I know we love Bri but I read an interview where they asked if he thought about going back to Chrissy after he met Anita and he said “there was a thought” but it was impossible bc he’d fallen for Anita and idk like 😵‍💫 mans didn’t try to save his marriage at all? That’s…😬

I know the interview excerpt you’re referring to, but going by other sources, I don’t think that was quite the case. We know from another interview that Brian lived alone for a while in 1988 after his marriage broke up for good because he said he was in denial that he was in love with Anita, thought the feelings would pass if he just sat around on his own, and he felt very guilty (which, yeah, was justified lol). That means he didn’t actually break up with Chrissy and go running to Anita—it sounds like the marriage ended and he didn’t think he’d get back with Anita at all, and there’s an interview with her from 1988 in which she apparently teared up and confirmed they were broken up.

The timeline and sequence of events aren’t totally clear, because a lot was still kept behind closed doors, but it seems like there was a time when Brian got caught, broke up with Anita, and did try to return to his marriage (there’s another interview where Anita said Brian was very lovely “but unfortunately, there is a Mrs. May”, so that was obviously after she knew he was married and at a time when she wasn’t with him anymore). When Brian said it was “impossible” because he fell in love with someone else, that could mean a couple things. He could’ve meant that he went back to Chrissy like, “I’m so sorry, I’m finished with her, let’s try to start over” (because remember, he didn’t actually want to get divorced) and Chrissy turned around and said, “Nope, this is the last straw, I can’t do this anymore, we’re finished.” We have no idea what her side of the story is and never will, but it would be very believable and understandable if she wouldn’t accept her husband’s apologies after a public affair. Or, maybe Brian broke up with Anita and he and Chrissy did agree to try to make it work because neither wanted to get divorced and there were children involved, but after however many months, they realized they couldn’t move on from what happened, or ignore any of their other problems that made their marriage on the brink of falling apart before Anita, and things would never be the same so they just couldn’t possibly stay together. I think that’s a very likely scenario, too. You can agree to try to make things work, but if a bad event fundamentally breaks a relationship, that won’t last. I don’t think it’s uncommon for couples to try to patch things up after an affair tbh, but break up later because the hurt feelings don’t heal.

(I’ve also wondered how the death of Harold May in 1987 might’ve influenced this…Harold was the one who shamed Brian for not marrying Chrissy to begin with, and Brian said it was “unfinished business” between him and his father when he died. Harold likely knew what was going on—did that influence Brian to try to go back to Chrissy? Did she temporarily swallow her pride and be there by his side when his father died, as support? We’ll never know.)

So yeah, there’s a lot we don’t know about this situation, as much as the tabloids exploited it, but it seems like every time you dig deeper and really examine the quotes we have, things were more complicated than they initially appear.