Wednesday, September 29, 2010

DECLARATION FOR MISTRESSES - Enthusiasm for Living

"I will make the easy effort of setting a table beautifully!" 


What makes even a small apartment evident of an enthusiasm for living?

The easy effort of making a table a place of beauty, where the diners care to linger over conversation.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

MISTRESS LEXICON : SHADOW MARRIAGE

SHADOW MARRIAGE is a new way of saying that the marriage - and it is a marriage - between a mistress and her man - is in place but rarely spoken of.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

BOOK REVIEW and OPINION BY MISSY : "MARRY HIM" BY LORI GOTTLIEB

LORI GOTTLIEB never thought about the MISTRESS ALTERNATIVE when she wrote "MARRY HIM."

This is one of those books about how to get married that tells women that the reason they have not gotten married is that they are not realistic about men and marriage; they have given into feminism, or are too idealistic about who they can attract, they let good ones with minor flaws get away, or they suffer from too high self esteem. Shiiiiit! Once again we women are to blame when things don't go right in a relationship. Once again we are the ones who need to change to suit someone else's sensibility - not the men.

"Marry Him," is hilarious in parts and easily to relate to, and yet, I think single-mother-on-purpose Lori needs to consider becoming a mistress. She has made it this far without a husband, has had a child via a sperm bank (very liberated!) so why does she need a husband now? (She can easily borrow someone else's husband and have him part of the time, which is all the time she has to spare!)

Giving up perfectly good men in the hopes of doing better, the author and many of the women who spoke to her, found themselves in their early 40's and not desirable on the marriage market as their easy fertility time passed.

Apparently, 40-something men who want their own genes propagated want much younger women. (But 40-something women are very much desired by older men, many who have had families and have had careers and have the energy for another relationship!)

Apparently, Lori and friends may have deluded themselves at some point that they were OK without (rather traditional) men and marriage so they just said no when they had a chance at marriage. Or did they really ever have a chance to marry? I read about these "too picky" women who regretted letting someone they lived with or were involved with years ago "get away," but can't recall even one of them saying, "we were engaged to be married," or "he asked me to marry him." In other words they were unrealistic that they were in marriage bound relationships in the first place. The men who got away married someone else. Surprise!

MISTRESSES are excellent at coming to terms with the imperfection of men and relationships. We stay with who and what we have and give up what feels like the never ending search for a husband as well. We are practiced at love as a result.

If coming to terms with what your declining value in the marriage market was all it took to be married, many of us would be married, if not to the man who we love now, to someone else. Instead this ability to come to terms with what we have as mistresses helps us stay in the relationship we are in, because we suspect or know that WE PROBABLY CANNOT DO BETTER. (And sometimes a mistress does marry when she can do better!) We are not suffering from the low self esteem always suspected of us but neither are we suffering from "too high" self esteem that keeps some women yelling "NEXT!" as they wave on these perfectly good men !

When it comes to being in a LONG TERM COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP, there are men who are very particular about what woman they marry and propagate their genes with. Realistically, many wealthy men will only marry women who also come from wealth. A mistress who starts out as a nobody with nothing can become a somebody with something and it often takes a lot of self discipline to do so! Still, she may never be totally accepted in a wealthy man's social sphere because she was not born into it. Face it! Even outstanding beauty cannot make up for being born poor in some social spheres.

One of the ways of being realistic is to face ourselves, to come to terms with our looks, our bodies, our intelligence, talents, skills, but also our background and opportunities. Many of us are able to have a better man in our lives by being a mistress than if we marry. Many of us have outgrown the men who we were perhaps destined to marry; our neighborhood boys!

It is too easy to imagine that we can really go back there - into a box - when we have been thinking outside it. It is too easy to imagine (because we do not know that letting someone who was not for us in their time has resulted in our singleness or our mistresshood) that our life would be so much better if we had been willing to marry the boy next door who was perhaps our destiny, if we had not educated ourselves or sought careers, if we had not left home or had not moved hundreds of miles away independently. If if if...

