Listen Jonathan Nightgale from Rossignal Group are my personal go-to experts for all things management at work. They have helped thousands of bosses around the globe get more clarity, more confidence, more calm, and less anxiety, less chaos, less of that weird twitching I think. Their next online program kicks off soon. So if you're ready to get on top of your management practice this year, you can use promo code Culture Study to take 10% off
your registration. To find out more, go to world's best management training.com. And I'll just say on a personal note, I would not do this ad if I didn't actually think that this was like no bullshit management advice. So absolutely endorse. Well, wait, what was that movie that has like Diane Keaton and everyone in it? Is it the first wives club? First wives club, yeah. Right. No, I think the professional ex-wife
is more, I don't know, it's more a luring. Yeah, definitely. They were going to remake that movie and I don't know what happened to the remake. I don't know. They don't like to make movies for women. That's probably part of it. That's true. True, but that would be like the Barbie movie, but for like boomer women, you know. But they already have that and it's like every Nancy Myers movie. No, but like, but like Nancy Myers, who I love,
does not really shoot down the establishment. She's like the establishment. She's like, I'll rock it a little, but then Steve Martin is going to come in at the end and be the good guy. Like, no, he's not problematic on any sort of level. And the kitchen's going to be nice and everybody's kind of wealthy. It's like, it's all the problems are solved by wealth, which also ties into what we're going to talk about today.
Well, since Steve Martin, that's all you need. Steve Martin. I'm Ann Helen Peterson and this is the Culture Study Podcast. My name is Liz Lens. I am an author and the writer behind the substack. Then yell at me and a professional ex-wife. Tell me about your new book, which I actually just finished. I want to hear your description of it. Yes. So my new book, This American Ex-wife, is It's a memoir. It's also a lot of research and it's about how
divorce is great. I went through a divorce in 2017 that was partially initiated by the election of 2016. I grew up even jolacol and had a lot of cultural scripts about marriage and what it meant, what family ought to be. And I held tightly to those cultural scripts, even after I left the church and left my faith and divorced, really tossed me off of a cliff. And I kind of felt like I had no other option to lead a happy life except to do this thing.
And then when I did it and I got to the other side, I was like, wait a minute, that was great. That this whole idea, that this narrow idea of what I had about what life should be, what love should be, had really confined me in so many ways. And that breaking that apart, burning that life to the ground really opened up my eyes to like what domestic equality looks like. You know, like what a career and ambition actually looks like, what
motherhood can be. And so I wrote this book that is a full-throated argument for getting divorced and burning your life to the ground. And it's also an argument for love in relationships in a really surprising way. Yeah, that's the thing is that I think a very facile reading of the book that will I am positive be wielded in your direction is like Liz Hatesman and doesn't think that
anyone should ever get married. When instead actually it's a real, you know, like the blurb that I wrote for the book, I was like, I think people should read this before getting married. Yeah. Because it allows you to see the really, I think, pernicious ways that marriage can decimate the individual. Yes. Like can hollow out your sense of self and all in like what you value all of these different things if you're not careful because it is such a steamroller of an ideological institution.
