The Divorce Diaries, 11
"I have a bestie, a drill, a vibrator, and a dog: I don't need a man for anything."
This is the story of a woman who sacrificed her career for her children. She never meant to give up her career completely. But at the time she intended to resume working after baby #2, she was in the hospital having baby #3. And then, she just never went back.
When they separated, the children were 7, 5 and not quite 3. She tried to find full-time work to no avail and because her spousal support ran out after a certain number of years, and she lives in Switzerland, which has a very high cost of living, money is always incredibly tight, no matter that she receives the highest amount of child support possible. It covers her rent and a portion of her health insurance.
I also live in a very high cost of living area. When my ex and I decided to settle down in Silicon Valley, it was under the presumption that we would stay together and my ex made a salary that could withstand the cost of living. But I knew, deep down, I’d never be able to afford living here on my own. When we got married, I worked in publishing. Before that, I worked in a church. I was a religion major in college. I was not someone who was taught to go after a lucrative career. My dad was a professor. My mother, a musician.
As I’ve been writing and thinking about how prenups and postnups can help women not be so financially devastated upon divorce, this calculus should be part of it. If you decide a build your life in an area that requires a high income, if there are no children upon divorce, you are free to go build your life elsewhere (even though, honestly, that may feel impossible depending on your career). But if you have children, and your ex doesn’t want to move, you are stuck living in a place that you cannot afford. Or that you can, but just barely.
Below this woman recounts the story of her marriage, how her husband’s working from home made her life MORE difficult, and why she would never consider marriage again.
She’s not alone. This recent article from The Wall Street Journal includes this from a 20022 Pew survey of single adults: Just 36% of single women were looking for romance, compared to 54% of single men.
36%.
This is surprising while also not really surprising given the discourse around marriage today. The Tiktok below starts with this: “I think in ten years people are going to kind of look at marriage the way we used to look at smoking.”
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I wrote about whether marriage was going extinct in the post below:
I personally love this quote from Nathan Hill’s novel Wellness:
“Marriage is just stupid. At least, the way we currently practice marriage, how we conceptualize it in the West. It’s so idiotic… I think it's time to sunset the whole idea.
You want to get rid of marriage?
I want to update it. I want to test new models. I want to break it and start all over. The way I think of it is: Marriage is just a technology that was never quite future proof. Like, it may have been a good tool in Victorian England, or whatever, but for us? Now? Not so much. We have these twenty-first century relationships running on eighteenth century software. So its glitchy and it crashes all the time. Typically with any technology we try to innovate and update and improve it, but with marriage we seem to refuse all progress. We’ve convinced ourselves that, actually, we like those glitches. We prefer all the crashes. If it weren’t so hard to use, it wouldn’t be worth it. We’ve been persuaded the bugs are features. It’s so dumb…It’s not your fault. You’re just operating a technology that is out of date and broken and maybe sort of even abusive in how it makes people feel like failures and frauds.”
Women rejecting marriage isn’t about man-hating but about women realizing how the institution of marriage has failed them and just how happy they are on their own. One of my final questions in The Divorce Diaries is: Do you hope to get married again one day?
Here are the responses:
DEAR GODS NO. I mean, really, what on earth for???
Only if I meet someone who truly sees me and respects me.
No, my partner and I do not plan to marry. This is important to me. I realized I do not want to be a "wife" again, and he understands and accepts this (at least he has for 7 years now).
Only if I switch teams…
No, probably never again. I do hope to find a partner someday but I never want to be legally attached to a person again.
God, no.
I don’t know. I am not entirely against the idea of remarrying but I will enter a second marriage a whole lot more cautiously and wisely, especially regarding commingled finances and this prospective partner’s ability to be a true partner, in every sense, including financially.
I don’t think so. I like my own space and time and am still trying to release all my care-taker habits.
Never while my kids are still so young. I also don’t want to put my elderly parents through any of that. But somewhere down the line, I can see just a glimpse of that. I often joke and say things like “My third husband and I will love Tokyo.” I have yet to meet my second.
Hahahahahahahaha HELL no. I mean, never say never, but right now I can’t imagine—I’d love to find a compatible partner to spend time with, but really am not sure I’m even into living with someone in future.
The Divorce Diaries are behind a paywall due to the sensitive nature of this content and to protect the women who have bravely shared their stories. If you’d like to share your own Divorce Diary, you can fill out a form here.
I’ll be at AWP in LA this week hosting a Substack meetup (details here) and attending friends’ panels and readings.
Don’t forget that The Love & Money Summit is taking place this week and my session, The Feminist Guide to Money in Marriage, is released tomorrow. Click here to register for access.
I chatted with
about my post The Problem with Part-Time Work on her podcast Motherhood Until Yesterday. You can listen to the episode on Substack here or on Spotify here.