Why Penny and Robbie Risked Pregnancy, Part 1
Why Penny and Robbie Risked Pregnancy, Part 2
Robbie's View of Penny as His Potential Wife
"Going Steady" versus "Going Slumming"
Robbie Gould's Denial of Paternity
Penny's and Robbie's Prospects in Paternity Trial
Penny's Loss of Hope About Robbie
Penny's and Robbie's Prospects in a Reconciliation -- Part 1
Penny's and Robbie's Prospects in a Reconciliation -- Part 2
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As Penny (née Johnson) Gould helped her son Robbie, Jr., take his first baby steps, Robbie Gould, Sr., looked on with pride. His decision to marry Penny had been the wisest decision he ever would make.
Penny adored her husband Robbie. He was handsome, intelligent, hard-working, kind and attentive. He had all the personal characteristics to become a superb doctor, who would improve the health and lengthen the lives of his many future patients.
Penny had experienced the miracle of giving birth, and now she was watching her wonderful baby grow and walk and talk.
To think that this perfect child -- the product of Penny's and Robbie's mutual love -- had almost been aborted! Thank God that Dr. Houseman did not give 250 to Baby Houseman -- to that meddling, manipulative brat!
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Penny and Robbie were expecting their blissful marriage to last. The USA's divorce rate had been low for many years. The vast majority of marriages lasted forever.
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| Click to enlarge. |
The previous low divorce when Penny and Robbie married in 1964 turned out to be a misleading predictor of their own marriage prospects in the following years.
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Robbie and Penny were not, however, an ordinary couple.
Robbie was attending Yale Medical School. After he graduated, he would enjoy an intellectually-satisfying, high-paying career. In his spare time he would continue to read philosophical works -- Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead was merely Robbie's beginning -- and would think profoundly about wisdom and justice. Robbie came from a good family, and his parents -- with their own lasting marriage and experienced advice -- would serve as superb role models for Robbie and Penny.
Penny would continue to dance and so would remain physically fit and youthful. Her feminine beauty would continue to make Robbie proud and to make his male colleagues jealous. She would be an energetic, limber lover. She would be a loving and attentive mother to Robbie's and her three children.
After all the youngest child began attending school, Penny would become active in community affairs. She would become a leader in charitable organizations that supported the arts. Penny would allocate the Gould family's donations to museums, orchestras and dance education. Whenever she wrote such checks, she signed them Mrs. Robbie Gould.
Penny never would become a reader of serious books. She never would read feminist authors such as Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem. Rather, Penny would read the books of Marabel Morgan, such as Total Woman, published in 1973, from which she would learn many new ideas about how to please her husband Robbie. For example, Penny read there that she should dress up sexy to meet her Robbie at the door when he came home from work. She would nod in agreement as she read: "It's only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him."
Penny's dancing experience has taught her to enjoy letting her man Robbie lead her. She would looks up and smile to him constantly as he guided her through their life together. She would strive to adjust her own compliant movements beautifully to his masterful movements.
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Although the divorce rate soared after 1964, it rose less among people with higher education. For example, the following graphs compare the divorce rates (divorced or married more than once during lifetime) by education. The higher the education, the lower the divorce rate. (Click on the graphs to enlarge them. Orange lines are men; blue lines are women.).
The first graph is explained as follows:
The graph shows the age of men and women along the horizontal axis and the percentage who have been divorced or married more than once on the vertical axis. These graphs are cumulative, so as you go from left to right they add in the people who have ever divorced or remarried at any age group, to reach the total percentage on the right hand side of the graph. As you can see, about 39 percent of men with a high school education or less divorce or remarry in their lifetimes, compared to 37 percent of women with a similar education.
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| High School or Less |
The second graph shows the rates for people with a Bachelor's degree.
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| Bachelor's Degree |
The third graph shows the rates for people -- such as Robbie Gould. -- with an advanced degree.
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| Advanced Degree |
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Among professional men, doctors have lower divorce rates than non-medical professionals. A large statistical research study published in 2015 found that physicians' divorce rate is 24.3% whereas non-medical professionals' divorce rate is 35.0%.
As a rough estimation, the probability that Robbie would ever get divorced from Penny would turn out to be only around 25% -- even though the divorce rate soared after he married her in 1963.
Robbie is likely to stay married because he has a higher education and is a doctor. He is a leader in a profession that is interesting and satisfying. He is highly respected, earns a high salary and enjoys high job-security. He is generally happy with his life -- all the more so if his wife is supportive and sexy.
There is, however, a 25% probability that Robbie and Penny will divorce. I foresee that their marriage might develop serious problems after about 15 years.
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In regard to the role that Robbie might play in causing a divorce, I refer to an article titled 7 Reasons Men Leave Their Marriages, According To Marriage Therapists, written by Brittany Wong, the Relationships Editor of Huffington Post. The seven reasons are:
1. They don’t feel appreciated.I have emphasized the two reasons that I foresee in Robbie's case. I elaborate as follows.