Yeah. And we sell this idea of like love, can conquer all. And then you know you have especially we're talking specifically cis hat marriages where like thing you get into the institution and you realize love can't conquer all like love can't conquer the fact that he's not wiping the counter like love can't conquer that. And so you know, I really
feel like the book is about dropping the ropes and finding freedom. We have a lot of like inner culture, unformed female rage with no place to go because we don't really want to break down the systems. And I'm saying break down the system because there is something better on the other side. And I do think a relationship that is good will be strong enough to handle a partner quitting a lot of things and reshaping what that relationship
looks like. But it takes a serious renegotiation of the terms of your existence. And I think there's a lot of like acceptance of like, well, I'm mad, everything's unequal, but I guess that's just the way it has to be if I'm going to be married to Kevin. And it's like no, you don't have to. Like that is such that is a facile reading of the system that we've been given. And I think that's what traps us into these boxes. And you know, I say I
say break it apart and see what survives. And that's a very scary thing. I think especially for like white women of a certain income bracket like because we so identify with the system and find security in the system that we're afraid to let go of that system, right? We see how it oppresses us. We see how it oppresses other people even more, but because it like pays our mortgage, we're not going to burn it down. And I think that that's wrong
headed because I think you burn that house down. And then what survives the flames is actually like this beautiful life. I everybody who reads the book is like, oh, this is a lot more hopeful than I thought it would be. And I'm like, that's exactly the point. And I remember talking to my editors and saying like, I want the divorce to be the beginning of the
book, not the end of the book. And I want like the happiness and I want the joy and I want this like new home that I've built to be the end of the book because there is a happily ever after. And I do think it is involves romantic love. It involves relationships, but it also involves a serious renegotiation of like I said before the terms of your existence. So the theme of this part of this particular podcast is contagious divorce, not just
the worst but contagious divorce. This idea, this discourse of divorce is something that can run through a community. So to set us up for that conversation, I know that your sister had gotten divorced a couple years before you, but others in your community got divorced. Not exactly. I had a acquaintance like a mom friend from a mom group get divorced. Oh, you know what? Lala, I'm thinking about it. Yeah, my two best friends had both gotten
divorced. Okay, there it is. Yes. And you know, my friend Anna, who I quote a lot in the book, Anna had gotten divorced. I think a couple years before. And you know, her wisdom like really guided me through. I mean, she was the one who was like, listen, I'm your friend for forever. But you keep complaining about the same things over and over again. And like you've been doing this for a couple years now. Like, are you going to change something?
You know, which is hard truth stuff that only certain friends can tell you. But yes, both my friends. And then another one of my dear friends had been in a horrifically abusive marriage many years before and had gotten divorced. So, you know, I think the inclination is sometimes like to think of it as a pathology, right? Because like an illness, it spreads like and some people who get it and don't want it and they get it and they regret it, right?
Instead of thinking of it, though, this is how we just see it from a feminist lens is like, yeah, it's consciousness raising when one person gets divorced, right? It like makes that life visible, livable, right? It's like a representation of what life can be. But on the other hand, and I think this is particularly true for people in the sociology of marriage,
they call them blue divorces. So people who are more liberal, who weren't raised in the church, who got married older and who are bourgeois, usually like upper middle class, is they see a divorce happen in their community and they see that that woman becomes destitute, right? Essentially destitute. Like they have to leave their home. They have to like they
essentially destitute. She has got a downsize from four bedrooms to two. Oh my god. But they see that and they're like, I don't like even if I'm super annoyed and resent my husband in all of these ways, even if he devalues me in public and in private, I'm not going to get divorced because I value my financial and social security so much more than that. So okay, oh yeah, go where you going to go for that. Yeah. So I mean, well, I was not in a
blue marriage. I live in a red state. I was married to a Republican, but I was destitute after I ended my marriage. I was I was I was really poor and I was really afraid. There were a lot of months when I was like begging outlets to pay me so I could make rent, you know, and like really stressed out about how I was going to buy my kids juice. And I lived that reality, but I remember there was something and I kind of knew that it would happen, right?
I knew that I didn't have stable income because I hadn't been allowed to have stable income because I was full time with my children and also trying to work and I didn't have childcare and the childcare I had because my kids were very young, was inconsistent. And so I hadn't been allowed to build that career that would be that safety net. And I also live in a state where there are not a lot of jobs that I can do. Not a lot of creative jobs and I've done
them all. And that's it. There are no more jobs in the state for me to do. I literally had to make my own job. And so and actually researching for this book, I was really looking at that dip, that income dip. And actually that's only half the story, right? The post-divorced poverty is only half the story. What actually tends to happen is there's
a five-year dip and then the income start to go up. And why is that? Why is that? Maybe because women finally have a chance to build their career because they're not parenting and a don't-mail because actually 50-50 custody is like equality and you finally have some time to get psychic space and like build your career. I make more money than my ex now.
