‘The View’ Star Whoopi Goldberg Reflects on Why She Got Married Three Times: ‘I Wanted to Feel Normal’
Whoopi Goldberg of The View is quite vocal about her love of living alone. After three marriages that ended in divorce, the talk show moderator discovered that she enjoyed life much more as a single person.
Goldberg previously shared her reasons for getting married and admitted that none of them had to do with love.
Whoopi Goldberg’s stance on marriage
Last year, Goldberg spoke with The New York Times Magazine about her initial reasons for tying the knot.
“Look, people expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married,” The View co-host explained. “So I kept trying to do that, but I didn’t want to share information with somebody else. I didn’t want anybody asking me why I was doing what I was doing, or to have to make the other person feel better. But if you’re in a relationship, you have to do those things, and it took me a while to figure out that I didn’t want to.”
Goldberg eventually discovered that she didn’t have to take the traditional route others did. “I’d be thinking, why don’t I feel the thing that I’m supposed to?” she commented. “Then one day I thought: I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to conform. I tried marriage, and it wasn’t for me.”
Yet there is one condition under which Goldberg could picture herself walking down the aisle again.
“The only way I could be married to anybody ever again is if they lived in another country,” Goldberg joked in a 2018 interview on Loose Women. “They could come and visit, it would be like ‘Oh, my goodness, I haven’t seen you in so long. Come here!’ “
‘The View’ star talks relationships with Piers Morgan
When Goldberg was interviewed by Piers Morgan on CNN in 2011, he broached the subject of her three marriages. When she told the journalist that she hadn’t been in love with any of her husbands, Morgan was stunned.
“Why did you do it if you weren’t in love with them?” he asked.
The EGOT winner revealed that her desire for normalcy is what prompted her to say ‘I do’ several times.
“I wanted to feel normal and it seemed to me that if I was married I’d have a much more normal life,” Goldberg shared. “Clearly that’s not the case. That’s not a good reason to get married. You have to actually want a life with someone through ups and downs. I just discovered that wasn’t for me.”
Morgan went on to ask Goldberg if she had every been in love. “Once,” she admitted, also divulging that the man she fell for many years ago wasn’t someone famous and she had no regrets for not marrying him.
“What I know now is I don’t want to live with anyone,” Goldberg said. “It wasn’t them [her ex-husbands]. It was me. I actually like living on my own. I like my privacy.”
‘The View’ moderator’s mom tried to talk her out of one wedding
When Goldberg was promoting her relationship book If Someone Says ‘You Complete Me, RUN! in 2015, she told Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts that her mother attempted to stop her from walking down the aisle at one of her weddings.
“She said, ‘You know you don’t want to do this. I have the keys to the car. Let’s go,’ ” Goldberg recalled of her mother. “My excuse was I don’t want to embarrass this person because we sent all these invitations out and you don’t want to leave them looking bad.”
The Ghost actress encouraged viewers to take stock of their mates way ahead of their wedding day. “Before you get to that place maybe you want to say, do I actually want to do this?” Goldberg recommended.
The Oscar winner reiterated what she had told Morgan years before, maintaining that she preferred to be on her own.
“For me, I came to understand that relationships require a day-to-day, a minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour… give and take. I’m not interested in that,” Goldberg told Roberts with a laugh, adding that she did have one form of company at home. “I have a cat. I’ll do it with him.”
