Whoopi Goldberg admits she was ‘never meant to be married’

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Whoopi Goldberg recently spoke about her experience with marriage during a segment on <em>The View</em>.

While discussing the contentious split between Real Housewives of Miami star Lisa Hochstein and ex-husband Lenny Hochstein, the View co-hosts shared their thoughts on divorce. Joy Behar commented that it can someone feel “homicidal” while Alyssa Farah Griffin - a child of divorce - said: “It doesn’t go away quickly, at least in my experience, and you can’t let that fester and dwell or it can take you from moving on.”

Goldberg, on the other hand, had an entirely different perspective on divorce. As someone who had gone through three divorces, the actor said: “I was dancing and prancing around, I was so glad to get out of there.” When Behar asked Goldberg if she had felt the same way after each divorce, she replied: “Every time, every time. Because I always knew, I always thought – you didn’t want to do this, and you knew you didn’t want to do it, and you did it anyway, so shut up and move on.”

The Sister Act star elaborated that she had tried marriage because she felt like she “could make a round hole go into a square peg.” Goldberg added that she felt like she succumbed to the pressure of getting married at the time, even though she ultimately knew that “she was never meant to be married”.

“I kept doing what everyone kept saying I was supposed to do,” Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, continued.  “And then I was like – this is getting expensive and boring.”

The actor, who was the first African-American woman to achieve EGOT status - the winner of an Emmy Award, Grammy Award, Academy Award, and Tony Award – has largely remained private about her love life. From 1973 to 1979, she was married to Alvin Martin, with whom she shares daughter Alexandrea Martin. Goldberg was also married to David Claessan from 1986 to 1988, and Lyle Trachtenberg from 1994 to 1995.

In 2011, she admitted on Piers Morgan Tonight that she wasn’t sure she had been in love with any of her husbands. When asked about her remarks in a July 2019 interview with The New York Times, Goldberg said: “Look, people expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married.”

The New York native continued: “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.”

Goldberg explained that in her past relationships, it was a bit of trial and error to figure out what she wanted out of her romantic relationships. With each marriage, she said that she felt dissatisfied and frustrated that she didn’t feel what she was “supposed to”.

One day, Goldberg said she realised: “I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to conform.”