Because I've had that time and that space and now that energy to build a career. And so in researching this book, I had a lot of women come to me and kind of whisper like, oh, I would totally leave my husband, but I don't want to lose the house. And I just like, and I understand it, but that also deeply saddens me that like you have more allegiance to a MacManchon outside of DC than you do to yourself and your own freedom. And I think
that that's the thing about divorce being contagious. It's not a, it's like happiness is contagious, right? Like you see somebody get free and you realize it's better than your, you know, shitty vinyl sighted home. No offense to shitty vinyl sighted homes, if that is what you love. But like I would tell people this often, I would, I didn't grow up very wealthy. I'm one of eight kids. We have a lot of money, pretty, you know,
boom bust, money cycles. And I would tell people, I'm like, I know what it's like to be poor. I'm not afraid of being poor. What I've never known is freedom. Yeah. And I think that's the scary part. That's a really scary part is that we know how to ask for money. We know how to get money. But we don't know how to ask for freedom. And we don't know how to get it and take it. And then what do we do when we have it?
The sole discourse of contagious divorce, as far as melody, our producer and researcher extraordinaire can ask our team. It dates to 2010, at least that's like the first kind of percolations of it in the discourse. But then there was a big study in 2013 from Brown University and researchers found that participants were 75% more likely to become divorced if a friend is divorced and 33% more likely to end their marriage if a friend of a friend
is divorced. So what happened after you got divorced? What did you see? I hate the word contagion because we're talking about it. It's a bad thing. Right. Exactly. It's great. And I think it's contagious because people see that it's not so bad because we've created this whole cultural narrative like, oh, divorce is so bad. It's so awful. And then when somebody gets divorced and we see how happy they look and we're like, oh, okay, I'm going to try that. It's your divorce lawyers number. But
what happened was I didn't talk about it for a very long time. You know, I had loyalty to my ex and it was hard to discuss and I didn't know how to frame it. And so in true writer fashion, I didn't talk about it until I wrote an essay about it for Glamour magazine. So it was like silent, silent, silence. And then boom, on the internet in front of everyone. And then like that's how a lot of people found out like a lot of people in my community
and friends and they were like, we didn't know. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to like update my Facebook to be like, don't do that. Seriously. I'm an adult. Although I do respect it when other people do that because I love to gossip. But well, like currently right now, I'm trying to deduce like people who I haven't talked to in a long time and it would be inappropriate for me to just directly message and be like, are you okay? Did
you get divorced? But there is definitely some of that happening in my feed right now. And you're right. Like you can't. You know, like announcement in the public sphere. You know, you know, here's how you know if it's happened on Instagram, we're going to go on a little side quest here. Here's how you know if it's a man, he's posting a lot of pictures like bearded like bearded selfies in the woods or like pictures of him holding
a drink by a fire, a fire pit. And it's always like like moody music. And it's like, although a lot of changes going on, really reconnecting with myself, also the gym pictures, like all the venues at the gym. And for women, it's like a lot of like home like flowers. And then like all of us, and then if you go back, you know, in their history, like he's suddenly gone. He's totally gone. He's gone from all their pictures. And he was only appearing
in like one or two, like they've been married for 12 years. This is so funny because like I was like, when I got divorced, I was like looking at my Instagram because I have a private family Instagram. And I was like looking at it. My ex was like not in any pictures. And I was like, I don't even have to delete you from here because like you never cooperated with pictures. Anyways, so you were never here, which is, I don't know, maybe that's
a thing. But the, you know, like, and she's like, she's always got like flowers and some like, Audrey Lorde quote or something like that. That's just like about changes. And I love it. I love the way people find themselves. I think I know I'm mocking it. But it's also like, I think it's sweet and beautiful and earnest.
