Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray have separated.
via: Radar Online
The pair announced the sudden decision in a New York Times interview published on Wednesday morning.
According to the former NYC mayor, he and McCray first made the decision to separate “about two months ago” while watching television at their Park Slope, Brooklyn townhouse on a Saturday night.
Also surprising was the revelation that de Blasio and McCray do not plan to divorce and will remain separated as they both date other people.
The pair will also continue sharing their Brooklyn home after the split “for the time being.”
“I can look back now and say, ‘Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,’” de Blasio told the Times. “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?’”
“I just want to have fun,” McCray added. “It’s not that we haven’t had fun.”
“How can you be a couple in the fullness of what you tend to think,” she continued, “when you’ve got this responsibility on your shoulders and you don’t want to add to that?”
The couple first married in 1994 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. McCray was allegedly an “out lesbian” when the couple first met and de Blasio said he “always lived” with the thought that their relationship was a “time bomb ticking.”
“For the guy who took the chance on a woman who was an out lesbian and wrote an article called ‘I Am a Lesbian,’” de Blasio told the Times, “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,” he added.
After leaving office in 2021, de Blasio ran for Congress in 2022. He ultimately withdrew from the race on July 19 – two months after announcing his campaign on May 20 – and announced it was “time for me to leave electoral politics.”