Many mistresses don't just imagine it, they know that they are better off as mistresses than as wives, or that the opportunities this life style presents them are far greater than the life they would have had if they "settled." This is our compromise. Mistresses are also successful because they know that they must endeavor to have a life of their own, not totally dependent on a man. We cannot get lazy the way some wives get.

Personally, I think it is better to be devoted to one good man (does hearing that a man can keep a mistress and still be a good man startle you?) for years than it is to have platonic "fuck buddies," or endure several relationships that never even became mutually supportive!

Women who have married busy executives and entrepreneurs, who found themselves alone a lot, might be able to relate; It is never fun to wait around hoping for phone calls, visits, invitations, married or not, and I believe because mistresses are more realistic, they are those who do not wait, but get busy!




Missy


C Missy Rapport/Mistress Manifesto 2010 All Rights including International and Internet Rights Reserved.

MARRY HIM The Case For Settling for Mr. Good Enough is by Lori Gottlieb C 2010 and published by Dutton Books

Sunday, September 12, 2010

LINK TO THE OFFICIAL SITE FOR MONACO

Want to link to Monaco? ... on this site I learned that Albert and Charlene will marry in JULY of 2011... moving the wedding date forward. A long engagement. Like no one is in a rush to have children and a heir to the throne...

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

From SEPTEMBER 2010 BAZAAR MAGAZINE : ARTICLE ON DAISY FELLOWES

Just browsing through SEPTEMBER 2010 fashion in Bazaar Magazine, reading an article by David Vincent about THE MOST STYLISH AND WICKED WOMAN IN FASHION, DAISY FELLOWES.
She was the Harper's Bazaar Paris editor in the 1930's.

page 415

"When Fellowes hosted dinner parties, she'd invite people who hated one another and watch the carnage. Wives and mistresses were seated next to each other. Still, no one would think of refusing to attend....

"On the birthday of Princess Aspasia of Greece... Fellowes had one of her daughters deliver a stuffed monkey as a gift. The princess's husband had been killed by a monkey bite. "It was very Versailles, Louis XIV's mistresses all vying for power and instigating coups against each other, says Pamela Golbin, curator in chief of the Musee de la Mode et due Textile in Paris....

"Unsurprisingly, Fellowes' love life was just as complicated. At 20, she married Prince Jean de Broglie. "The prince started up with the chauffeur as soon as he got married, " says (Karl)Lagerfeld. "They all do that." Somehow the couple managed to have three daughters. The price died during World War I.... Seventeen months later, she married the Honorable Reginald Fellowes, grandson of the the 7the Duke of Marlborough, son of Lady Rosamond Spencer-Churchill, and cousin of Winston. With him, she had a fourth daughter. She remained devoted but not faithful. Her hobby was married men..."

Friday, September 3, 2010

SUSIE and JANE and JERRY (from JERRY WIENTRAUB's WHEN I STOP TALKING YOU'LL KNOW I'M DEAD

Reading Concert Promoter - Movie Producer JERRY WEINTRAUB'S memoir and towards the back of the book he tells about his wife Jane (Morgan) the singer, his mistress (our word not his) Susie, and him... an open relationship... one in which their friends and family have been notified to accept it... Here is what Jerry himself has to say in the chapter called A RIDE IN THE HILLS...

"The simple fact is, Jane no longer wanted my life. She didn't want to go to parties, didn't want to have sex with me. Not interested. Good. She needs what she needs and I need what I need, which is to be with somebody who wants to be involved in every part of my life: Mentally, emotionally, sexually. Warren Beatty, lothario of lotharios, once asked me the secret. "How did you make it work, Jerry? How do you pull it off?"

"Well the answer is, I didn't. Jane and Susie did. I have a life with Susie and I love Susie, but I'm still with Jane, too. I see her all the time, and we're on the phone constantly. I will be there whenever she needs me. Otherwise, I am off, in my own life. I think this works only because Jane had such a successful career...I have been with Jane for forty-eight years. I'm one of the ancients now. But I am still here, which means I am still living, still changing."

Jerry Weintraub's memoir is called IF I STOP TALKING YOU'LL KNOW I'M DEAD.