PDA’s Can Signal Break Up Just Like in Seal & Heidi
The real secret behind Seal and Heidi Klum’s partnership is out: A plethora of PDA does not necessarily a happy marriage make.
The kiss-and-tell couple, who cozied up to the extreme in Seal’s 2010 Secret video (think intense eye contact, rumpled sheets and lots of intertwined naked limbs), epitomize the notion that too much public pawing, among celebrities or mere mortals, can be a red flag for private turmoil.
The seemingly inseparable, so-in-love duo announced their split on Sunday night after almost seven years of marriage and “much soul-searching.”
“We have had the deepest respect for one another throughout our relationship and continue to love each other very much, but we have grown apart,” they said in a statement given to People. “This is an amicable process and protecting the well-being of our children remains our top priority, especially during this time of transition.”
The supermodel and the singer are parents to Leni, 7, Henry, 6, Johan, 5 and Lou, 2.
Exposing yourselves so literally, as Klum and Seal did, is about “overcompensation,” says New York psychotherapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, author of Make Up, Don’t Break Up, “because they want to prove not only to themselves but to the rest of the world that everything is fine.”
Sometimes, Weil says, overt affection is a means of overcorrecting for specific problems at home. “It’s like a tease,” she says. The guy who makes sexually suggestive comments about his wife at a dinner party? “That’s the couple that’s not having sex at all.”
The unsealed nature of their relationship made Seal and Klum Hollywood’s gift to the public’s fascination with celebrity matrimony.
There was their May 2005 marriage, the details of which they spilled in interviews. In May 2011, the two renewed their wedding vows, something they did every year around the time of their anniversary. Traditionally, the couple donned some sort of costume. Last year, she wore a mask, and he came decked out in a pirate headdress and blue vest.
The annual “I do’s” were “just unusual,” says Linda Mintle, a Chesapeake, Va.-based marriage and family therapist and a Beliefnet blogger. (Typically, couples renew their vows once, after enduring a hard patch.) “I kind of wondered if that was an attempt to get back on track every year, to get them focused on the marriage.”
There’s a reason The Seven Year Itch resonated. “If you look at the research, they’re at the really pivotal point when more than half of divorces happen, at the seven-year period,” Mintle says. “What that usually means is those seven years were not great.”
But they sure looked great, on the surface. Klum and Seal loved to celebrate. On Halloween, they threw their annual lavish costume party in New York, showing up — and hamming it up — in matching, elaborate ape get-ups. On Sept. 29, they appeared to be a vision of goofy happiness while posing for photos at Disneyland, as part of the Magic Kingdom’s Halloween Time celebration. And in August, they locked lips while boating in the Mediterranean Sea.
The kiss-and-tell couple, who cozied up to the extreme in Seal’s 2010 Secret video (think intense eye contact, rumpled sheets and lots of intertwined naked limbs), epitomize the notion that too much public pawing, among celebrities or mere mortals, can be a red flag for private turmoil.
The seemingly inseparable, so-in-love duo announced their split on Sunday night after almost seven years of marriage and “much soul-searching.”
“We have had the deepest respect for one another throughout our relationship and continue to love each other very much, but we have grown apart,” they said in a statement given to People. “This is an amicable process and protecting the well-being of our children remains our top priority, especially during this time of transition.”
The supermodel and the singer are parents to Leni, 7, Henry, 6, Johan, 5 and Lou, 2.
Exposing yourselves so literally, as Klum and Seal did, is about “overcompensation,” says New York psychotherapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, author of Make Up, Don’t Break Up, “because they want to prove not only to themselves but to the rest of the world that everything is fine.”
Sometimes, Weil says, overt affection is a means of overcorrecting for specific problems at home. “It’s like a tease,” she says. The guy who makes sexually suggestive comments about his wife at a dinner party? “That’s the couple that’s not having sex at all.”
The unsealed nature of their relationship made Seal and Klum Hollywood’s gift to the public’s fascination with celebrity matrimony.
There was their May 2005 marriage, the details of which they spilled in interviews. In May 2011, the two renewed their wedding vows, something they did every year around the time of their anniversary. Traditionally, the couple donned some sort of costume. Last year, she wore a mask, and he came decked out in a pirate headdress and blue vest.