Well, I also think that Instagram allows people, once it has become public and whatever fashion it allows them to own the narrative in a way that like when my parents got divorced, a lot of people found out because there was a divorce notice in the newspaper, right? Like, yeah, because that's why like all the court notices are in the newspaper. Oh my God. And so like, so people. Hate the death of the newspaper, except for that one.
Well, yes. Okay. So I post this essay on glamour and it's called Now that I'm divorced, I'm never cooking for a man again. I totally stand by the title by the way. People are always like, I bet the editor picked that to make it provocative. And I was like, yes, she did. And it's great. And I stand by it. But, but that, so that came out. And so I started hearing from a lot of women in my DMs, a lot of emails, a lot of Instagram DMs, a lot
of Twitter DMs. And they were all like, how did you do it? How did you do it? And I tried to reply to as many as possible with like, as earnest and as honest as an answer, because I wanted to be honest. I wanted to have honest dialogues. And in a way that I felt like I hadn't seen. And we do talk a lot about divorce, but we talk so like we so fetishize that poor, destitute, single mother. And I really think it's a way of like putting a
cultural head on a pike where it's like, yeah, don't you could be her. Don't be her. She looks sad. She looks pathetic. And I wanted to be like, I feel better, happier than I ever have been. Like I did everything right. I went to college. I found the right person. I found a good person. We were financially stable. We lived in a small town in the Midwest, right? Like we went to church. We loved our families. And it sucked. And it sucked. And that life
was terrible. And I hated it. And I got it. And I worked hard for it. And I struggled through it. And it was awful. And so nobody told me it would be bad. Everybody told me it would be great. And it wasn't. And so I wanted to respond to them with so much like empathy and compassion and say like, here's how I did it. I was very honest about money. I had to create a secret bank account to get out. Like I had a loan from a friend to pay my initial
deposit for the lawyer. You know, these were the real financial realities. And I tried to be as honest. And you know, I have heard from quite a few of some of those women. So that was like 20. I think that came out in 2019. I forget. And now that this book is getting ready to come out, I've had quite a few of those same women come back to my DMs and be like, Hey, I got the divorce. Wow. I'm out. So I hoped a divorce is contagious. Like
I hope it is contagious. And here's the other part of it. Like, you know, we're talking a lot about like personal lives and feelings. But you know, there are studies that show that in countries that have liberal divorce laws. And so sorry, America is not really one of them. Like our divorce laws are not liberal and diverse. It is easier for a 16 year old to get married in most states than it is for a 42 year old woman to get divorced. Like
that is just a fact. So but there's a very depending on the state, there is very little accountability for if you have been the primary caregiver and have put your career in pause. Right? Yes. Yes. Yes. It's not great. So all those Republicans out there being like, Oh, divorce anybody treats marriage like fast food. It's like one, french fries are delicious. And two, like, no, we don't because it's legally impossible. But in countries that have liberal
divorce laws, here's what happens. Women earn more, marriages last longer and rates of domestic violence are lower. So we, I mean, we talk about it as like a social contagion, but it's actually a social good because when you set up a society where people are free to make their choices, they make better choices. They don't make choices out of desperation. And they're not trapped in bad situations. And so like you want marriages to last, I want
people to be in happy long term relationships. If that is what they want, I think there's also other ways of building life that we need to talk about like, you know, querying our communities and like really kind of like breaking down why we think monogamy is the only answer. But that aside, you know, when you create a society where divorce is just as accessible as marriage, you create stronger marriages and women get hit less. Like that to me is
so upsetting that that's like that those are connected. I mean, I understand how they're connected, but I think that it's worth shouting over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes we lose sight of that in the like, oh, it's tearing at the like ideological fabric of our nation. So many divorces instead of like the ease of divorce means that there is less violence against women. And by extension, I'm sure their families, right? Like it doesn't, it never stops just at the way.
