Source: Eugene Gologursky / Getty
eople get married for many reasons: obligation, political influence, tradition, and, on some rare occasions, the simple aspect of love. However, for all those reasons and more than anyone should have to comprehend, 50% of couples who walk down the aisle soon after spend copious amounts of time (and money!) trying to end the union. Yeah, you know the dreaded word — divorce.
Of course, there is that little pitstop somewhere between
“I do” and
“I should’ve never in the first place” called separation, where both parties take a non-legally-binding break in order to grow closer together by living apart. You might imagine that many couples never make it back around to each other, but the ones who do often reunite and want to share their newfound single life with their actual partner. Thus, we enter the spectrum of an open marriage.
Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, brought the topic to the public recently with
the announcement of their separation after 29 years of marriage. Both de Blasio and McCray have agreed to continue sharing their Brooklyn townhouse while dating other people, stating they are “still very much in love.”
Love NewsOne? Get more! Join the NewsOne Newsletter
We care about your data. See our privacy policy.
The couple, he 62 and she 68, share a highly public lifestyle that can understandably be hard to break away from so easily. They chose to get ahead of the story and announce the separation together, doing a joint interview with
The New York Times where McCray made it clear of her intentions specifically by stating, “I just want to have fun.”
More details on their arrangement below, via
AP News:
“They arrived together at the realization that the spark had gone out of their relationship, they told the newspaper in a joint interview.
‘You can’t fake it,’ McCray said.
‘You can feel when things are off,’ de Blasio said, ‘and you don’t want to live that way.’
McCray said the pair spoke to the Times in an effort to head off gossip.
‘As very public people embarking on a new chapter, we thought it better to say all this openly before anyone tries to find negativity, or before any misunderstandings occur,’ she told the AP.
McCray said she and de Blasio ‘have only respect and admiration for each other, and the sense of wonder that we ever found each other to begin with.’”
Many have been quick to cite the glaring elephant in the room that points to McCray identifying as a lesbian when she and de Blasio first began dating back in the ’70s. She even penned an
essay for the September 1979 issue of Essence Magazine titled “I Am A Lesbian.” De Blasio addressed this briefly by telling t
he Times, “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?’ So I always lived with that stuff.’”
“Even at this moment of change, this is a love story,” the former mayor of NYC confirmed when sharing the article on Twitter, and we believe it wholeheartedly given their decades of being locked in as a unit with two adult children to be proud of. We wish them the best.
Research shows that a not insignificant portion of people in North America are in open marriages.
Psychology Today reported in 2019:
The best evidence suggests around 4 percent of adults. That may not sound like many, but it means one couple in 25. If you know two dozen couples, chances are one participates in consensual non-monogamy (CNM), also known as “open” relationships. Put another way, 4 percent means some 2.8 million U.S. couples.
See what some are saying on social media in regard to the arrangement between de Blasio and McCray:
