I don’t really want to write about Al Gore’s marriage to Tipper, but this paragraph from Howard Fineman raises an issue that I think we don’t discuss enough:
They were an odd couple from the start, a teenage romance that tried—and, after 40 years, failed—to bridge the divides that were inherent in it from the start: political versus nonpolitical Washington; pure, driven ambition versus another day at the beach; a need to internalize and intellectualize versus the drummer in the band.
This kind of thing seems way too negative and judgmental to me. Life in a modern-day developed economy is quite long. If two people can be happy together for 38 years, during which time they raise a few kids, and then maybe be unhappy for two years and wind up realizing they want to get divorced is that really such a “failure”? It sounds okay to me. Kind of impressive, actually! As a society, I think we need to cut ourselves some more slack about this kind of thing. Failure is relative.
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