry a divorcee (meaning Elle.) Now, Uma is actually twice divorced.
Which begs a number of questions: Was Arki lying when he gave Elle that excuse? Or did he mean it at the time, but it turned out his love for Uma was enough to override his Catholicism? Or does he believe that the second divorce undoes both previous marriages and Uma is once again pure as driven snow? Or is he, at three years older, seeing a narrowing of his options and deciding that it’s time, once and for all, to settle down? And does anyone but me give a crap about the answer?
If you’re still reading, then the answer to that last question is yes. And I thank you. Now on to the answer: I think that people trick themselves all the time. Arki probably convinced himself when he was dumping Elle that it was in the name of his faith (a faith that didn’t preclude his producing two children out of wedlock, interestingly), but the reality was that the relationship wasn’t what he wanted and he needed a way out without feeling like a complete jerk. And now that he wants to be married to Uma, he’s able to find the loophole. We’ve all heard the stories about women who wait years for a guy to be “ready” to marry them, the relationship finally ends, and then he marries the next woman he dates. The lesson, in my mind, is that if a man can’t give you what you want (marriage, kids, consistent affection) and he claims it’s because he’s just not wired that way, get the hell out. Because we can all be rewired if we want something (someone) enough. Just think of Arki.