The annual “I do’s” were “just unusual,” says Linda Mintle, a Chesapeake, Va.-based marriage and family therapist and a Beliefnet blogger. (Typically, couples renew their vows once, after enduring a hard patch.) “I kind of wondered if that was an attempt to get back on track every year, to get them focused on the marriage.”
There’s a reason The Seven Year Itch resonated. “If you look at the research, they’re at the really pivotal point when more than half of divorces happen, at the seven-year period,” Mintle says. “What that usually means is those seven years were not great.”
But they sure looked great, on the surface. Klum and Seal loved to celebrate. On Halloween, they threw their annual lavish costume party in New York, showing up — and hamming it up — in matching, elaborate ape get-ups. On Sept. 29, they appeared to be a vision of goofy happiness while posing for photos at Disneyland, as part of the Magic Kingdom’s Halloween Time celebration. And in August, they locked lips while boating in the Mediterranean Sea.
And the two never met a red carpet they didn’t love. Yes, that was them kissing while arriving at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar viewing party on Feb. 27, 2011. And yes, that was them kissing again while working the arrivals line at the Grammys on Feb. 13. And while showing up at a 2007 Lorraine Schwartz party in New York. And while going to the 2005 Vanity Fair Oscar party.
But the height (or depths?) of their onstage mutual admiration society was September 2010’s Secret romp, a (literally) black-and-white metaphor for appearance vs. reality when it comes to relationships. “That’s more telling than anything,” Weil says. “What they’re uncovering in that video is what they’re covering up” at home.
“I’m sure they were hoping they could fix the problem and transpose the video to their (real) life, but it doesn’t work that way. It takes effort and work,” Weil says. “Now, they’re really naked in front of the whole world. They’re naked emotionally because the cover has been blown.”
Mintle is more circumspect. The extreme expressions of ardor “could have been fake, but it also could have been an attempt in the public to say, ‘C’mon, let’s make this work.’ “
Still, Weil calls faux frontal affection “the ultimate betrayal.” Other couples — think Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, or Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig— take connubial privacy to a new level, barely mentioning each other in interviews and rarely, if ever, posing together.
And then there was the ultimate Hollywood couple, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, whose longevity (50 years) was matched only by their secrecy.
“They never held hands. He never put his arm around her,” says Weil, who saw them out and about a couple of times. The message? “If I have it (love, romance), I don’t have to flaunt it, and if I don’t have it, I have to flaunt it.”
The lessons are applicable beyond Hollywood. “What’s so frustrating is what they’re experiencing is not really different from the average couple. It’s more magnified,” Mintle says. Deconstructing divorce “is not, like, a mystical science. It’s not some mystery.”
But the height (or depths?) of their onstage mutual admiration society was September 2010’s Secret romp, a (literally) black-and-white metaphor for appearance vs. reality when it comes to relationships. “That’s more telling than anything,” Weil says. “What they’re uncovering in that video is what they’re covering up” at home.
“I’m sure they were hoping they could fix the problem and transpose the video to their (real) life, but it doesn’t work that way. It takes effort and work,” Weil says. “Now, they’re really naked in front of the whole world. They’re naked emotionally because the cover has been blown.”
Mintle is more circumspect. The extreme expressions of ardor “could have been fake, but it also could have been an attempt in the public to say, ‘C’mon, let’s make this work.’ “
Still, Weil calls faux frontal affection “the ultimate betrayal.” Other couples — think Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, or Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig— take connubial privacy to a new level, barely mentioning each other in interviews and rarely, if ever, posing together.
And then there was the ultimate Hollywood couple, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, whose longevity (50 years) was matched only by their secrecy.
“They never held hands. He never put his arm around her,” says Weil, who saw them out and about a couple of times. The message? “If I have it (love, romance), I don’t have to flaunt it, and if I don’t have it, I have to flaunt it.”
The lessons are applicable beyond Hollywood. “What’s so frustrating is what they’re experiencing is not really different from the average couple. It’s more magnified,” Mintle says. Deconstructing divorce “is not, like, a mystical science. It’s not some mystery.”
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