Tipper and Al Gore certainly gave us all a start this month when they announced their separation after 40 years of marriage. "Forty years!" a lot of people thought. "What brings an end to their much-touted romance after that amount of time?"
They’re not saying, which of course just makes us more curious. Some strange habits in the bedroom? Affairs with interns? Problems with hanging chads? We will likely never know. But it was fun to speculate.
A lovely woman friend of mine is in the process of leaving the man she married more than 30 years ago. Recently, I remarked on how great she looks, and she said, ‘I should- I just lost 165 pounds!” Besides the joking, I’ve known this sweet, kind, thoughtful and generous woman for more than 20 years and only now am I starting to get a few tentative glimpses into what her life was really like behind those closed doors. It isn’t pretty, but you would never have known it from the happy smiles in those family photos.
The fact is, you can simply never know what goes on in someone else’s marriage. You can never know what brought them together in the first place, what needs they answer in each other, and how the process works that finally breaks those millions of tiny bonds. That’s what makes coupling such a mystery, and for the lucky among us, such a blessing.
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