Bethenny Frankel has an interview in People Magazine to promote her new book, I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To: 10 Rules for Not Screwing Up Your Happily Ever After. Single Bethenny has defended the content of her book by saying she learned from her failures. Judging from some of the things Bethenny told People, she assumes that her mistakes make her an expert in the “do as I say” department, and that’s just not the case.
It’s true, I suck at relationships. It’s like I see the island. But I have a difficult time swimming there.
She wants love more than success
Everybody would think all I ever wanted was success. I think the success I created was probably like a false sense of love, being on television and connecting with an audience. But if anybody ever asked me what I wanted more, it’s love.I learn more from my mistakes than my successes. As I say in the book, you think you have someone pegged and you feel blindsided and you are afraid that you’ll do it again so you don’t even want to get into anything because you’re scared.
Offering to pay is ’emasculating’
Someone said to me recently, ‘We are pricing ourselves out of the market.’ I’m ok with a money gap, but men need to feel in control – there’s nothing more emasculating than a woman pulling out her credit card. I don’t care how women’s lib we are.She won’t use online tools to meet someone
[Blind dates are] my idea of hell. I don’t like small talk; I like big talk.I don’t have any [dating] apps. I’m averse to online dating, but then again I suck at relationships, so maybe I should try it.
She won’t marry again
I don’t legally marry again. I’m not saying I wouldn’t stand on a beach and commit to somebody, I just don’t want to be in a contract with someone I love. I want a partner. Someone who is not threatened and not emasculated and not with me for the wrong reasons.I would not want to date anyone who would want to be on a reality TV show. You have to date someone who has their own identity. Someone’s identity can’t be you.
I self-deprecate, but I don’t actually think I’m a disaster at relationships. You just have to know how to handle me. I’m complicated.
[From People Magazine, print edition, April 20, 2015]
That’s bad advice not to offer to pay, especially once you’re in a committed relationship, and especially if you’re the higher earner like Bethenny. It’s just part of being in a give and take relationship, but I guess Bethenny doesn’t know much about that. She does know about dating drunken former frat boys, and she’ll tell you about it. Radar Online has some details from Bethenny’s book in which she reveals that her last boyfriend, Michael Cerussi, would show up late at her house wasted and looking for a booty call. Just FYI – she met him at a bar. They also have an anecdote about how Bethenny offered to split a $600 dinner bill with Mac. Maybe she partially blames that for their demise, but that was never going to last and I’m sure they had bigger problems. From what I remember of her show, she used to argue with her ex, Jason Hoppy, constantly. In this interview she says she’s looking for a guy who can “handle” her, but maybe she needs to just chill out and do her own thing for a while.
I really have a problem with women who refuse to pay their own way.
+a gazillion.
What’s more emasculating to your husband Bethenny, that you air all your dirty laundry out on national tv? Or you pick up a check now and then? Or those pesky rumors you cheated during marriage? Sooo emasculating.
Maybe men wouldn’t be feel emasculated if we didn’t provide it as an out. Like instead of poor emasculated man! It’s, you’re emasculated by financial stability? Get a grip!
Is it just me or is the title misleading? Bethany didn’t say that, she said that someone said that to her.
@V4Real: I think someone else said the “we’re pricing ourselves out of the market” part, but the rest of the comments look like it’s her own.
So do I, the main reason being equality goes both ways or it doesn’t go anywhere.
Exactly.
Maybe part of her problem is that she dates men who are so easily “emasculated.” Ffs
This! I’ve dated guys who always insist on paying and they’re (usually) alpha male types. Not always of course, but usually.
I laughed out loud when I read the header.
Really? Tell it to my boyfriend.
I ALWAYS offer to split, and if we’re travelling and going from restaurant to bar or whatever, I’ll pick up the tab at one place, and he’ll pick up the tab at the next place or whatever.
He’s definitely not “emasculated” by it. In fact, I suspect he’d be happy if I paid every time. lol
No kidding.
I don’t understand how people can stand doing that, honestly. I had an ex-boyfriend a few years back who would. not. let. me. pay. for. anything. and it wound up destroying the relationship. For me, being able to pay my own bills and afford the things I want was part of the enjoyment of working full time, the sense of accomplishment I got out of working for something and then procuring it. Having somebody pay every time I went out made me feel infantilized and dependent, and I hated it.
Is it an American thing? My boyfriend is European and we have always split the bill unless it was special occasion type things or if he offered to pay for it all.
Never for me. I have always just kept a mental tally of who did what. Not hard to keep up with.
Um yeah. Very public humiliation and a marital meltdown in the media seems far more emasculating and emotionally damaging than offering to pay for your half of dinner.
I think I’m going to error on the side of caution and not take life advice from Ms Frankel
Wise decision.
