Theirs might not be a marriage of true minds — but Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo should still be able to stave off a permanent split in their political union.
That’s the opinion of professional therapists contemplating the rocky state of the 20-year relationship between the two pols.
“The mayor and the governor have to put their issues aside for the good of the children,” said Michelle Ascher Dunn, an Upper East Side psychotherapist.
“And we are the children,” she added.
Although it might not always look that way to the voting public, in her professional opinion both pols appear “mentally healthy” — which means they should be able to patch things up.
“There is no such thing as not being able to work together,” she said.
She would advise the state’s top two Democrats against trying to work it out over dinner.
“When you’re forced to face someone you’re annoyed with, it brings out the primordial anger because someone has to dominate,” she said. “It’s like two animals facing off.”
Instead, she’d recommend a 30-minute walk.
Karol Ward, a New York-based psychotherapist and communication consultant, said she has seen many couples whose issues mirror the ones de Blasio aired last week.
The mayor’s stunningly frank admission to reporters that he has been “disappointed at every turn” by the governor reminded her of a wife who gripes to girlfriends instead of her husband — “a reaction when we feel we are being bullied,’ said Ward.
And in her view, it appears Cuomo — who was de Blasio’s boss in the 1990s at the federal Housing and Urban Development Department — is having trouble adjusting to his one-time underling’s prime position as head of the country’s largest city.
“It sounds like a power struggle,” she said. “They’re in different roles from how they originally met, and that’s causing what I like to call turbulence.”
She suggests de Blasio write down what he wants out of the relationship to get his feelings out constructively — and to avoid future public blowouts.
He should also develop his “stand-up-for-yourself skills.”
The tightly wound Cuomo has to “be willing to give,” she said.
But the most important thing they need to do, according to Jennifer Howard, might be the hardest for the two alpha men.
“They have to be able to say, ‘I want to get along,’ rather than ‘I want to be right,’ ” said Howard, author of the award-winning “Your Ultimate Life Plan.”