Brady and Gisele are Both Spotted Without Rings Amid Reports He's 'Very Hurt' by the Breakup
I'm going to admit, that's the most US Weekly headline I've ever written. All you'd have to do is swap out the names for some The Bachelor contestants like Colton or Desiree, and I could be slapping some celebrity photos up asking "Who Wore it Best?" or reminding you "They're Just Like Us" because they sometimes shop.
Frankly, I'm having one of those moments ever adult faces eventually where I ask myself if this is really what I intended to do with my life. Like I'm reminded how growing up in the vicinity of the South Weymouth Naval Air Station, where I'd be out playing with my friends as the jets would be screaming overhead and imagining myself as one of the steely-eyes missile men at the controls. Or as a teenager I'd watch 007 movies and wish I was the guy with the tricked out car and state-of-the-art gadgets saving the world and then celebrating by fornicating with a gorgeous, morally-ambiguous double agent in a designer dress. Never did I consider a plan for my life that involved Old Balls me sitting in my house, obsessively following the marriage of an athlete and his wife. Even if he's the most prominent player in the history of the football team I always loved and she's a supermodel on a one-name basis with the entire human race.
And if when I ask myself whether this is what I really want to do with my life? The answer is always the same:
Yes. Positively. This is what I want to do. I apologize for nothing. Not even to Young Balls me, playing touch football at Stella Terrell field, looking up at a squadron of F-18 Hornets flew overhead. Like I said earlier this week, when Brady and Gisele reportedly hired divorce attorneys:
... this affects all of us. On a football level. But also on a personal level. Because if these two metahumans can't make it, what hope to we fatally flawed people have?
So pressing on with the latest news:
Daily Mail - Tom Brady is 'very hurt' by supermodel Gisele Bündchen's decision to hire divorce lawyers — marking the beginning of the end for the couple's 13-year marriage.
A source close to Brady, 45, said it's 'pretty obvious that he's hurting' and that he 'doesn't want to fight' through an ugly divorce, People magazine reported.
According to one source, Gisele, 42, 'is the one steering the divorce,' as she was the first to hire attorneys. …
'She is playing offense and he is playing defense. He wants to protect himself, protect his interests, but he's only starting to go the legal route in his defense from her,' a source told People.
'He doesn't want this to be ugly, he doesn't want to fight. If the divorce is happening — and it seems like it is — he wants it to go as smoothly as possible.'
Gisele is reportedly angry after the NFL quarterback decided to un-retire weeks after saying he was leaving the game forever. …
A source told People in September that the couple had already been living apart for 'more than a month' when the season started. …
Brady, however, is still reportedly struggling to come to terms with the separation because he is used to winning, the source said.
His 'very charmed life' has reportedly made the divorce proceedings 'awful for him.'
'Things always seem to go his way. He works hard, he's a good guy, he hasn't had a lot of things go wrong in his life,' the source told People.
'This is awful for him. You can tell that this really, really hurts.' …
Bündchen was also recently spotted … with her luxurious diamond ring missing from her left hand as she locked the car door.
And as someone else noticed from his most recent Instagramertisement for TB12 Fitness, Brady has also ditched his wedding ring:
So cue the obvious jokes:
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Anyway … It really puts things in perspective when you read it expressed this way. Here is everything Tom Brady has never been. Ever since he clawed his way to the top of Lloyd Carr's depth chart at Michigan, fought to earn his way from the Patriots 4th string QB to their QB2, and defied all odds to win his first Super Bowl in his first season as a starter, everything he's done has been a victory. Everything he's touched has turned to sterling silver and white gold with diamonds. I won't use "charmed life" the way this Brady-Bundchen insider did, because he's dedicated his life to this. But the rest really makes you appreciate how unfamiliar all this has to be for him.
He's hurting. She's the one "steering the divorce." She's on offense which puts him on defense for the very first time. He's a good guy who hasn't had things go wrong in his life. Which is true. Hell, even when he was falsely painted as a cheater and became the object of the whole nation's ridicule, he served his time, then came back from suspension to go 14-1 the rest of the way and win his fifth ring. But now for the first time, he's faced with an adversary he can't defeat: A dissolving marriage. So it's only natural that this "really, really hurts."
There are plenty of suggestions that their issues go beyond football. But it's impossible to look at the way the events have unfolded and not see that his decision to unretire cost him his marriage. Sad and tragic as that is, there's something sort of romantic about it. A man loving a thing so much that it costs him that which he loved most. Like Captain Kirk, always breaking some woman's (or sexy alien's) heart because his first love is the Enterprise. Or the cowboy in all the great Westerns who has to give up the gal he loves because he's got to ramble. Or the detective in the cop movies who can't keep a marriage together because he's too obsessed with catching bad guys to be there for his wife emotionally (1:15 mark):
Brady loves his family. And he loves being the greatest football player who ever lived. He was asked to make a choice and couldn't. So Gisele is making the decision for him. It's sad. But it's sadly beautiful too. Sincerest thoughts and prayers for him as he deals with a loss far greater than any he suffered to Nick Folk or a Manning brother.