Letting it all hang out: Here come the de Blasios to tell us all about why their marriage is on the rocks

In the realm of Too Much Information, former New York mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife Chirlane don't have many equals.

So here they are, attention-whoring for the New York Times about the breakup of their marriage:

About two months ago, after another stale Saturday night of binge-watching television at their Brooklyn home, Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray surprised themselves.

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."

They made their decision that night.

Mr. de Blasio and Ms. McCray are separating.

The only thing a reader wonders is who made that call to the Times to report that "Vows" in reverse story and how much time they really spent in that interview.  The Times said it was "nearly" three hours.

After all, instead of break up the normal way and keep a private matter private, these two decided to let it all hang out in the pages of the New York Times:

Rather than issue a terse joint statement to announce what they called a trial separation — the carefully worded fate of so many political marriages before theirs — the two suggested they wanted to get considerably more off their chests.

Get it off their chests?  It gets worse as they babble out what they plan to do as a couple in the aftermath:

They are not planning to divorce, they said, but will date other people. They will continue to share the Park Slope townhouse where they raised their two children, now in their 20s — the vinyl-sided hub of a thoroughly modern political family whose mixed-race symbolism helped send a spindly progressive long shot to City Hall.

Chirlane even "jokingly" suggests near the end of the piece that the Times run her phone number so that she can market for fresh partners.

That sounds like some household they've got plans for, basically an open marriage set-up — with boyfriends and girlfriends and hookups rolling in and out at all hours while the kids and neighbors get to hear all about it — as their recommended "cure" for their now-they-tell-us troubled marriage.

Like everything else the de Blasios touch, it will turn to...

The psychobabble abounds so naturally, they see it all as a "teachable moment" for the rest of us:

And as with much about their marriage, they see lessons for others even in its tumult, both for workaday couples negotiating the challenges of growing old together and for the small subset who expose themselves to the uncommon glare of public scrutiny.

"I can look back now and say, 'Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,'" Mr. 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?'"

Had enough?

What the Times doesn't get into much is that this pair was hardcore political — he married her to win the black vote, and she married him for the oodles of power she would be able obtain through marriage tied to his political career.  We know she took it — she's been accused of financial mismanagement of a mental health fund she ran, with $850 million missing.  He is of the same stripe, making the total for the pair $1.8 billion, according to the New York Post.

The gig is now up for de Blasio, the money's gone, and now he looks as though he's outlived his usefulness to Chirlane.

So much for all the lovey-dovey-ness for the cameras during the happy days, which, the Times noted, embarrassed even their aides.

De Blasio's mayoralty was a disaster.  His Senate and congressional runs went nowhere.  His presidential ambition drew microscopic levels of political support, and even the Times called it "calamitous."  He's not going anywhere useful to Chirlane.  De Blasio himself blamed the breakup of the marriage on the demands of his mayoral job, but this is nonsense — he said the troubles in the marriage got started only after he was out of office.

Now they both seem to be looking for attention — and all they've got to sell to the Times is the innards of their skeevy marriage.

What a wretched picture.  Obviously, this pair has no idea what a good marriage is like, and their results speak for themselves.  But their appetite for attention seems boundless, so here we are.

Image: Walt Disney Television via FlickrCC BY-ND 2.0.

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