Besides, the huge age gap between the two also played a big role in the demise of their relationship admits Crawford
Back in the 80s and 90s, Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford were the IT couple. Wherever they went, there was much hype and stardust, with crowds cheering on and loving every bit of the glamor and good looks. Theirs was a quintessential fairy tale romance, but not all of them end with "happily ever after."
The couple first met at a party, and it did not take long for Crawford to fall for Gere's charm. They started dating almost instantly, and after four years of courtship, they tied the knot in 1991.
But being in the spotlight and having a high-profile relationship is not easy. In a candid confession on Oprah's Master Class, Crawford revealed how their marriage began and ended in rather different tones.
"I just think your twenties, for women, is such a time when you're starting to come into your own and feel your own power and connect to your inner strength," the supermodel explained as quoted by MailOnline.
"And it's hard to do that, it's hard to change in a relationship, because what one person might have signed up for, all of a sudden, you're not that anymore," she went on. "I think I was more willing at 22 to be, like, 'Okay, I'll follow,' but then you start going, 'Well, I don't want to just follow, I want to lead sometimes and I want to walk side by side sometimes,'" Crawford added.
She confessed back in 1995 that they didn't spend a lot of time together as husband and wife early one, which took a toll on their relationship. “We didn’t spend enough time together,” PEOPLE quoted Crawford. “And we’re equally responsible for that. We thought it would be okay if we just flew in from Paris to L.A. to get together for a night to see each other. It wasn’t.”
However, there was a bigger crack in their relationship from the very beginning that they could never fill, and it kept growing over the years. She believes this was one of the reasons for the fallout.
Cindy believes what was lacking was a healthy friendship between the two. “I think part of the problem in our relationship was that we were a lot of other things but I don’t know if we were ever friends—like peers, because I was young, and he was Richard Gere," HuffPost quoted her in 2016. "And then, as I started kind of growing up and growing into myself—it’s hard to change the nature of a relationship once you’re already in it.”
Although she did admit that she had learned a lot from Gere, especially how to handle fame. “Look, I learned a lot from Richard,” PEOPLE quoted her. “I learned about how to be famous. Again, that’s not a universal lesson. And a lot of the personal things, everything else I learned from that, were for me.”
Decades later, Gere is now happily married to Alejandra Silva, who he believes is his forever and Crawford went on to marry Rande Gerber. She had confessed that her relationship with Gerber worked because they are friends first.
She also believes that the lack of friendship is also why Gere has gone back to being a "stranger." "We're friendly, but I think it's almost like he's gone back to being, like, 'Richard Gere' again, like a stranger because we don't really see each other that much," HuffPost mentioned.
While many could argue that theirs was too short a marriage to have a meaningful takeaway, Crawford's confession is proof that you can always learn from failed relationships and use those lessons to evolve. There is more that we can take away from this ridiculously gorgeous couple—that friendship between partners is the foundation of a healthy longer, relationship.
References:
https://people.com/celebrity/cindy-crawford-talks-marriage-to-ex-husband-richard-gere/
