BB FANS

I have just read this book where Cheryl talks frankly and openly about her marriage with Michael. I read it with a mixture of horror and frustration. Definately Michael has lead a car crash life and Cheryl seemed to be keen to put her side of the story across as things became more and more bitter.

Michael no doubt will have his version of events but from the book he was seen as a bully, who physically, verbally and mentally abused his wife for years and years and years while at the same time she claims they had this deep love for one another. I felt frustrated because I just wonder why she put up with it for so long if things were as bad as they were. (michael soiling the bed due to drugs, causing many scenes while out, smashing up hotel rooms, running away, flitting between gay relationships and his wife to name but a few!) Yet Cheryl had him back over and over again. In a marriage as volatile and unstable as that I just don't understand why she didn't get out and it left me wondering if she was in some way part of the problem. She was always there for him to come back to. It struck me as a co-dependancy thing going on. he needed her and she needed him to need her. Interesting stuff.

Absolutely. I also wondered if she felt she had 'invested' too much to walk away and if she felt a sense of guilt about how her own 'idyllic' childhood compared to the one that he had described to her, even though his story changed so often that she surely must have known that he was hiding things from her. She seemed to want to 'fix' him somehow and make it 'all better' but I think he played on that and let her assume the role of 'mother' and he was the wayward child.

I sensed a defensiveness when she talked about his 'alleged' homosexuality, almost in denial about it. She surely had deeper reasons to stay with him than the ones she referred to in the book. Anybody else would have got away but she seemed like she never even considered it as an option until she was literally left with no choice.

I think you have a point about her possibly assuming the mother role. She often defended his comments about her being too controling ie picking out his clothes for him to wear by saying he liked it. We only have one word against another I guess but it definatley seemed she had a bigger part to play in it than she perhaps realised. Sorry but if my husband shat the bed because of drug use I would rub his face in it then get on the next banana boat out of there. That said I didn't like Barrymore on BB either he was a knob most of the time