Maria Bello’s Anti-Marriage Vows

by Jesse Kornbluth

In past interviews, she has delivered eye-openers that now strike her as inoperative. For example, “I never want to get married. I’m like a guy that way.” And nothing against monogamy, but she has wondered how fidelity makes sense when modern medicine keeps us alive two or three lifetimes longer than our ancestors?

And then there are her myriad interests and obligations. Acting, parenting, reading, writing, spiritual exploration—so, isn’t even the most compelling guy doomed to get this woman’s leftovers?

Now that bar may be lowering. “My friends sometimes tell me, ‘Learn to love yourself first,’” she says. “Bullshit! You learn in a relationship. It brings up all of your stuff, the good and the bad. I find that in every relationship I grow more and more, become more and more, become someone I didn’t know I was. I’ve been in this relationship for just five months, but I’m already opening up, questioning what I think.”

Then comes a flash of classic Bello: “I’m not saying I want to marry and have five kids.”

And, softening, a return to the new: “I feel the mix of security and longing, and I hope for that to continue.”