So, I joined this forum just to ask this question because it has been weighing heavily on my mind. And, after reading about everything that went on during their marriage, I think I may be onto something. I think I read in one of the old threads on this board where Lucy say's that Desi never loved her, and that got me to thinking.

Do you guys think that he married her for his American Citizenship? He didn't become one until 1943, a couple years after they married.

I don't know, I wanted to believe in the whole fantasy that they were soulmates and they really loved one another deeply, but I just think Lucy really loved him and he simply tolerated her. I think this may be the reason she became so bitter, hard, cold and a workaholic during the second half of their marriage up until her death.

Sorry but I beg to differ!

Yes, I know that Desi was quite the Don Juan womanizer who never wanted to be faithful to any one woman (and there's speculation that it took some bribery to keep his 2nd wife from divorcing him). HOWEVER; I DO think as much as Desi could have, Desi DID love Lucy but just never thought he should have to be faithful to her which was quite the contrast re what SHE expected. Of course, considering that they both knew from their courtship that they each had very different expectations re roles of spouses in marriage, it would have been for the best had they simply had a torrid premarital affair but married folks who were more accepting of their respective standards but that's not what happened.

Let's not forget that when Desi was dying and knew that Lucy was going to be honored at the Kennedy Center, he arranged for Robert Stack to postmortemly read his tribute to his onetime wife. In spite of ALL the angst, turmoil, fights and even remarriages by both, Desi summed it re aptly by saying ' "P.S. Re 'I Love Lucy', it NEVER was just a title!'

A few years ago, when CBS aired the annual Christmas Special, they also included some newly-found footage of Lucy and Desi's makeup tests from when the show began. There's no audio, but during Lucy's test, Desi sneaks up behind her, grabs her, and starts hugging and kissing her and nibbles on her ear, all to Lucy's laughter. There's no way he was faking that (or else he was a much better actor than he was given credit for). Same with that last scene in the nightclub during "Lucy is Enceinte".

When Here's Lucy started, Desi took out an ad in Variety congratulating his kids on their new series. At the bottom of the ad, it said, "By the way, that red-headed gal playing your mother is the greatest."

Lucie Arnaz put it best. She said her parents loved each other even after the divorce. They just couldn't live together.

I guess I just have a hard time believing that a man who claims to have loved a woman so much could cheat on her like he did. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

I guess I just have a hard time believing that a man who claims to have loved a woman so much could cheat on her like he did. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

It's important to remember that every single person has their own idea what consitutes love and its likely that Desi simply believed that having a common goal ａｎｄ the shared desire to stabilize their respective families after each family got thrown to the wolves and wanting to have her be the mother of their children was sufficient enough for love on his part. If its any consolation,Lucy probably would have agree with you,though.

I kind of feel like Lucy was a sugar momma to both her husbands actually. Even though she wasn't making much money when she got with Desi, she was making more than him right? I think he stayed married to her for the simple fact that he felt like he owed her and maybe even felt sorry for her. Hence, all the love talk, flowers, and apologizing after they divorced.

I have been reading a great deal about them both lately and I just think he may have had a sex addiction(Cesar Romero?) and she may have suffered from love addiction(neglect in early childhood). It's also clear that Lucille had very low self-esteem and was a severely insecure woman. She felt inadequate in every aspect of her life and being married to a womanizer only seemed to magnify these perceptions. Her anger, bitterness, cold and distant nature seem to be a direct result of feeling like she just wasn't good enough. I also feel like her hardness was a coping mechanism.

Ball Fan,

While I admit to being somewhat intrigued by your analyses re Lucy and Desi, I have to disagree re your claim she was his 'sugar mama7. He had already catapulted himself from a destitute teen immigrant in a broken home having to clean birdcages for a living to being an up and coming Hollywood Latin heartthrob and big band leader when they met.Yes, he proved to be far more of a spendthrift than Lucille would be but he was definitely pulling his own weight from Day One until their split. Since you are a Ball fan, please consider that Lucille herself would ALWAYS credit him and his genius and hard work for their mutual success even when she was understandably her most bitter re his infidelity and self-destruction. Years after their split and both had remarried, one of her friends asked why she had her characters' surnames always have an 'ar' sound.Lucille replied because she believed that'ar' brought her success.The friend replied that she'd done fairly well as 'Ball' alone to which Lucille replied that she only REALLY became successful when she became an'Arnaz'.
I also think that his kind gestures towards her long after their divorce (which I believe they BOTH needed to have happen to survive) showed he DID love her even if he knew that he could no longer live with her(it also should be noted that his autobio sang her praises even when he recounted the stuff he liked least about her but was virtually silent re his 2nd wife or even anything after 1960- despite him writing it in 1975).
Oh,and I think Cesar Romero merely just projected what he had WISHED had been the case to someone he knew would eagerly buy any gay claim possible.

As far Gary? Yes, they may have 'had their own accounts' but he was living under HER roof which she paid all the bills for(Ａｎｄ he'd been a barely noticed stand up comic before they　met and created virtually nothing on his own [unlike Desi].
Yes, I agree that

Well thanks for the clarification about his finances. I had read that she was making more then him early on. I'm not one of those people who likes to discredit Desi, I know full well that there would be no Lucy without Desi and that neither of them could have done what they did without the other. Somethings just don't quite make sense to me, but I tend to read between the lines a lot.

I don't know, I just feel like their both difficult personalities to grasp but also very interesting.

I do think he loved her but he came from a family where cheating was the norm (his dad had a mistress) and this is common on many cultures.

