July 18, 2006

Carmen Electra, Dave Navarro Separate After Three Years Of Marriage

By Jennifer Vineyard (MTV.com)

Dave Navarro and Carmen Electra are separating, Electra's rep confirmed Monday (July 17).

The couple, who got married November 22, 2003, documented their courtship on Carmen & Dave: An MTV Love Story and then their wedding on Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen + Dave, which aired for seven episodes in early 2004.

"Thanks to MTV, we can give our kids a DVD package about how their parents met and wed," Navarro joked in January 2004 to MTV News. "And maybe MTV can document our childbirth. I got some making-of home footage, then I think we're gonna do some kind of C-section delivery, so perhaps MTV can come in and shoot that."

The couple, however, didn't have any children before deciding to call it quits. Electra's rep described the split as "amicable."

Navarro and Electra spent long periods of time apart, as she shot movies and performed occasionally with the Pussycat Dolls and he played with the Panic Channel and Camp Freddy and hosted Rock Star. Their time apart often sparked rumors that a split was imminent, but Navarro disputed those rumors on his website, writing April 16, "So regarding all the gossip ... Are we getting a divorce? Are we having a baby? Are we doing sex aerobatics? Well, none of these things are true. However, I wouldn't mind trying the sex aerobatics thing!"

As for Electra, she seemed happy with the union during a recent interview in the August issue of Self magazine, which hits newsstands next week. She discusses jamming with Navarro to Led Zeppelin songs and taking a trip to the paint store, where they bought canvases, paints and brushes so they could create art together.

"Sometimes you get so caught up in stuff that you're not really living," she told the magazine. "I'm the most secure in myself now, so that makes me feel happy. I've felt bad long enough, and I'm over it. Now I always like everything to be fun."

Navarro and Electra started dating after being set up on a blind date through a mutual friend. For their wedding invitations, David LaChapelle shot them naked as if they were dead in the morgue.

If Navarro and Electra divorce, this would be her second failed marriage. She previously married former Chicago Bulls forward Dennis Rodman in a Las Vegas ceremony after briefly dating in November 1998, but the union was annulled after nine days, with Rodman claiming he had been too drunk at the time for the marriage to be valid. Electra attributes the impulsive marriage to the deaths of her sister and mother just three months prior.

"I just tried to keep big things constantly happening, so I didn't have to focus on what was really going on," she told Self magazine. "I surrounded myself with people - I didn't really care what kind, so long as they distracted me. I couldn't be by myself for one second."

After a year of trying to avoid the grief, she was "sick of being sad," she told Self. "I did a complete life change. I had friends to let go of, a marriage [to Rodman] I needed to get strong enough to walk away from. I moved. I changed my number. I really tried to get my focus back, do some healing and let myself cry. I needed to be alone and I needed to feel."