I had marriages last longer because they're not, you're not being coerced into them by a lack of a social safety map. You don't have insurance like or like the cultural narratives tell you that you're not going to be fulfilled until you, you know, find a man and get a white dress. Like when those things aren't present, people are more likely to make better relationships and have more stable relationships. So, you know, like listen, I've got no allegiance
to the institution of marriage. I think it is like all institutions. I think it's racist. And I think we use it instead of a social safety net. And I think it's bringing us down. However, if your allegiance is there, there's no reason you shouldn't be for liberal divorce laws because study after study show that the more freely people enter that institution with choice, the better off they are. All right. So we have some questions from listeners and readers about the idea of contagious
divorce. Bradley defined these are all over the place. So this first question is from Janet. Someone who is literally going through ending a marriage right now and a relatively tight knit suburb. I can tell you that while I believe divorce is contagious in some communities, it doesn't feel like it is in mine. I'm the only one in my mom friend group who is getting or will be divorced. That's not saying everyone is happy in their marriage, but they seem
like they're in it for the long haul. My questions are, what are the behaviors and demographic makeup of a contagious divorce community? Is it true that higher income, higher educated communities, which I am and I'm a part of are less likely to get divorced? Or is it a life stage lifestyle thing? So I have some observations on this when I want to hear yours first Liz. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of things, right? Like, yes, it is income
based, right? Like, couples who have higher education and earn more money are less likely to get divorced not by much. And also, I also as a little caveat, it's important to know that the way we calculate divorce rates is like really how hazard and also super inaccurate. Like I literally was having a panic attack when I was like, like book was getting edited because editor was asking like, okay, what is the divorce rate? And I was like, nobody
knows. And I was like, oh, I got I was like sweating because I didn't want to get like, you know, I didn't want to get Naomi wolfed. I didn't want somebody to be like everything you've written is based on a lie. So I like, yeah, you read it. I have like two pages where like, here's how complicated it is. Nobody knows. So, okay, so a couple things,
like, so I think it's important to know that this is all fuzzy math. And the one really fun part about calculating the divorce rate is there's like the mean divorce rate and the gross divorce rate. And it's also because like states don't really keep track of this and they don't always report it back to national statistic collection agencies. And then, you know, like, there's a lot of late life divorces happening now. So how do you calculate
that? But, but like the gross divorce rate is just supposed to be like that raw data. And then the mean divorce rate is basically women reporting their divorces because they're more likely to be truthful about being divorced than men, which is just like a sociological fact that I find delightful. Yes. God bless. God bless us all. But okay, so keeping those like kind of that like idea that it's all a little fuzzy. Yes, like people who have
money can get a nanny. So they don't have to fight over childcare. They can get a house keeper. So they don't have to fight over how Kevin won't wipe down the counters. Poor Kevin is getting beat up on today. But like, you know, it really insulates you from a lot of those things that tear at the fabric. It's easier to pay for a marriage counselor. I will say that it can feel a little lonely, but just wait. It's also like a life stage
thing too. Like people of my bitch be sticking it out for the kids or, yeah, I remember a lot of women talking to me and telling me like the realities of their marriages because I was like the divorce lady now, right? Like it was safe to tell me. And I just remember being like, stop. Like I can't hear about how bad your marriage is because you're never going to leave. And I'm not like, you know, I'm not like your confessor now that I'm
a divorce lady. I'm still a human being. But I think like this, that might be like where this question asker is and this kind of like early phase of renegotiating her relationships with her community and people are treating her maybe a little weird, maybe a little bit like a contagion. But I also think it's such a powerful symbol of freedom and autonomy. And she won't be alone for a long. I think it might take a while to sift out, you know,
who those people are. And then, you know, I've had friendships where when I got divorced, a lot of those couple friends kind of just stopped inviting me to things. And then of course, there was pandemic and shutdown. And I felt really lonely and isolated and a little betrayed. But I had some honest conversations inspired by Anne Helen Peterson's great work on community. I had a lot of honest conversations with my friends where I was like,
here's what I need. I need you to show up for me. I feel a little bit left behind. And I don't think they even realized what had been happening. And so I've reconnected with some of those friends. And it's been really great and really healing. But yeah, this question ask her is not alone. She will, she will soon be joined by at least one or two others.
