When Jeanine Pirro's campaign for attorney general is over — or, to be cruel but precise, once she loses — she'll be going straight into marriage counseling, at least if her husband has anything to do with it.

New York's Steve Fishman profiled the Pirros' increasingly confounding marriage for this week's magazine, and he found Al Pirro, Jeanine's wayward husband — by all accounts a screamer, a bruiser, a brusque alpha male — surprisingly wounded and therapized, talking about his anxieties. Al knows he needs to be flattered, to be reminded that he makes more money than Jeanine, to feel generous (Fishman zeroes in on his compulsive need to pick up the check, even for parties of 30). He denies the infidelities that drove Jeanine up the wall (and into the dubious confidences of Bernie Kerik) while readily admitting something even more hurtful to a relationship: that he needs outside female companionship, be it platonic or not, because he doesn't feel encouraged, admired, or appreciated at home. And he knows the couple needs to work on these issues.

"He was essentially stewing," Fishman says. "He feels that he's been shut out, silenced, and attacked, both by the campaign and by his wife personally." Is there enough therapy in the world to get the pair past all that? Maybe, Fishman says. The real turning point for the relationship, he says, was Al's tax-evasion conviction. "But it was never a fake marriage. There's a basis of deep mutual admiration — hell, love."

Can This Marriage Be Saved? [NYM]