Long Post ⤵️
Well. It’s verified.
Chris acknowledged the child himself. So there it is. He has a child. I have said from the beginning that if it ever came directly from him, I would accept it. It has, so I do. I was wrong about the existence of the child. I’m not going to move the goalposts or pretend he didn’t say what he said simply because it contradicts what I believed.
But apparently some people think this means I now have to rewrite my opinion of the entire relationship, and…no.
If anything, this confirmation makes me look at him differently. Because if all of this was real the entire time, then I have even more questions about the way he has handled it. This disgusting woman has been subjected to many allegations and speculation for years, and from what I have publicly seen, he has been remarkably comfortable allowing her to stand in the middle of that storm while keeping himself at arm’s length. Maybe there are things happening privately that none of us know about. Of course there are. But I can only form an opinion based on what he chooses to show publicly, and what I’ve seen is not a relationship I would want in any way, shape or form.
Having a child does not automatically make their relationship healthy, romantic or aspirational to me.
I still see absolutely no sexual chemistry between them. I don’t know how they conceived a child. My personal guess would be IVF/artificial insemination, and I also wouldn’t be surprised by surrogacy. I have no evidence for either and I’m explicitly saying that is my speculation, not fact. Ultimately, how he had this child is none of my business.
I also still don’t believe this marriage lasts.
Again: opinion. Prediction. Not fact.
Maybe I’m wrong about that too. But I can very easily see this ending in divorce and the two of them becoming co-parents. Maybe she eventually fucks off back to Portugal and he ends up doing most of the parenting, which, based purely on my impression of him, he might actually love. Maybe they’re stuck dealing with each other as co-parents for the foreseeable future. Or maybe they stay married for fifty years and I eat those words too.
Having a child does not prove to me that this is the end-all-be-all love story people desperately want it to be.
What it does change is my relationship with him as a fan.
I unfollowed him.
I used to think he was not only entertaining and charismatic but fundamentally a good guy. This whole thing has stripped that away for me. I don’t hate him. Weirdly, I almost pity him now. Whatever this life is that he has chosen, none of it looks particularly happy, enviable or impressive to me.
And his fandom? Absolutely fucking decimated.
What used to be fun has become toxic, obsessive and vicious. At this point, a huge portion of the remaining discourse seems to come either from people who despise him or people so parasocially invested in his marriage that they practically live vicariously through his wife. Neither sounds enjoyable to me.
I also think his career has taken a serious hit, and I don’t know whether he ever fully recovers the kind of fandom he once had.
So no, I’m not having an existential crisis because I was wrong.
He has a child. I was wrong about that. I accept it.
I haven’t suddenly changed my opinion of the relationship. I haven’t changed my opinion of how bizarrely this has all been handled. And I certainly haven’t come away from today's confirmation thinking more highly of him.
Quite the opposite.
I wanted an answer for years. I finally got one.
Turns out the answer didn’t make me like him again. It made me done.