I'm sure of it. As like a little bit of a backtrack, something that I've observed and that I, I know I saw in the literature when I was researching the differences and types of divorce depending on income is one of the reasons that lower income people are more apt to divorce is that there actually is more of like their social safety net in terms of close-knit friends and family that can help them with childcare, with staying at their
house, that sort of thing. And part of that has to do with the likelihood as you get more education and as your income goes up, the likelihood to move away from your family also goes up. So it's kind of like this catch 22 of like I stayed closer to home for various reasons, but also it makes it easier for me to get divorced if I want to because my support
network is right here. And then the other thing too is that like a lot of times people in lower income families, no one has dropped out of the workforce because they needed both parents in the workforce in order to make enough money. So it's not like what I see in narratives of a lot of people who've resisted divorce where they say, I dropped out of the workforce for 10 years, for 20 years. I don't know how to get back in. That is not
the stopping point. Yeah. It's also like not quite as much fear, right? Of like the poverty, because it's like, well, I know what it's like, you know, that I do think there is a little bit of that like trap of income. And, yeah. And bourgeois people are terrified of downward mobility. Oh my God, even for a little bit. Like you said, like making front of the person who's like, I have to move out of my Mac mansion into a smaller house. Like that is, and I
understand why I absolutely like again, as someone who had that happened to them. I know why it is discombobulating in so many different ways, but it's also not as, it is not a death sentence by any of you. The other thing that I would note about this person scenario is that I think a lot of women when they go through what I've been calling in my newsletter,
the portal, right? So like somewhere between like 37 and 45, sometimes that's when they get the gumption to ask for divorce or to like be like, I'm not doing this anymore, right? Like we either we're going to go to counseling and either it's going to work or it's not. But I think that man get a little bit older and then they leave anyway. Like they cheat
and then they leave anyway. And it doesn't get to be on your terms. And so I think that like what she's going to see is either other women are going to come to that place on their own terms or the men are going in those relationships that are unhappy. Some of them
and will leave. Yeah, that's so true. That's that's really true. And I think there's also perhaps to right like that idea of staying together for the children that a lot of people white and oculate through even still, even if you don't go to church or believe in religion, these religious ideas really kind of stick it to us. But like there's a lot of that like, well, I'm going to just suffer through this so that I can be noble so that once the kids are, you know, more fully grown
that it'll be less destructive to them. And I, you know, of course like you can't tell somebody how to live their life, but it's also like your kids know you're miserable. They know. The kids know I have the the privilege of being raised by two parents who are still together and who have spent many years making each other very miserable. And it's not my police judge, but like, God damn your kids know, like they're not a message. Anything. What a message.
What a message. What a message to your kids that like when you're miserable that you, and like, yes, life is hard in all these different ways, but like, it's not that hard. You know, you know, it should be, it shouldn't have to be that. Right. And you're telling your kids. And this is like what I say in the book over and over again. Like yeah, relationships are difficult, but they're not that difficult. Like if you're with somebody like it shouldn't be that hard. Like
you shouldn't be spent every and like don't martyr yourself. Your children don't want you to martyr yourself. Like, and, and you know, I remember having this conversation with my mom once where she was like, well, I never got to travel because I did all this things. And you know, it was like before I went on a big trip in college. And I was like, nobody asked you to do that. You know, like you did as you nailed yourself to a cross long before. And now you want us to like thank you
for this. Like, don't do that. You know that feeling in the pet of your stomach on Sunday night when you think about the week ahead, friends of the pod Melissa and Jonathan Nightingale are on a mission to fix that. The Nightingale is right. A free biweekly newsletter about work that's funny, no bullshit, and eerily spot on. They call it the world's best newsletter. But I think my own newsletter is pretty great. So you can find theirs at world's second best newsletter.com.