I do think he loved her but he came from a family where cheating was the norm (his dad had a mistress) and this is common on many cultures.


I think this is true. Desi was self destructive and many ways including cheating on Lucy and being a drunk. Not only did he love Lucy when they were married I don't think he ever stopped. He may not have been a good husband or person but he was a tremendously talented performer and even more talented as a producer. He invented the modern sitcom and founded and ran his own studio. He's not running for office so he's one of the many talented people in show business that shouldn't be idolized.

See, I tend to look at this as an excuse. And the thing about Desi that really bothers me is he didn't really ever try to be discrete with his cheating or flirting. It seemed like he wanted to hurt and embarrass her. Even during the show, he was chasing every good looking woman around the set trying to screw them.

His infidelity became BLATANT during the show. And no I'm not trying to paint Lucy as some victim or a saint because she knew who she was marrying when she married him and SHE decided to stay married to him. She was very naive and kept thinking that eventually her husband would stop cheating.

It's not an excuse. This is the way he was. That didn't mean he didn't love Lucy. He didn't see it in those terms even though most people do. If I was Lucy's friend I'm sure I'd tell her to dump the bum. He may have done it because he was a drunk and he may have done it because deep down he didn't think he was worthy of Lucy and he got subconscious satisfaction by doing all this and having Lucy stay with him. I was more offended by Gary Morton, who treated Lucy as his meal ticket.

I would be more offended by Gary If Lucy loved him the way she loved DESI, but it's clear that he was just a companion, someone to settle down with so she wouldn't be alone. He was a rebound and a distraction to keep her from falling apart without Desi. They cared for one another but in love? NOPE!!

It was suitable for Lucy because she had all the power and money in the relationship, he was easy to control and would stay with her for the simple fact that he could get anything he wanted. Lucy was his sugar momma PERIOD! She knew this.

Desi offends me more because he KNEW that his actions hurt his wife. He knew that he was humiliating her. He knew that he wasn't capable of being with one woman, nor did he want to be. And above all, he knew how much she loved him. Why get married in the first place if you are incapable of being with one woman? Something just doesn't add up!

Desi offends me more because he KNEW that his actions hurt his wife. He knew that he was humiliating her. He knew that he wasn't capable of being with one woman, nor did he want to be. And above all, he knew how much she loved him. Why get married in the first place if you are incapable of being with one woman? Something just doesn't add up!

Desi was always a womanizer, but a good part of it was alleviated when their daughter was born. It wasn’t until the pressure started to build at work that he started drinking a lot and the womanizing got worse. I am not in any way excusing his behavior, but I do believe that a lot of it, especially in the 50s, had to do with his alcohol problem which fueled the womanizing. I believe he used alcohol as an escape, and things got out of hand.

Supposedly, when he was having someone help him write his book, things were going fine until it came time to discuss his split from Lucy. The person helping him claimed things fell apart when Desi reflected on the fact that he hadn’t treated Lucy very well, and so he once again turned to alcohol and women to find an escape and numb the pain. I believe that story in itself demonstrates that it was painful for him to think about how much he hurt her. An author of a book about “I love Lucy” who interviewed Desi told a similar story – that when it came time to talk about their break up, Desi became misty-eyed and had to leave the room. He was NOT indifferent. I believe that at the end of their marriage, when he was hurting her the most, he was such a mess and was in such a fog due to the alcohol, that he didn’t know how much he was hurting her. Or maybe on some level he knew it but the alcoholism impaired him from turning his life around.

This quote from Desi is telling: “Once you arrive at the plateau of success we were at, you find yourself in a whole new ball game, where the players are engaged in fierce competition for more and more success, and more and more money, and more and more power, and in which strains and tensions are such that the only relief they find is in pills, alcohol and sex--which enables them, at least for a short time, to continue in this seemingly endless contest. A merry-go-round you wonder who you got on and how in hell you can get off! Most people never get off for fear of losing it all. Norman Vincent Peale once asked me how come I didn't seem to be one of those that when reaching that plateau of success, seem fearful of losing it. I told him that perhaps it was because once before in Cuba we had it and lost it all, and yet we've seemed to have managed to survive and even succeeded in getting some of it back. So I wasn't afraid of getting off--I was anxious to do so. I knew that if I were to stay on that crazy merry-go-round, I would eventually be morally and physically destroyed. And once you face that fact and admit it to yourself, what you give up ceases to mean much.”

I believe that Desi truly loved Lucy but was self-destructive and constantly fighting these demons. Right around the first time that Lucy filed for divorce, in the 40s, Desi was out partying and one magazine reported him making the comment that, “Marrying for love is the bunk.” This says to me that he had in fact married Lucy for love, but he was constantly at odds with these demons that were pulling him in another direction. Maybe on some level he knew that he shouldn’t have married due to his vices but did it because he loved her.

If you watch some of the talk show interviews with Desi in the 70s, and read some of the articles where he talks about his ex-wife, there is no doubt in my mind that he was still in love with her. He talks about her so lovingly. Even in Lucie Arnaz’s documentary, “A Home Movie,” his good friend and neighbor in Del Mar, Marcella Rabwin, says that he would sit with her and cry sometimes, saying how much he loved Lucy and how terrible it was that they were divorced. Another friend, Kaye Ballard, said that Desi “worshipped” Lucy and that his second wife Edie was a very unhappy woman because she knew in her heart that Lucy was the first love of Desi’s life, and she was the second. That says a lot.