2. They’re at odds with their spouse over spending.
3. Someone cheated.
4. They don’t have anything in common with their spouse anymore.
5. They feel inadequate.
6. Sex is lackluster ― or totally non-existent.
7. They don’t feel their needs are being recognized or validated.
* Robbie and Penny have too few common interests.
Robbie talks with Penny only about their children. He no longer tries to talk with her about his medical work. Her interests and chatter bore him.
* Robbie gets a mistress who shares his interests.
Robbie attends medical conferences without bringing Penny along. At a conference he meets a single woman who works professionally in the medical field. Robbie is delighted that she converses with him about his professional concerns at a high intellectual level.
Robbie's medical career is stuck on a plateau. He is not expanding his influence. He is not innovating and inventing. He is not getting promoted. He is sued for medical negligence or malpractice. His medical business gets into tax troubles with the Internal Revenue Service.
Robbie can discuss his frustrations with this understanding and sympathetic professional woman whom he has met.
When the woman was younger, she read the book Sex and the Single Girl, which encouraged and taught her to have affairs with handsome, successful married men. Robbie and the woman involve themselves in an affair, which becomes a long-lasting romantic relationship. Eventually Robbie decides he would rather spend the rest of his life with this woman.
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The only occupational profession that Penny ever wanted was to be a dancer. Because of that profession's physical demands, the career ends for most female dancers by the age of 30. Professional dancers are essentially athletes, and they age out of their competitive playing careers.
Penny acknowledges and accepts the limits of her dancing career. While in her mid-twenties, she leaves her career, marries, and devotes herself to raising her three children. She never finished high school, and so she does not feel that her marriage to Robbie has limited her ability to develop a successful career in the economy. In general, she feels proud to be a doctor's wife and the active mother of three smart, healthy children.
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In regard to the role that Penny might play in causing a divorce, I refer to an article titled 6 Reasons Women Leave Their Marriages, According To Marriage Therapists, written by the same Brittany Wong:
1. They feel taken for granted and overly responsible for the relationship.I have emphasized the two reasons that I foresee in Penny's case. I elaborate as follows.
2. They keep having the same argument with their partner.
3. They’re not satisfied with their sex lives.
4. They don’t talk and emotionally connect with their husband like they used to.
5. They’ve outgrown their partners.
6. They get to the point where divorce is the only way to put themselves first again.
* Penny cannot talk and emotionally connect with Robbie.
Robbie talks with Penny only about their children. He does not value her opinions about his professional life or about any other intellectual subject. When she tries to tell him something, he does not pay attention. He is not interested in her thoughts or activities.
* Penny is subordinated to Robbie's mistress.
Penny suspects and then figures out that Robbie has a mistress. Robbie denies all Penny accusations and continues to deceive Penny. Robbie lies in order to spend time and to travel alone with his mistress. When Robbie does not pay attention to what Penny is saying, she perceives that he is daydreaming about his mistress.
Penny feels constantly humiliated, and she feels the humiliation never will end.
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To the extent that the movie's character Penny is based somewhat on Lisa Swayze, Robbie's cheating might cause Penny to suffer a mental breakdown. In their autobiographical book The Time of My Life, Patrick and Lisa Swayze (i.e. Lisa Niemi) describe her mental breakdown when she was about 16 years old and her parents' marriage was troubled (page 31):
Lisa was back in Houston having problems of her own. She'd been having a lot of trouble sleeping, and her insomnia eventually got so bad she had to drop out of high school. She'd always had trouble fitting in, and now, with the onset of a creeping depression, she felt even more alienated. This was the beginning of what she later called her "blue period".If Penny were being constantly lied to by Robbie, then she too might have began to suffer similar insomnia, depression, hallucinations, paranoia, and other mental disorders that would cause her to flee her marriage in order to restore her sanity..
Things at home were rough, too -- her parents had a very contentious relationship, and their dynamic affected the entire family. Eventually, Lisa began lying awake at night in fear. Her house didn't feel like a safe place emotionally, and she began to feel an overpowering sense that if she walked out the door of her bedroom in the middle of the night, she'd be eaten by wolves. It wasn't a rational fear, but this was a scary time for a teenage girl who had come to feel that no place was safe for her.
Finally, she decided that she had to get out of her parents' house, at least until things cooled down a bit. So one day at the studio [the dance studio owned by Patrick's mother], she asked my mom if she could come stay at our house for a while.
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When we think of Penny, we think primarily about the actress Cynthia Rhodes, who played the character. Rhodes devoted herself to her acting and dancing career until she was about 32 years old. Then she married and gave birth to three sons and raised them with her husband. After she had been married for 25 years, however, she and her husband divorced.
Rhodes' marriage indicates how Penny's marriage might turn out. Penny might raise three children with Robbie and stay married with him for 25 years. Then, however, Penny and Robbie might divorce.
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This article concludes my series about the relationship of Penny and Robbie.
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