Source: Bruce Glikas / Getty
Not all love stories have happy endings—even if the story is three decades long.
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, are calling it quits after nearly 30 years of marriage. Actually, it appears the marriage itself won’t be ending, but the honeymoon has apparently been over for some time.
During an interview with the New York Times, the apparent non-couple announced Wednesday that they are separating and will see other people, but they won’t get divorced and they’ll both continue to live in their Park Slope home.
From the Times:
It began with an offhand remark: “Why aren’t you lovey-dovey anymore?” Mr. de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, asked, according to Ms. McCray, his wife.
It moved quickly, both said, into the sort of urgently searching dialogue that had been necessary for years but avoided until that moment: a full accounting of their relationship, what they wanted, what they were not getting.
“You can’t fake it,” Ms. McCray said Tuesday from their kitchen table.
“You can feel when things are off,” Mr. de Blasio said, “and you don’t want to live that way.”
Neither McCray nor de Blasio appeared to be bitter about splitting up, the Times noted, which is great, especially for two people who are rejoining the dating scene at ages 68 and 62 respectively. (Hopefully, they can ignore the various social media warnings that “the dating pool has pee in it.”) They both seemed to be acutely aware that it was long past time to move on. In fact, during the three-hour-long interview, de Blasio speculated that their marriage wouldn’t have lasted this long if he were never mayor, and he said there were plenty of missed opportunities throughout his marriage to check in with his wife to see where they stand with each other.
“I can look back now and say, ‘Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,’” de Blasio said. “And I think one of the things I should have said more is: ‘Are you happy? What will make you happy? What’s missing in your life?’”
“Everything was this overwhelming schedule, this sort of series of tasks, and that kind of took away a little bit of our soul,” he went on to say in regard to how his political career affected his relationship with his wife.
Welp, I suppose the lesson here is it’s never too late to start over. Good luck to de Blasio and McCray, and may they both find their happily ever after.
See how Twitter‘s reacting to the separation below.
