That was fast. Right after we heard that Seal and Heidi Klum were splitting up, Seal moved forward with pre-arranged commitments to promote his upcoming album, Seal 2. He’s taped interviews that will air on both PBS’ “Tavis Smiley Show” and “Ellen” in which he hasn’t been shy about talking about his breakup. Seal’s responses were surely well thought out, but they came across as genuine and very positive and loving toward Heidi and their family. He also explained why he’s still wearing his wedding ring and admitted that he’s grieving.

“I think we were shocked,” Seal explains on Ellen. “You go into these things with the greatest intentions when you say ‘I do’ and you say ”Till death do us part.’ Those vows hold value. They are not just words. These things happen. We pretty much said how we feel and made it clear in the release statement.

“But, for intents and purposes of this show, you just grow apart after awhile. You try and you work through it and the thing that you quickly realize when you are married and you become a parent is you do the best that you can. It makes you actually appreciate your parents a lot more.The thing that I’m most proud about this great woman who married—and I really do mean that from the bottom of my heart—is that together she has given me four incredible gifts…four beautiful children.

“She still, in my opinion, the most wonderful woman in the world. I think our priority was to remain civil and do this thing with dignity. We still very much love each other. It’s not a question of we were never to follow suit of some breakup or separations that you hear about, especially in our industry. It’s a shame. To say that neither of us were grieving would be an out and out lie, and I don’t mind telling you that. I think the operative here is that we are civil to each other and we both have a tremendous amount of respect and love and we try and do this with as much dignity as we possibly can. And of course, when you have four children, you hope and pray that the rest of the world will respect that we have four children and that their little hearts are at stake, too.”

And why is Seal still sporting his wedding ring?

“I think it’s just pretty much a token of how I feel about this woman. We have eight years. Eight wonderful years together. Just because we have decided to separate doesn’t necessarily mean you take off your ring and you’re no longer connected to that person.

“We will be connected in many ways till the rest of our lives…through our children and also through this tremendous admiration, respect and love that we have for each other. Will we wear the ring for the rest of our lives? Who knows? But right now it feels really comfortable on my hand, so I have intentions of taking it off anytime soon.”

When it came to Smiley’s interview, he asked Seal about the timing of his split with the release of such a “romantic” album, and how he stays focused on the music with everything in his personal life “falling apart”, the singer seemed to have similar answers.

“We have a tremendous amount of love and respect for each other, and also, of course, our children are our first priority. I think we’ve pretty much said everything that we needed to say about it in the statement that we released.

“But how does one stay focused? Um, just because you decide to separate—I don’t think you all of a sudden stop loving each other, I don’t think you all of a sudden stop becoming friends. Especially when there are other things to take into consideration, like family. So to be honest, it’s not really that difficult and it’s not really that much of an issue. What one has to do in this situation is to remain civil and to retain one’s dignity and to be professional and to understand we are not the only people on this planet that go through this. It is just, unfortunately, a chapter of life.”

[From E! Online]

A lot of you pointed out that it was unfair of me to focus on Seal and his alleged bad temper as the reason for Heidi and Seal’s breakup, and you’re right. I’m a woman and I have a few friends who have gone through divorces. I always get my female friends’ perspectives on their breakups which is of course one-sided so that’s what I tend focus on in my coverage. In the case of my close friends (and a few acquaintances) their men cheated on them, got caught, and then their wives were the ones to pull the plug. The men wore their wedding rings well after their wives told them it was over, and they talked a lot about how much they loved their families and didn’t want to lose them. I see a lot of parallels in this story is what I’m saying. Given what I’ve seen in my friends’ divorces, and what we’ve heard about Seal and Heidi’s split and how their friends didn’t see it coming, I don’t think that the only thing Heidi and Seal are dealing with is conflicting schedules or communication issues. I do think they still have a lot of love for each other and for their kids, and I hope they keep it classy. TMZ is reporting that Heidi has already shopped around for divorce lawyers and has found one through which she’s going to file for divorce.

Update: I just found this article on USA Today [via WeSmirch] in which they interview a therapist who says that excessive PDA may be a clear sign of trouble in a relationship. I don’t necessarily agree, some people are just like that with their partner, but this is what a lot of you have mentioned and I wanted to report on it:

Exposing yourselves so literally, as Klum and Seal did, is about “overcompensation,” says New York psychotherapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, author of Make Up, Don’t Break Up, “because they want to prove not only to themselves but to the rest of the world that everything is fine.”

Sometimes, Weil says, overt affection is a means of overcorrecting for specific problems at home. “It’s like a tease,” she says. The guy who makes sexually suggestive comments about his wife at a dinner party? “That’s the couple that’s not having sex at all.”

The unsealed nature of their relationship made Seal and Klum Hollywood’s gift to the public’s fascination with celebrity matrimony.

There was their May 2005 marriage, the details of which they spilled in interviews. In May 2011, the two renewed their wedding vows, something they did every year around the time of their anniversary. Traditionally, the couple donned some sort of costume. Last year, she wore a mask, and he came decked out in a pirate headdress and blue vest.

The annual “I do’s” were “just unusual,” says Linda Mintle, a Chesapeake, Va.-based marriage and family therapist and a Beliefnet blogger. (Typically, couples renew their vows once, after enduring a hard patch.) “I kind of wondered if that was an attempt to get back on track every year, to get them focused on the marriage.”

There’s a reason The Seven Year Itch resonated. “If you look at the research, they’re at the really pivotal point when more than half of divorces happen, at the seven-year period,” Mintle says. “What that usually means is those seven years were not great.”

But they sure looked great, on the surface. Klum and Seal loved to celebrate. On Halloween, they threw their annual lavish costume party in New York, showing up — and hamming it up — in matching, elaborate ape get-ups. On Sept. 29, they appeared to be a vision of goofy happiness while posing for photos at Disneyland, as part of the Magic Kingdom’s Halloween Time celebration. And in August, they locked lips while boating in the Mediterranean Sea.

And the two never met a red carpet they didn’t love. Yes, that was them kissing while arriving at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar viewing party on Feb. 27, 2011. And yes, that was them kissing again while working the arrivals line at the Grammys on Feb. 13. And while showing up at a 2007 Lorraine Schwartz party in New York. And while going to the 2005 Vanity Fair Oscar party.

But the height (or depths?) of their onstage mutual admiration society was September 2010’s Secret romp, a (literally) black-and-white metaphor for appearance vs. reality when it comes to relationships. “That’s more telling than anything,” Weil says. “What they’re uncovering in that video is what they’re covering up” at home.

“I’m sure they were hoping they could fix the problem and transpose the video to their (real) life, but it doesn’t work that way. It takes effort and work,” Weil says. “Now, they’re really naked in front of the whole world. They’re naked emotionally because the cover has been blown.”

Mintle is more circumspect. The extreme expressions of ardor “could have been fake, but it also could have been an attempt in the public to say, ‘C’mon, let’s make this work.’ “

[From USA Today]

I like that last part, in which they comment on that Secret video in which Seal and Heidi rolled around in bed seemingly nude, making out for the camera. It was kind of ironic in that nothing about their relationship seemed secret, except for maybe the fact that they had a lot of problems and issues like other couples.

Seal on Ellen

Seal on Tavis Smiley

Seal is shown in the gorgeous grey coat on 1-20-12 at LAX. Credit: BJJ/FameFlynet Pictures. He’s shown in the black coat outside The Late Show on 1-16-12. Credit: Mr Blue/WENN.com. Heidi is shown at the Globes on 1-15-12, and she was still wearing her ring then. Credit: WENN.com. Photo from Ellen credit: Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.