+100000000. Who is actively looking to take advice from her??? Is this book actually doing well. This heifer can’t even maintain a decent co-parenting relationship with her ex and we are all supposed to flock to buy her idiotic relationship book that hasn’t even worked for her??
This entitled dingbat needs to eat a box of crackers and STFU.
I read this because every day at work, I have to look at Skinnygirl drinks in the fridge. My two co-workers copycat one another on what they eat and drink (which is weird enough). I thought the name of that drink is rather silly, not realizing BF is behind it.
What drivel. I mean, seriously. At the point where money is somewhat equal (meaning both partners have enough of it), who cares who pays? Ridiculous. I always pay when I’m out with my husband – he’s never felt emasculated by it – and if he did, I’d have something to say about it, lol!
This lady is a piece of work. She treated her ex fairly terribly, and, IIRC, he helped her with her business pro bono and when she sold it for an enormous sum, she didn’t want to share. She didn’t want a partner then, and I doubt she wants one now.
Yeah you can replace “lady” with ‘freak”…
I think it is in the approach as well, if a person of either gender whips out their credit card with a ” I have money and can afford to pay because I make more money” attitude That is a major turn off. I have had friends do that and I make it a point to pay my own way. If it was more like “you pay next time” or it was really sincere act of kindness that is cool. Using money as some sort of power over a person regardless of gender is just low class
Excellent point.
I don’t care how ’emasculated’ a man feels, I’ll whip out my credit card whenever I want.
Word. My purchase, my money, my independence. Also, there’s nothing more pathetic than a successful woman pretending to be anything else because someone’s precious feelings might get hurt. Get over it.
Btw, is this a generational thing? Maybe it’s dudes her age but when I look around, the couples in my circle of friends don’t seem to have that problem. Everybody works, everybody pays. I don’t live in the US though. I’ve invited guy friends for coffee/dinner and they had no problem letting me pay. Next time it was their turn. I do NOT get this whole thing at all.
I think it is partly the way you are brought up. I’m 61 and I believe in paying my own way. I could barely get through what she told People. Of course people learn (or at least should learn) more from their mistakes than their successes. I constantly tell my grandchildren to learn from the mistakes and don’t do it again. Maybe she wouldn’t suck at relationships if she were more comfortable in her own skin.
I know at least three old (in their 70s and 80s) married couples, married since forever, where the wife has always handled the money, giving the husband like an allowance every day, since obviously their husbands are terrible with money. So maybe it really is partly the way you are brought up.
@fruitloops: How do you know my parents??? 😉
Fortunately for me I have no real idea who this woman is, I seem to have managed to avoid her but just from the headline I do know she’s a blithering idiot.
I want to be where you are.
How do I erase all traces of this annoying-ass lady from my mind?
Er bleach? Strong alcoholic beverages or possible emigration, none of my friends over this side of the pond know who she is either.
Absinthe
I thought “absinthe made the heart grow fonder” (I’ll see myself out…)
“It’s like I see the island. But I have a difficult time swimming there. ” Apparently she sucks at writing too.
You know when I won’t be pulling out my credit card? To buy her dumb book, or any other product she’s selling.
LOL!
The Bethenny Frankel threads are always worth reading for the hilarious comments alone.
“Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
So nice to know common sense still exists 🙂
I hope that credit card bit is due to her own personal experience. Her exes might have felt emasculated due to her paying all the time, being on the show, being more successful etc. She is assuming she will be dating only wealthy men in the future and is willing to compromise her own feminism to please them. That is the bigger problem IMO with that statement. Most modern men appreciate women chipping in or taking turns paying the tab.
I’m annoyed by the not liking small talk, only big talk. You have to make the small talk, in any relationship, whether romantic or not, before you get to know each other well enough to get down to the big talk. Anyone who opens up with the deep personal stuff on the first date likely has a problem. I’ll admit the whole dating thing, the tentative first dates, the getting to know people, can be tough, but that is going to happen whether you meet them online, meet them on an arranged first date, or meet them in a bar. Relationships take time. She’s an idiot.
Exactly. ITs getting to know someone before springing on them that you are a narcissist maniac.
Yes exactly! And I met Mr Snazzy online on a dating site … worked perfectly fine for us!
Another reason for me to completely ignore all advice this woman has to give
THIS! My husband and I were friends were years before becoming romantically involved. But you know what? That still involved a lot of small talk. And frankly even now we still engage in small talk! Who wants to have every conversation be emotionally and mentally draining?
A blind date sometimes works out well, especially if you have mutual friends who see commonalities. I reluctantly went on a blind date 15 years ago and never looked back.
from what i have witnessed and heard its ironically mostly the high earning women, the ones who profited greatly from feminism, who have a problem with a man making less.
