The Search for Fulfillment

The Search for Fulfillment

Chapter One

Grown-ups and Growth

As she sifts through the day's e-mails, Barbara pauses to admire the sparkling diamond on her ring finger, a present from William, her fourth (yes, fourth) husband. (I have changed all of the subjects' names and identifying characteristics but have otherwise stayed true to the information that I have collected about them.) She and William just celebrated their fifteenth anniversary, but Barbara still shudders to think that she burned through three previous marriages in twenty years. Back when her college pals were in the social whirl, Barbara—now one of the country's leading nuclear physicists—was working furiously in the lab. By the time she was a senior, she had spent two summers training at the premier nuclear research lab in the country. But her parents couldn't understand how a pretty girl like Barbara could be interested in spending all her time in the basement of the science building. So Barbara made her parents happy by marrying her boyfriend. He was nice enough but not her intellectual equal. And in fact he wasn't so nice when she started spending nights and weekends at school working on her graduate thesis. Once after running an experiment until three in the morning, she stumbled home to find that he had cleared out of their apartment. Marriage number two lasted ten years and produced her two oldest children. Although she could write her first divorce off to marrying too early, or marrying just to please her parents, she couldn't figure out what exactly she did wrong in the second one. Yet, shortly after it ended, she was once again ready to try again. Marriage number three brought her a lovely boy, ten years after she thought that her motherhood days were pretty much behind her. She never imagined having four husbands, but she never imagined having three children, either. It took three husbands to get to William, but he was worth it. A medical researcher specializing in neurodegenerative diseases, William retired a few years ago. William doesn't seem to mind Barbara's long hours, her preoccupation, her endless wondering about whether she handled a delicate situation correctly. Yes, Barbara has finally met the man who not only is her intellectual equal but who also really understands what makes her tick.Still, Barbara is filled with self-doubts. Despite a significant record of scientific accomplishments, she's scarred from her colleagues' hostile reception of her as a pioneering female scientist. And while she appears to have it all—a stimulating job, a beautiful home, a loving husband, and three well-adjusted children, she wonders: Why am I not happier?

Excerpted from The Search for Fulfillment by Susan Krauss Whitbourne Copyright © 2009 by Susan Krauss Whitbourne. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.