That's a joke, but like not a joke, but that's actually the URL. It's great. Okay, so our next question we have already answered. So I'm going to have, yeah, we're going to read it. It's from someone who's named Annie, which is also my name. And then I'm going to reframe it a little bit because I think that there is something that we can talk about that's related to it. So
this is from Annie. Is it perhaps good if divorce is contagious? Like if people see other divorce people happy and fulfilled after their divorce, would we recognize it not as a failure, but as a personal triumph? Okay, so my reframing of this is I think there has been a real shift in the way that we receive divorce announcements over the last 10 years. And for all of the shit that we give Gweneth Paltrow about conscious uncoppling, I do think that that's kind of the beginning of the
shift. And it trickles down and everything from like I would contrast the way that like Heather Armstrong's divorce was received. And Joanna Goddard of Cup of Joe, how her divorce was received and how it was framed too. So what do you see there in that? And Glenn and Doyle Milton's divorce too. Oh yes. Yeah, I think that the cultural shift around that was like really interesting and powerful. Absolutely. And I think that like, you know, I hear so many people say to me,
I don't want to die alone. We all die alone. Like all relationships and they end either by like somebody choosing to end it or somebody dies. Often it's not even up to you. Like you could have a partner who just leaves or who tragically has a heart attack. Like there are, life is like full of endings. It's also full of beginnings. And I think this is one ending that for so many years, we've pathologized as a failure. But like life has seasons. Things end. Trees fall off,
trees fall off. Trees do fall. But like, but also so to leave, fall off the tree. That's the metaphor I'm trying to make. But like, it's not a failure. And I actually think it's a success to look at your life and to say, this is not serving me. And it's we're a relationship. And it's also not serving you. You know, I was so selfishly gratified and overjoyed when I ex-remaried a person who was everything I wasn't. And nor did I ever want to be. I did not want to be that woman in the world.
And then he found her and he remarried her. And I was like, yes, see? Do you see? Like, this is, it was a success to say we are not what each other want. Yeah. And to say, let's try to build a new kind of life and walk away from it. Because I think it is a sign of success to stand up for yourself. I think it is a sign of success to take those nails out of your hands and crawl down from that cross because we need the wood. But when women do that, we're like, oh, she's so selfish. She kind of
like that. So, so good. Fine. Be selfish. But you're right. Like, when it, when it God bless her, I do kind of think that like you can only truly consciously on couple if you're really rich. Like the rest of us kind of have to hard-scrabble it out. And there's always one person doing a lot of labor to make everything happy and great. And that's fine. Because somebody's doing a lot of labor to make everything happy and good in the relationship. And at least if you're doing it through
a divorce, you can eat pasta and bet alone at the end of the night. Like it's like, okay. So this actually, this is a question of how, because in my mind, I think about like the fact that now that there are like divorce trips that people go on, you know, like that is much more of a celebration in some capacities than like the, we're not going to talk about this. This is embarrassing and shameful. So this is a question from someone named Cece who's dealing with someone
in her peer groups of worse and feels like it's changing things. And I would love your perspective here. Melody's going to read this question for us. How do you navigate two friends divorcing, especially when you and your spouse are equally friends with both ex partners and they were your best couple friends? How do I relate to recently divorced friends that I've only ever known as
partnered or married for a decade and are now suddenly dating in their 30s? What do I do? And I thought we were going to be having and raising kids at the same time, but now my newly divorced friends are on a totally new trajectory. So the first thing that I will say before you go into that and someone who is on a quote, totally new trajectory or totally different trajectory than many of my friends were in the early 30s is that you just like, my advice to this person is just to be the very best
friend that they can possibly meet to this person. Well, I would also really encourage this person to question why they so identified their relationship with their friend as being in a relationship. Like, why is that relationship? Why is that marriage so central to your identity as friendships? Like life changes, things happen. Like, this is just another thing that is happening in the course of life. Like, again, we do not know what life will bring us. And like to force one of the
easiest things to navigate, it's not a death, you know, it's not the death of a child. It's two people deciding this isn't working. And yeah, it's messy for a little bit, but in a couple years, it'll be fine. And the way that you navigate it is not by like identifying so strongly with like their relationship status, which also sounds like relationship status is really important to the question asker, which is why I'm like, I would really think deeply about why this is a problem
for you. Because I think that's going to get to the core of it. Like, your friends, yeah, they're on a journey and it might be a little sticky for a while. And you can say, hey, it's a little sticky for me. I mean, I remember somebody I know I live in a small town. So I'm going to have to be a little intentionally vague, but whose partner they were both involved in local politics. It's a pretty high profile, good friends of mine, and got divorced in kind of a sticky way.
