#sting After more than four decades together — and 33 years of marriage — Sting and Trudie Styler prove that true love doesn’t fade with time. The couple is still as close as ever, and Sting says the key is simple: “We love each other — which is a given! — but we also like each other. I think there’s a difference.”
00:00After more than four decades together and 33 years of marriage, Sting and Trudy Styler
00:05prove that true love doesn't fade with time.
00:08The couple is still as close as ever, and Sting says the key is simple.
00:12We love each other, which is a given.
00:14But we also like each other.
00:17I think there's a difference.
00:19And honestly, that might be the best relationship advice out there.
00:23We don't have a secret.
00:24It's just we're just lucky.
00:26Trudy agrees.
00:27She once said,
00:28I'm married to an incredibly good husband, and we're devoted to each other.
00:32We laugh a lot.
00:34I think that's important in a marriage.
00:36He has my back.
00:37He's my champion.
00:38You can really feel the warmth between them, can't you?
00:41But what's the real secret behind their long-lasting marriage?
00:45According to Sting, it's a mix of chemistry, independence, and respect for each other's space.
00:51We have space apart because he tours and I go and do my films.
00:55We don't live in each other's pockets, Trudy explains.
00:59That balance seems to work wonders.
01:01I think that it's no secret, but I think having careers and independent lives is very important.
01:09Absolutely.
01:10And when they reunite after time apart, it's still electric.
01:13Sting once said,
01:14That kind of spark lasting 43 years is something truly rare, especially in Hollywood, where enduring love stories are almost unheard of.
01:29Now, Sting is also known for making headlines with one very memorable confession, the time he claimed that his tantric intimacy sessions with Trudy lasted seven hours.
01:39Over the years, he's clarified that it wasn't really about the number, but about connection.
01:46I don't know any purer and better way of expressing a love for another individual than sharing that wonderful, I call it sacrament.
01:53I would stand by it.
01:55Not seven hours.
01:57The idea, Sting said.
01:59I mean, she's an extraordinary person.
02:00Somebody said to me the other day, who's the most extraordinary person you've ever met?
02:05Expecting, I'll say, you know, Nelson Mandela or, you know, one of these grand statesmen.
02:09I'll say, I think I'm married to her.
02:11Trudy later admitted the original story started as a playful, slightly tipsy exchange between Sting and fellow musician Bob Geldof, but she stood by the message behind it, that true intimacy is about presence, care, and deep engagement with your partner.
02:29And that philosophy seems to have served them well.
02:32For me, becoming a man, paradoxically, is about the nature of how you relate to women.
02:41I think you're really a man when you treat women well.
02:46Sting and Trudy Styler have been together for over four decades now, and they're still as in love as when they met.
02:51The way their romance started, though, turned a lot of heads back in the day.
02:55The marriage I go crazy to, so I need that balance.
03:00And she's very strong.
03:02I feel like an orbit, because she's central to my life.
03:07Why?
03:07Well, Sting was married with two children when he met Trudy, who was his wife's best friend.
03:13In 1974, Sting's whole world changed when he met his first wife, Frances Tomelty.
03:18She was playing the part of the Virgin Mary in a Christmas rock show in his hometown.
03:22After a little over a year of dating, Frances fell pregnant.
03:26And when she was three months along, the pair got married in a Catholic ceremony.
03:30We will fall in love, and within 18 months, this woman will be my wife.
03:36She transformed my life, and was a catalyst in my becoming something completely different, he wrote in his biography.
03:42In 1976, they welcomed their son Joe.
03:45Six years later, they would welcome their daughter.
03:48But this wouldn't be as happy an occasion.
03:50Just one year after getting married, Sting met Trudy Styler.
03:55At the time, Trudy was neighbors with the singer and his wife.
03:58Their bond began when they passed one another on the street, and what could have been a romantic encounter between two people turned into a media scandal years later.
04:08Not only was Styler acquainted with Sting after their meeting, she was also a close friend of Tomelty since they met during a production of Macbeth.
04:17Sting's wife at the time took the actress under her wing, and they became good friends.
04:21We have such a, I don't know, an easy and fantastic, great friendship together.
