KallMeKris

following the pattern she'd been taught since childhood.

Protect the person with more power, swallow the truth.

And in pages from what's been described as her unpublished memoir, she wrote about the end of the marriage saying, quote, so shattering, it destroyed the relationship.

It was more than a final straw.

It was a reality crushing the fragile web of romantic fantasies with sledgehammer force.

unquote.

And she later told People, quote, we knew each other better than we knew ourselves.

I always knew he was okay.

It was myself I didn't know about, unquote.

So after the divorce, Natalie was 24 and one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood.

She certainly didn't lack company.

And Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, David Niven Jr., Frank Sinatra, who'd she'd known since she was 15,

And in 1965, she was briefly engaged to a Venezuelan shoe manufacturer named Ladislav Batnik, but none of it lasted.

And the relationship with Beattie was the most volatile.

Quote, our affair was a collision from start to finish.

While Robert Wagner never did express hostility, Warren couldn't stop and I contributed my share of fireworks too.

In fact, we were both so confused that we thought fighting and hostility meant real emotional honesty, unquote.

And she threw herself into psychoanalysis after the divorce and sessions nearly every day for years.

And she once joked that her therapy bills were quote unquote, at least the equal of the annual defense budget of most Central American nations.

I don't blame her as if it's every day.