Why Keaton gave up on men

Diane Keaton resisted motherhood for a long time, says Johanna Schneller in Ladies’ Home Journal. Not until she was 50 did the actress adopt the first of her two children. “I didn’t think I was ever going to be prepared to be a mother. I wanted to be in a good relationship. But those good relationships that are strong and substantive never happened for me.” Keaton, who dated a series of men with strong personalities, including Woody Allen and Warren Beatty, now thinks she knows why those relationships ultimately failed. “I was always a little bit afraid of men: Oh no, am I going to get lost in this? Am I going to be myself, or am I going to be constantly saying, ‘Your jokes are so funny.’ Maybe that was my generation, or maybe I didn’t feel comfortable enough with men to go, ‘Hey, I don’t agree with you on that.’ I was inclined to be somebody who would go along. Not a good thing. They’re not getting the real you. I’d get lost in that, and when the real me came out, it was less than flattering.” When she gave up on romance, she found that children were by far the better alternative. “Children, oh, they pull your heartstrings, they crush you to the core of your being, don’t they? But that’s what love is—pain and beauty. It’s never going away, that love. It gets more and more intense. I’m so surprised by it.”

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