Whoopi Goldberg Explains Why Marriage Has Not Worked for Her: ‘I Don’t Care How You Feel’

Whoopi Goldberg has been married three times. Her last marriage, to Lyle Trachtenberg, ended in divorce in 1995 one year after they tied the knot

Whoopi Goldberg on Feb. 29, 2024. Photo:

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Whoopi Goldberg is over marriage.

Goldberg, 68, appeared on the May 10 episode of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? on MAX to promote her new memoir Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me. As host Wallace asked the EGOT winner about her three past marriages, Goldberg confessed that she simply does not have the energy for that kind of relationship.

“No, I don’t,” she said, after Wallace, 76, asked whether she does not “want to share” in a marriage. “I don’t care how you feel. It’s terrible,” she said with a laugh. “You know, when you’re married to somebody, you have to be invested in how they’re feeling.”

“I am not,” she continued. “I’m invested in my kid. I’m invested in her kids. I’m invested in my son in law. I’m invested in my friends. But I’m not invested in a relationship that would require as much as having a child requires and I know that that’s not for me.”

Goldberg has been married three times. Her marriage to first husband Alvin Martin ended in divorce in 1979; the two share daughter Alexandrea, 49. In 1986, Goldberg married cinematographer David Claessen; they divorced two years later. She later married Lyle Trachtenberg in 1994; the pair split the following year.

Whoopi Goldberg on Oct. 17, 2023.

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While speaking to her stances on relationships, Goldberg told Wallace that she is “not adverse to hit and runs.”

“I know you’re not supposed to say that but I think you must say it because not everybody is meant to be married,” she added. “But many people enjoy, you know, sex. So sometimes a little hit and run is not bad.”

Goldberg has long been forthcoming about her ambivalence toward her past marriages. In a 2011 interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, she confessed that she never felt in love with any of her three ex-husbands.

Whoopi Goldberg on Oct. 17, 2023.

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“I wanted to feel normal and it seemed to me that if I was married I would have a more normal life,” she said of why she tried marriage in the past. “But clearly that’s not the case, that’s not a good reason to get married. You have to actually want a life with someone through ups and downs and I just discovered that wasn’t for me.”

At that time, Goldberg said she did once fall in love, but declined to specify with whom.

“What I know now is I don’t want to live with anyone. I think I tried it with probably the right guys for other people. It wasn’t them; it was me. I actually like living on my own,” she told CNN.