hii I'm not sure if your blog also covers this kind of topic, but whenever people talk about the rough patches in Paul and Linda's marriage, what exactly are they referring to? I came across a period where it seems his relationship with Francie was still ongoing while he and Linda were already dating, but I don't know if there's any solid evidence that he continued to cheat on her after they got married
Hi! I think I've actually talked about this before. Admittedly, this is a topic I really don't like discussing for many reasons. One of them is that, other than Paul and Linda constantly emphasizing that they didn’t have a fairytale marriage, we have no confirmed, concrete idea of what their actual problems were. Because of that, there is always going to be a lot of speculation and a reliance on hearsay. The only real insider source who has given us a glimpse of these behind-the-scenes issues is Peter Cox (who clearly didn’t like Paul very much). Personally, I love Paul and Linda together, but every marriage has rough patches. Based on what I’ve read, their marriage seemed to go through an especially difficult period in the 80s and early 90s. This isn't entirely surprising, given that Paul was still processing John’s death and grieving deeply during those years. But there were other factors at play too. For exemple, Peter Cox, as I already mentioned (who worked on Linda’s cookbook and was her friend during the late 80s and early 90s) claimed that Paul and Linda had frequent arguments about touring. Paul often wanted her on the road with him, but Linda didn't really enjoy it. Other times, Paul would be completely ambivalent about her coming along. She would ask him, "Do you want me to go?" and sometimes he’d say yes, and other times no. Cox also noted:
"Paul used to complain that their life at Peasmarsh was isolated, out of the way. He wanted very much to be in town, going to parties and restaurants. Linda didn't want that. This was one of the causes of tension between them."
Since neither Paul nor Linda ever specified what happened behind closed doors, we don’t know for certain if Cox's account is true, but it’s the only detailed insider source we have (and personally, I don't find these arguments hard to believe). Cox also claimed he would occasionally find Linda in tears, adding:
"And there were about five or six occasions when I would get the train down to work with her only to be met by a driver who'd been sent to say that she couldn't see me... Every marriage has its ups and downs, of course. In her low moments, the idea of leaving him did cross her mind, but she immediately rejected it. Her family was the most important thing in her life and there was no way she'd give them up. At the low points, she did feel trapped."
This somewhat reminds me of an interview Linda gave much earlier, back in the late 70s, where she offered a remarkably nuanced and realistic view of their relationship:
"My life is not perfect," she told reporter Bonnie Estridge. "But whose is?" Estridge asked whether Linda was ever sorry she married Paul. "No, I’m not," Linda responded. "I can honestly say that. But if we ever broke up, I wouldn’t kill myself... We row, naturally. And every couple gets to a point when they feel trapped and think, ‘What the hell’s this about, anyway? I could be free.’ But then, the next day life seems better. The good outweighs the bad for me... I don’t pretend that I can’t ever see things going wrong. I’ve never been on the point of leaving him, but I’ve been able to see how it could happen."
If Peter Cox’s account is accurate, it would suggest that those strains Linda was alluding to in the late 70s only amplified in the 80s.
To be clear, we have absolutely no credible accounts of Paul cheating on Linda; I don't think infidelity was the issue at all. But aside from Paul dealing with the profound loss of John, I can imagine he wasn’t always an easy person to live with. Being married to someone with a huge ego, who doesn't handle criticism well, all while managing the suffocating pressures of global fame, would take a toll on any relationship. It’s easy to see how that environment led to frequent arguments, something Paul himself openly admitted to after Linda’s passing. He confessed that he had to seek psychological help to "get rid of his guilt" because, for a while after her death, all his brain could focus on were their fights and the moments where he "wasn't so nice" to her.
Cox claimed that Paul and his inner circle viewed Linda’s cooking book "patronisingly," treating it like a cute hobby that wouldn't amount to much. He also recalled:
"Linda would try to arrange it so we would work on the book when Paul wasn't there. If he was, he would always dominate things so much that we couldn't get anything done. The work was mainly done at the kitchen table. If Paul was there, he would be the alpha male. He had an opinion about everything."
There's also the story that Paul explicitly opposed Linda writing her own autobiography. According to his PR manager at the time, Geoff Baker, Paul reportedly snapped, "I'm the only fucking star in the family!"
And (though this should be taken with a MASSIVE grain of salt), I remember reading old threads from the rec.music.beatles forum from the late 90s/early 2000s where a user who claimed to know the McCartneys (or knew someone who did, I can't remember), and was a huge fan and very defensive of them, alleged that Paul and Linda had temporary separations in the 80s, where they lived under the same roof but were effectively separated.
Besides all of this hearsay, the only window we have into these "rough patches" comes from Paul and Linda’s own words. They never gave away the exact details, but they stated countless times, using different phrasing, that their marriage was highly volatile.
In 1984, Paul described their relationship as "volatile."
In 1989, he said: "When you’ve been married as long as I have, it’s not a sweet subject at all. It’s bittersweet. It’s both."
In 1993, he admitted: "If you had seen our marriage at any point in the last 23 years, you might’ve thought, this might not last. It’s always been a fragile thing." To which Linda added: "It still might not last."
In 1997 (in Many Years From Now), Paul reflected: "People have this image of twenty years of marital bliss, like we were swimming down a stream avoiding the white water. But in fact, we were in the middle of the white water. It’s a miracle we made it, but we did."
Just months before Linda's death in 1998, an interviewer complimented the longevity of their marriage, and Paul replied: "Yeah, we were lucky. But we had our ups and downs. It’s not rosy-posy. We argue."
This was a strong and enduring marriage between two people who loved each other deeply (something even Peter Cox admitted was obvious). They just experienced real human tension (an average amount, or maybe a bit more than average). When people hear about marital difficulties, they often think about cheating. But infidelity isn't always the culprit; there are a million complex reasons why a marriage can be difficult at times, especially when one of the spouses happens to be Paul McCartney.
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