Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, announced that they are separating after 30 years of marriage, without filing for divorce and while living together for now.
In an extended interview published in the New York Times on Wednesday, the couple explained that their union had stalled and they needed a change.
“I just want to have fun,” McCray said before quickly turning to de Blasio and adding: “It’s not that we haven’t had fun.”
“Thank you, honey,” he said, according to The New York Times.
When contacted by NBC News, the two-term mayor declined to comment but did not dispute the details of the story, saying, “For today, we just let the article speak for itself.”
The couple said they began considering a separation two months ago, when de Blasio noted that they were no longer gushing about their love.
“’Why aren’t you affectionate anymore?’” McCray said she asked.
“You can’t fake it,” McCray told The New York Times.
De Blasio agreed that his spark had been lost.
“You can feel when things are bad,” he said, “and you don’t want to live that way.”
The couple said they have not yet filed for divorce and will remain in their townhouse in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.
But they will be open to dating other people, the couple said.
The former mayor admitted to having reservations about his marriage to McCray who had come out as a lesbian years before.
“For the guy who took a chance on a woman who was an open lesbian and wrote an article called ‘I’m a lesbian,’” de Blasio said, “there was a part of me that sometimes said, ‘Hmmm, this is like a time bomb. ? Is it something you will regret later? So I always lived with those things.”
The couple, jokingly at least, seemed eager to get on with their new semi-autonomous lives.
An expressionless McCray asked the newspaper to print their phone numbers, while de Blasio hoped to look better with a photo of himself working out.
“Can I put a picture of the gym in there?” de Blasio asked, adding that he doesn’t believe in using online dating apps.
