My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

Author:Barbra Streisand [Streisand, Barbra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

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• • •

Jon kept asking me to marry him. And I kept putting him off. Just to placate him, I said, “If we’re together for ten years, I’ll marry you.”

Clearly something was holding me back, but it’s amazing how much you can overlook when you’re so eager to have a family. When we bought the ranch out in Malibu, I saw it as the beginning of a new kind of life in this country environment.

But Jon and I were two very stubborn people, and our visions for the house didn’t always coincide. He had some guys build what was supposed to be a bathtub out of stone, but it was impossible to take a bath in it because the stones were so rough that you couldn’t sit down. When he set a tree stump next to a chair as a side table, I had to point out, “But it’s slanted. You can’t put anything on it. It’ll slide off.”

He won that fight, too, by saying, “It’s my house.”

I think one of the reasons Jon wanted to own that house was so he could have the last word. He needed to be the boss. I thought it might help if we talked to my analyst (Freudian, by the way, and a bit cold). The first question he asked Jon was, “So, what do you think of Barbra?”

Jon said, “You mean what do I feel about her.”

And I thought, Wow. Jon’s right. He was coming from a different place, not the mind but the heart. And I was impressed.

Then Jon suggested I see his therapist, which sounded interesting. I went there alone. The doctor seemed so warm and kind. After I sat down he said, “What problems are you having?”

I said, “Jon and I fight about a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Business . . . finances. He always says, ‘You don’t trust me.’ I think I have a problem with trust. I don’t trust most people.”

And he said, “Why should you? Trust has to be earned.”

Suddenly I was so relieved. Tears filled my eyes. It’s amazing how one sentence that is true and supportive can set you free.

I really liked that doctor and stayed with him for many years.

The fact is, I knew down deep that I could never commit to Jon.

I remember a moment on the set of For Pete’s Sake when he was talking to Michael Sarrazin about stereos, and he said, “Sounds like you’ve got a terrible set. I’m going to get you a better one.”

Weeks later, I asked him, “Did you ever buy that stereo for Michael?”

“Oh . . . no,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter! When you promise to do something, you have to do it.”

I could hardly believe it. I would feel so guilty if I didn’t follow through on a promise. But Jon didn’t.

He tends to ignore inconvenient facts, and his version of reality was often very different from mine. He always says we had this great love affair. I remember going skiing in Aspen early on with some friends, their kids, and our kids.

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