Al and Tipper - What Happened?

It's already on WIkipedia: Al and Tipper Gore are separating after 40 years of marriage.

Today's announcement by the couple is a huge blow to anyone still left in the "happily-ever-after" camp. The Gores enjoyed a fabled relationship that withstood Tipper's depression, their six-year-old son's near-fatal accident, Al's painfully close miss at the presidency, and his eight years in office as vice president. Donna Brazile, his 2000 campaign manager—single at the time—once told me it was the couple's intense love for each other that made her realize what she was missing in her life.

As the AP reports, the Gores circulated an email today that described the decision as "a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."

Here's a couple who met in high school, married young—she was 21, he 22. They have four children and three grandchildren. And 40 years! What happened? You can't help but leap to "Affair!" "Cheating Scandal No. 10,987!" "A dirty awful secret!" But by all accounts so far, the reason may be far less exciting: The inconvenient truth, it seems, is that they simply grew apart—a side effect of his traveling for climate change, spending less and less time together.

Although infidelity, abuse, and money arguments are top reasons for the dissolution of long-term marriages, growing apart is right up there, according to licensed psychotherapist, Tina Tessina, PhD,  and author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage. "Couples who have been married for decades often start to take the relationship for granted, and focus elsewhere—on career or children, for example—and either neglect the relationship, or build up resentment over time because they don't do the work to clear it out," she says. "It's also possible that couples who don't stay in intimate contact can grow apart without realizing it, and then find they're focused on completely different things."

Statistics gathered by the Centers for Disease Control show, in general, that among women who marry between ages 20 and 24, as Tipper did, after 10 years, 29 percent are divorced. And after 20 years, the number rises to 41 percent. (By the way, don't assume it was Al who initiated the parting. Two thirds of divorces are filed by women, according to a paper in the American Law and Economics Review.)

We don't know yet what led the Gores to this sad point, but according to studies by the National Marriage Project/University of Virginia, Cambridge University, and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, there are many factors that can point to divorce down the long road of matrimony. A few:

• If you argue about money once a week with your spouse, you are 30 percent more likely to get divorced than if you argue about money less frequently
• If your parents are divorced, you are 40 percent more likely to get divorced
• If both of you have been divorced before, you are 90 percent more likely to get divorced than if it was a first marriage for both

Whatever the complexities that are driving the Gores apart, let's hope that, as in marriage, they'll raise the bar for how to do divorce should it come to that. "The Gores are very special friends and I am wishing them the very best," Brazile told Shine today. "They are two wonderful people still searching to find out how to make this world a better place."

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