04:30At the time of Sting and Trudy's meeting, he was a struggling musician who had just formed a little-known band called The Police, and was juggling marriage with a newborn baby.
04:39Despite his outrageous looks, the actress couldn't help but fall in love.
04:43I thought, I fancy that guy with green hair, she said.
04:47It was certainly love at first sight for Sting as well.
04:49In his autobiography Broken Music, he wrote about what he felt when he met the actress.
04:53Her eyes are a pale green, and across her left cheek is a strip of scar tissue that curls like the violent memory of an animal claw.
05:02Strangely, the scar in no way detracts from her beauty because she looks to me like a kind of damaged angel, he wrote.
05:09Although Sting claims that he and Styler were platonic for at least the first year of their relationship,
05:14it's not known exactly when they began to see one another romantically.
05:17Neither are proud of the situation, and remain quiet on the exact details for the benefit of everyone involved.
05:24Soon, things got murky.
05:26Frances and Sting welcomed their second child in 1982, and it was around the same time that she discovered her husband's affair with Trudy.
05:34Not long after the birth, they separated.
05:36As for Stiler's situation, she was also in a committed relationship with someone else.
05:40It was the least ideal situation you can imagine.
05:43I don't talk about it because it's tied up with, you know, his ex-wife and I don't talk about her, Trudy said.
05:50By 1983, Trudy was pregnant with Sting's child, and things were going very well for the police, with hits like Roxanne and Every Breath You Take.
05:58With this in mind, the band was about to embark on a world tour.
06:02Trudy went on the road with the police up until she was eight months pregnant.
06:05It wasn't until 1984 that Sting and Tomelty divorced, and that same year Stiler gave birth to a daughter.
06:13Sadly, the demise of the police would be coinciding with the breakup of his family.
06:17After the divorce, strict Catholic Frances kept her dignity, and would only say of the split,
06:23I'm happy everything has gone through, it's been done amicably.
06:27She had longed for the fairy tale marriage ever since she was young,
06:30but Sting's growing fame, good looks, and inability to be faithful meant their 1976 wedding was doomed.
06:37He once announced that it was cool to be promiscuous,
06:39and admitted to sleeping with five women in one week during a U.S. tour.
06:42As the band took off, he would not see his young family for weeks on end.
06:47It was wonderful to spend more time at home, you know, with my wife,
06:50and in the same bed every night, and walking my dog.
06:53Things seemed different when he married Trudy as his womanizing ways were no longer.
06:57He became the family man he was meant to be as the couple had four children together
07:02over the next 20 years of their relationship.
07:05While Sting says that it wasn't his goal to have a big family,
07:08he is forever grateful that he has it.
07:10I became a dad by accident six times, that's how smart I am.
07:14Yet they were the happiest accidents of my life, because they're remarkable human beings.
07:19They have produced seven grandchildren at this point, who are also wonderful.
07:24So, I didn't intend to be the patriarch of a tribe, but I am, he said.
07:30Over the years, he has also spoken about how difficult it must have been for his kids to have
07:34him as a dad.
07:35He was sure there were times it was great to be his child, and other times it was a pain in the ass.
07:40When he would go pick his kids up from school, there were other parents asking for his autograph,
07:44which was embarrassing for him and his children.
07:46With my children, there is great wealth, success, a great shadow over them.
07:54So, it's no picnic at all being my child.
07:57I discuss that with them.
07:58It's tough for them, he said.
08:00Despite how difficult it was, he has never had any plans to make their life easier, at least financially.
08:07Sting has said that he and Trudy have instilled in them the importance of making their own living.
08:11His kids are fiercely independent, and don't sit around waiting for a handout.
08:16People ask me about this statement I've made about not leaving any vast fortune to my children.
08:22I say I wouldn't want to rob my children of the adventure and the privilege of making it on their own,
08:29of actually making a living on your own.
08:32It's a fantastic thing to do.
08:33The musician did say he will always help them if they're in trouble,
08:37even though he has never really had to do that.
08:39My kids won't see a penny of my $300 million fortune.
08:45I told them there won't be much money left because we are spending it.
08:49I certainly don't want to leave them trust funds that are albatrosses around their necks.
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