Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and wife Chirlane McCray announced Wednesday that they are separating, without getting divorced, and will continue to share their home in Brooklyn while seeing other people.
The couple told The New York Times that they had a discussion two months ago about separating after 29 years of marriage, with de Blasio asking McCray why she wasn't "lovey-dovey anymore."
"You can't fake it," McCray told the Times.
"You can feel when things are off, and you don't want to live that way," de Blasio said.
They acknowledged that the marriage began to crumble years earlier, especially during the then-mayor's ill-fated presidential bid in 2020.
"I can look back now and say, 'Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,'" de Blasio, 62, 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?'"
McCray reportedly had considerable misgivings about de Blasio's run for the White House.
"I thought it was a distraction," she said of the long-shot bid.
"Kind of true," he said, laughing. "Point for Chirlane."
De Blasio also blamed the breakdown of their marriage on his eight years as mayor of New York City.
"Everything was this overwhelming schedule, this sort of series of tasks," he said. "And that kind of took away a little bit of our soul."
The COVID-19 pandemic made the mayor "emotionally very needy," he admitted, and said he and his wife "were not as connected" as a result of the public health crisis.
The Times also indicated that the couple's marriage was played-up to voters to dispel potential fears that de Blasio was "some boring white guy."
When asked what she's seeking from this new arrangement, McCray, 68, said, "I just want to have fun," quickly clarifying, "It's not that we haven't had fun."
"There's a certain weight that goes with being with Mr. Mayor," she said.
Married by two gay men under a tree in Prospect Park in 1994, their union initially seemed unlikely, as McCray identified as a lesbian at the time and seemed unreceptive to his overtures.
"He was very easy to fall in love with," McCray said.
De Blasio said he always harbored a lingering fear that the relationship would not work out.
"For the guy who took the chance on a woman who was an out lesbian and wrote an article called, 'I Am a Lesbian,' there was a part of me that would at times say, 'Hmmm, is this like a time bomb ticking? Is this something that you're going to regret later on?'" de Blasio told the Times. "So I always lived with that stuff."
Both reportedly seemed eager to start dating, with McCray jokingly asking if the Times could publish her phone number and de Blasio requesting that a picture of him at the gym be included.
"One of the things we're saying to the world is we don't need to possess each other," de Blasio said.
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