The third type is the brother/sister relationship, where two people are united by their mutual interests and have what usually turns out to be a long and successful, but almost asexual, union.
Paul McCartney is reputed to have had an exceptionally happy first marriage, although doubtless it had some minor problems. When someone is left bereaved after a successful marriage there is a good chance that they will want to repeat the experience as soon as possible. But they are unlikely to have analysed the qualities in both partners that made the first marriage outstanding, and to have questioned whether these qualities will exist in the next one.
Paul McCartney married Linda when they were both young. They both made fortunes early and both cocked a snook at the Establishment even as the money rolled in. This was the archetypal successful child/child relationship in which money and ability insulate a couple against the world. Yet McCartney’s second marriage was almost certainly, in medical terms, a parent/child relationship.
The age gap between the partners, and the difference in their national and international profiles, meant that Paul would have expected to become the dominant figure and Heather the dependent partner. This arrangement usually works well for a time but inevitably, sooner or later, resentments arise. The provider becomes irritated at having always to look after someone else’s needs, and the partner receiving this largesse comes to resent their dependent position.
These marriages often last if both partners are tolerant, understanding and accept the difficulties — and especially if the dominant partner has a need to be a carer. This is unlikely to have been the case with Paul McCartney. Nor is there anything in Heather Mills’s history — at least, as it has been reported in the Press — that would lead one to suppose that she would want to play second fiddle to a dominant husband.
Sir Paul has shown no previous evidence of having a co-dependent personality — ie, of being the type of person who thrives in a parent/child marriage despite the irritations of it — for he is one of the best-known people in the world and the concept of him enjoying old age in the role of an all-indulgent sugar daddy, prepared to fetch and carry and provide a one-man cabaret show to keep the child half of the parent/child marriage happy, is unlikely.
This was a marriage that wasn’t made in Heaven and wouldn’t even have been dreamt up in Hollywood. For those reasons, the odds were stacked against it.
DR THOMAS STUTTAFORD
There will be many commentators who dance on the grave of the McCartney’s marriage this morning. Didn’t we all say it didn’t stand a chance? But it is time to be kind, urges Denise Robertson, who has for many years dispensed emotional wisdom as a television agony aunt and through her books.
Robertson immediately dispenses with the idea that Paul McCartney married too soon after the death of his first and much-loved wife, Linda. The four-year gap between the two is long enough, she points out, and she should know: she has herself remarried twice within a year of being widowed and both these mariages have been successful.
So what did go wrong? Robertson believes that the answer is simple: Linda McCartney was almost impossible to follow. “She was an extraordinary person,” Robertson says. “She wasn’t beautiful, though she wasn’t ugly, but what does it say about her that Paul was besotted with her when he could have had the choice of so many other beautiful women? He settled for her because she had that quality of strength. She had great presence: she could get things done without raising her voice. I don’t think Heather ever stood a chance.”
Both Robertson and Heather McCartney come from the North-East and they have met. “I’m not pretending she’s a saint,” says Robertson. “But I think she’s brave. I think he saw that and thought that here was another exceptional woman. The problem was that Heather was more mortal than exceptional. I’m desperately sorry for both of them but I’m not at all surprised that this marriage is failing
how do you step into the shoes of a legend?” Again Robertson refers to her own experience of marrying a widower. “I’m really quite a sensible woman and I was driven to the edge of madness by stepping into the shoes of two women who were both very beautiful. If you’re not extremely good-looking, that’s hard. I’ll never forget that feeling. You wake up with it. You come round from making love and you think, ‘Was it as good as with her?’ If you are following an extraordinary woman, that feeling stays with you.”
From Heather McCartney’s determination to put herself on a world stage through her humanitarian and charity work, it seems that she was trying to turn herself into a woman as extraordinary as her precessesor, Robertson believes.
“She was trying to devote hereself to being the same kind of wife. She wanted to be more, so she sent the false limbs to Africa. She was competing with Linda and she didn’t make it. There was something very special about Linda — she didn’t need to make a fuss. Heather spent four years making a fuss.
“She was saying: ‘I’m here, I’m not in her shadow. I’m Mrs McCartney now.’ But Linda was captured in iconic photograph, smiling, because that is what the photographs you keep do: they show people when they were happy. How much more difficult that was for Heather, when the pictures were on television, in glossy magazines. Linda never went away.”
PENNY WARK
What about their baby?
CHRISTINE NORTHAM
Senior Relate counsellor
Paul and Linda famously said that they spent only one night apart in 30 years of marriage — so Heather has very much been living in Linda’s shadow. I was struck by the way she took on many of Linda’s personal causes, such as animal rights.
There are many issues that could have affected this marriage badly: he had children from a happy earlier marriage, and it is never easy to be a step-mother, especially when the children resent you, as has been reported in the media. Also, they are both at different life stages — he is a father and grandfather, and now has a new baby, which is her first — that’s an upheaval for both of them, and they will approach it very differently. Their ages of course are very different: he married a woman the same age as his own children, and that’s hard to accommodate for all of them.
Then there’s the issue of emotional health — he came from a long and happy relationship, very supportive and family-based, whereas her relationship background is probably quite different.
Paul may be a world-famous star, but women today are no longer content to play a supportive role — she’s a young woman who wants her shot at life and her own fame and success. There may have been conflict there. There’s also the major issue of her disability — that’s a huge part of her emotional and physical make-up and it may have been deeply destabilising for her, no matter how much cash she has at her disposal to make her life easier.
Finally, and I think most importantly, the adults need to stop focusing on themselves and think of their child. The fate of the child is extremely sad. It’s a reflection of today’s society that every one talks about the split but no one says “What about the baby?”. They should sort this out and make parenting their child their priority.
Interview by Lucy Alexander