“regular” women are in my experience the ones who have the least problems with it.
it is certainly not a male only problem. she tries to put it on the man when her words show that she is the one having a problem with it.
I was going to comment on something similar. These women are such a strange dichotomy of benefitting from feminism, yet still holding on to old-fashion, outdated values where the man has all the control in the relationship.
Not me. I’m a feminist and both my husband and I work hard, but I make more than he does. I don’t have an issue because he works so hard. As long as we both work hard and make our own money, and we have our own identities, it’s all good. Bethenny just wants a rich guy to live off of, IMO.
I am a man and make an ok living; if someone wants/offers to pay for me I thank them & say I will get it next time or something similar. Why is that so hard?
It’s not for a mature, self-assured man. Good grief.
And contrary to what the media wants to make us believe, those are not that hard to find. At least not in the under-40 age group. Not at ALL. Though, as I’ve stated somewhere above, I don’t live in the US.
yes, thank you!
I’m fascinated by the lines on both sides of her mouth.
I think she just has an emasculating personality. That is who she is. She loves busting balls and putting people (men) down.
Gawd forgive me…out of curiosity watched RHNY last night with Bethenny whining and crying about having been “homeless” for two years…homeless and having to stay in Presidential suites of hotels. Poor Bethenny.
I have to mute every time she starts the manic chatter.
The delusion is strong with this female.
It is as simple as this. She wants her money to be hers only. And she wants your (man/date/husband) money, to be her money too. Plus she wants to be able to demean you daily.
Any male who attempts to “handle” her… well she has an ex-husband who can tell you how that went. Either you let her have her way all the time. Or get prepare for her hate filled quest, to destroy you.
She is after a Ron Perelman. Which is not happening for her. A man that obscenely wealthy… avoids a loud harpy… like the plague.
I’ve never had an issue when I pay for things, some men have been surprised but they actually made a huge deal about how awesome it was that I at least try to help, one said it was a huge turn on, lol. It’s probably emasculating if you make them feel that way or if they aren’t secure enough in the first place. Bad advice there from Bethenney, and I’m sure most of the book is full of it.
She should try dating a teacher.
I think she’s confused about the concept of online dating and how it works. It’s not a “blind date”, you read a profile and see pics of the person, email, text, sometimes talk on the phone, etc before you go on a first date.
This is the prejudice I can’t figure out. You’d rather meet some random at a bar then be able to pre-screen? If you are careful with online dating, and follow a couple of personal safety tips (first date in public place, driving your own car, letting your friends know where you are going etc.) you can meet amazing people. I have to use two hands to count the number of friends I have who have met their current SO/spouse through online services. Really great amazing partners, long time relationships…. whatever. Yeah there were some dud dates, but no more than the dud dates one gets from bar meetups or friends “I know the greatest person for you…. I’ll hook you up!”
Bars can be fun, and I know people who have good long term relationships from bar meetups, but they can be kind of limiting.
I regularly carry my guy’s wallet in my purse because he doesn’t like to sit on it. Can only imagine what she would think seeing me pull it out and hand it to him to pay for things.
Hi Krista, are you me? Unless we’re going off in different locations, my husband usually chucks his wallet into my purse. And sometimes if my purse is heavy, he will carry it around and think nothing of it.
*CREDIT CARD USAGE INTENSIFIES*
Mr. Imo pays the bills and I pay for entertainment, vacations and dining out etc. so when we’re out it seems as if I am paying for everything. But it amuses him when other men side eye him and he jokingly refers to himself as a kept man.
Mr. Rose & I have a similar approach to splitting our finances, but I paid on our first date. It was during the tech crash. We’d both been unemployed and recently rehired, but I was a month ahead of him on that count so I paid. If he felt emasculated by that, he’s sure hidden it well all these years.
On another note, she shouldn’t go out in public until her fillers are more settled.
Oh lordy, I actually kind of agree with Bethenny on this one (I know, gah??!!). No matter how many men say it (and they all do) men don’t like it when their woman earns more – in my experience. They ALL say it’s awesome at the beginning, then the issues slowly start to creep up, year after year….or on down the line in marriage. Not outright always – “I feel emasculated”! It is usually more on a subversive level — “you think I am lazy” or “I know you secretly wish I would earn more.” I think it is simply stuck in the DNA to be the provider and if he is with a woman who makes or is worth substantially more, then more often than not, it is a problem. I don’t mean all pay gaps, just big ones…..I think it really comes into play when the woman makes a lot more than the man or is a very high earner in the top 1 % – not when the woman makes $75K and the man $50K.
