Kamala Harris Confirms Those Doug Emhoff Divorce Rumors Weren't Totally Off Base

Long-term, high-stress situations can have a lot of negative impacts on romantic relationships. And we would certainly assume that running for president of the United States would be more than a little bit stressful. Combine this with some of the strange things about their marriage, and it's not really surprising that some believe they saw signs that former Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were headed for divorce, particularly amid Harris' 2024 bid for the presidency. Since then, Harris and Emhoff's outings have hinted that their marriage was able to come out strong on the other side. However, Harris may have just confirmed that those divorce rumors weren't entirely off base.

In her memoir "107 Days," in which she recounts her 2024 presidential campaign, Harris recalls how her 60th birthday that October, shortly before election day, was very nearly a breaking point. As Harris recalls, both she and Emhoff were on the road campaigning, but her staff worked things out so they'd both be in Philadelphia on her big day. She had been looking forward to what Emhoff had planned, only to discover that he hadn't planned anything, and that her staffers had taken care of most everything. "Storm [Harris' social secretary] knocked on Doug's door to ask him to choose the menu. He'd shrugged and told her to ask me. So she picked the menu herself," Harris writes (via InStyle). The former VP is sympathetic to Emhoff in her book, noting that he had also been campaigning hard and that all the attacks from political commentators had worn them both down. But because tensions were so high, it only took a few more perceived slights on Harris' birthday to bring things to a boiling point.

As she recalls in her memoir, Kamala Harris was disappointed, to say the least, with husband Doug Emhoff on her 60th birthday. Due to Emhoff's own busy schedule, he hadn't booked the hotel, nor made dinner or dessert plans, with all that being pushed off on Harris' staff. To make matters worse, despite supposedly being nicer than some of the places they'd normally stay while on the campaign trail, the hotel was apparently nothing to write home about. For a brief moment, Emhoff seemingly redeemed himself with his birthday gift to Harris: a beautiful piece of jewelry belonging to a set of two. However, Harris' gratitude quickly turned to annoyance when she realized that the date engraved on the back of it was their wedding anniversary, not her birthday. "He'd obviously intended to give me both pieces on our anniversary, until it occurred to him that by repurposing one piece, he could kill two birds with one stone," Harris writes (via InStyle).

Harris retreated to the bathtub to decompress, only to realize that the towels were on the other side of the room. When Emhoff was too preoccupied watching a baseball game to hear her calls for assistance, Harris had finally ran out of patience, and the two began arguing. But as Harris recalls, Emhoff was able to stop the fight dead in its tracks by saying something that really resonated with her: "We can't turn on each other." Harris concurred, writing, "With the hits coming from every direction, we had to stay united." As for how Emhoff made things right, he wrote several love notes to Harris on index cards, which were then individually placed on the then-VP's hotel room pillows on the nights they were in different cities.