Vice President J.D. Vance's marriage appears to be falling apart behind the scenes, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon — and the two barely seem to be capable of hiding how much they "loathe each other" at this point.

The tension between the vice president and Usha Vance, who has already been dispatched for some of President Donald Trump's geopolitical side ambitions, has already gotten to the point that comedians are making fun of it. But those jokes are coming from a real place, Marcotte continued.

"Last month, Megan McCain hosted Usha Vance for what should have been the softest of softball interviews, focused on what life as second lady is like," wrote Marcotte. "Vance clearly understood her assignment was to make it all seem like a great time — that leaving her career as a high-powered attorney to spend her days doing sub-Melania Trump public appearances about dull topics like the importance of reading for kids. But her acting chops weren’t up to it. Instead, audiences were treated to a one-hour hostage video, as the increasingly desperate McCain tried to get Vance to feign interest in her own life."

In particular, she showed no interest in her role as second lady, and talked on and on about how much she missed her old life, saying her husband doesn't cook for her anymore, and reflecting, “In a dream world, eventually, I’ll be able to live in my home and continue my career” — all while offering McCain no details about her romantic life no matter how much she was pressed.

The vice president himself doesn't appear to get any more joy out of the marriage, wrote Marcotte.

"J.D. Vance has spent years now dropping similarly miserable hints that he is not enjoying married life ... In March, he 'joked' that when 'the cameras are all on; anything I say, no matter how crazy, my wife Usha has to smile, laugh, and celebrate it,'" And during his speech at the GOP convention last year, he boasted about how “when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms,” and that his marriage proposal included being buried in the family's seven-generation Eastern Kentucky cemetery plot. "The implication wasn’t subtle: Usha Vance is expected to subsume her South Asian identity to his family’s whiteness, as well as her husband’s blood-and-soil idea of what makes someone an American."

Beyond that, Marcotte noted, Vance is constantly talking about how married couples have a duty to stay together no matter how rough their marriage is.

"Despite his claims that 'childless cat ladies' are 'miserable,' it’s hard not to notice the protest-too-much quality to his obsession with single or childless people," she wrote. "He keeps insisting the childless are 'sociopathic,' painting them as selfish hedonists, all in a tone of barely concealed envy — as if he senses they are getting away with something." At the same time, she noted, he is constantly distancing himself from his family in rhetoric, "joking" that she has the kids, not himself, and agreeing with a radio host that free child care is “the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female.”

"I don’t know what goes on in private behind the gates of the Naval Observatory," Marcotte concluded — but "if that’s what the right thinks marriage is all about, J.D. Vance shouldn’t be so surprised that ever larger numbers of women are saying, 'Thanks, I’ll choose cats instead.'"