My husband and I have been married 20 years. In the very beginning, when he was in residency, I made far more than him. Then when he went into practice and I went part time he made way way way more than me. In the last few years it has flipped again. In all these years and all the flips, it’s never been an issue at all. Our money is shared. I can’t be in asshole about it bc I saw how gracious he was when i barely making anything
My huz and I had a similar experience. When we met (online!) and started dating, he was struggling through some lean years in his business, so we kept the dates inexpensive and I cooked for him or we cooked together as often as we went out. When we married, I managed our household finances (thank God he’s not a spender) so even though he whipped out the credit card when we were out, I was contributing more to the coffers that paid the credit card bill.
I think deep down he would have preferred to be the primary provider, but had to wait a few years before the roles were reversed. It wasn’t a macho, controlling issue as much as feeling like he was adequately providing for his family. I’m happy to let him feel that satisfaction since we’re in this thing together and each doing what we can to keep the family’s affairs running smoothly.
Why are we wasting space on this woman and who is actually interested in her advice?? Yesterday it was all about her distorted barbie doll proportions – i.e. skinny frame + fake boobs – today it’s financial advice?
I met her last boyfriend, Michael Cerussi (Mac) last night. He… was very slick looking and his face was much younger up close than from a distance (botox/fillers?). He’s a hedge fund guy and this was at a drinking party.
Mutual friends who said they had dinner together with her said she was quite nice and engaging/funny to be around (though self-absorbed), which doesn’t surprise me.
What DID surprise me is that this character Mac would have wanted to date her for as young and slick (too slick) and attractive as he was.
That woman will never get a penny of my money. She can stuff her stupid books, booze, etc.
Can’t believe I waste time reading about her–i think I was sucked in by the kardashian black & white dotted dress she’s wearing.
Bethenny’s demeanor is what’s emasculating. She’s so abrasive, I can’t stand her. She’ll be forever alone.
Your lookalike, Rhoda Morgenstern, would be appalled.
Ugh, she is soooooo wrong.
I had the good fortune to marry a woman with a much sharper business acumen and better career focus than I. So when we met and began dating, she was earning more and had more in the bank than I did. And I mean, a LOT more.
So being old fashioned, I always paid on our dates (after all, I was the one who asked her to please go out with me — it only felt right. Plus, at the early stage, neither of us had a clear picture of how big the wealth disparity was).
But as things got serious, she began offering to pay for things, especially when we did things that I flatly couldn’t afford otherwise.
And let me tell you, as a man, when she pulled out her AMEX and paid for my glorious prime rib, it was the OPPOSITE of emasculating.
It made me feel like a boss, because I’m the champ who landed this beautiful charming lady who earns lots of money, and wants to spend that money hanging out with this guy right here.
Sounds like she got a catch too!
Sounds like you both got a great catch!
A part of me feels bad for her. It’s natural to want someone to love eternally, but honestly I don’t think she’s ever going to find that. She seems… off. No one wants to be with a maniac. Girl needs to chill.
She needs to find someone who will be able to “handle” her?
How about you just stop being an *sshole Bethenny.
This train wreck is giving relationship advice?! Oh man.
So why would you want to be with a man who feels emasculated by a woman with a credit card?
While I have respect for her business accomplishments, I’m going to give a permanent side-eye to any relationship advice she has give mkay?
She sold her Skinny Girl alcoholic drinks company for many millions of dollars… I’m curious as to why she’s writing a relationship book and not a business book?
…maybe she just needs to be less “complicated”. It’s exhausting.
Maybe it’s a Southern thing? IDK because me and my female friends do expect a guy to pay on the first date. I would always pull out my card and offer, but that offer was never accepted, and I knew it wouldn’t be. Now, after that, it should be half and half or some sort of splitting. My fiancé pays for most of our outings, because he makes a lot more money than I do. But then plenty of times I’ll take him out to lunch and pay, and we split groceries and bills and such. But the first few dates – yeah, he paid. It is a source of pride for a lot of guys to feel like they can “tae care of their girl” – it’s never made me feel like I’m not a strong woman, it just makes me feel like I’m cared for. *shrug*
What the hell with all these women who are so damn scared to be alone and think being in a relationship is more important than anything else? Seriously, it’s so depressing and desperate and what does it say to all the women out there? “If you’re not looking for love, you’re a loser. If you’re not in a relationship, you’re a loser.” Jeez.
No it is liberating IDIOT!
Bethany is too scared to let her guard down to be vulnerable in a relationship, that’s why her marriage broke up. She pushed him away to avoid getting hurt because she was hurt and had no trust with her mother. She claims her ex husband was threatened by her wealth, etc. but he didn’t like her pushing him away by controlling and emasculating him. She wanted to hurt him before he hurt her, out of fear
Would you pay for a math tutor who doesn’t understand math and still has to figure out a way to actually make those equations work, because apparently SHE LEARNED FROM HER MISCALCULATIONS?
I can’t be the only one who learned more about how a relationship works through her one working relationship than from all the break-ups prior. I know for a fact that hubbs feels the same way.