Politics & Power Quote by John Hewson

“I never wanted to separate from either wife” is a politician’s confession engineered to sound like candor while quietly distributing responsibility into the air. The line leads with desire (“never wanted”) rather than action, inviting sympathy for an outcome he frames as inevitable. It’s less a moral accounting than a preemptive rebuttal: don’t read this as selfishness or betrayal; read it as tragedy, as drift.

“Accumulated stress” is the key euphemism. Stress is no one’s fault, and “accumulated” makes it feel like sediment, not a choice. The subtext is managerial: relationships fail the way projects fail, under load, over time, because no one had “bandwidth.” That corporate metaphor is reinforced by “virtually no time to ourselves,” a phrase that turns intimacy into a scheduling problem. It also hints at a familiar political-life alibi: public service as a solvent that dissolves private commitments.

The context tightens with “After politics.” That pivot suggests a comedown narrative: the campaign or office ends, and the real scramble begins. “We were both working very hard to establish new careers” reads like an attempt to modernize the story, emphasizing dual ambition and shared pressure. Yet it also spreads accountability sideways: if both were building, then no one can be singled out for neglect.

The intent isn’t to litigate a breakup; it’s to protect a public identity. Hewson speaks in the language of overwork, transition, and teamwork because those are culturally forgivable failures. He doesn’t ask to be absolved for what happened. He asks to be understood for how hard it all was.