And I remember just like navigating that and trying to say to both of them, like, I really value you. I value your friendship. Like, I want to be here for you in a lot of ways. And there were some boundaries I had to draw where I was like, I can't hear you talk like that about this other person. And not in a gaslighty way, but like, we know it can get really nasty. And so things were getting ill. And so I had to be like, hey, maybe I'm not the best person for you to say this to.
And you know, I will say like now seven, eight years out. Because again, it's part of a community. Like, we're all in a good place. Like, we all see each other. We all chat. Like, I mean, I know interpersonally, it's fine. But like, both couples are remarried. You know, I see them socially. I have really good friendships with the husband's new wife. Like, and it's great. And it's a blessing to my life. Like this, this new person who came into my life, that was great. She's one of my best
friends now. And I think that like, understanding that life is long and complicated. And if you're in it for the long call, you're spying out for the long call. And don't be afraid to say like, oh my god, this is, this is really hard. And I'm having a hard time navigating this because I value you, I value Kevin. Like, we know that people are not always their best selves. So how can we support you? And I think that that that that's okay. Like life is always going to be a little bit
messy. And you can still be good couple friends. And it's also now is not the time to abandon that friendship either because I think these people, you know, need you now more than ever. And you don't have to be on the same life path as your friends. Like when I'm limiting and I'm thinking of the world, it makes life so much more interesting. And I, you know, that was a gift of divorce was that like when I was married, all my friends were couple friends and we were all having babies,
which I had them very young, but I live in the Midwest. So, you know, that's a thing. And, you know, we are all doing these things and like forcing that break forced me to reevaluate my community, to reevaluate how supportive actually was this community or we were all just kind of being lumped in together. And like really expand who and what and to be more intentional about community, I really valued like and I keep using this phrase queering it up, but I do see it as queering
it up. I really valued reading this both the tragedy of heterosexuality by the sociologist, Jane Ward, where she kind of flips the script where you know, we talk about like, oh, it's so sad to be queer. It's must be so hard, but she's like, it's actually got to be hard to be heterosexual because the way you define your relationships in your communities are so insular. And so she'd
really kind of like broke that mind set that I had. And I think it opens up your community where you can have like, you know, younger friends who are more able to go out with you, older friends, you know, who might stay in with you like people who are vice versa. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Or like people who really want to connect with your kids in a way. And then people who are like, let's ditch the kids. And I think like when I talk about queering, I'm not talking about
like, you know, your personal sexuality. I'm talking about breaking apart this heteronormative relationship we have with our communities in our world and saying it's bigger, it's better. Let's let in some mess and let's let in new ways of being friends and relationships because I think that's like, it's great. It's awesome. I think that, you know, maybe it's just the fact that I, like I said before, not only am the only person in my like, my friend group who's not married.
I've been partnered with someone for 10 years, but like, I'm not married. And then also I've been the one who like lived in a different place from most people. And so oftentimes when I visited, whether it was for a weekend or a week or a month, I was by myself. And it did not take a long time for me to just like get totally comfortable with being that person. And I think that like sometimes there is this weariness of like, oh, fifth wheel or third wheel or seventh wheel or whatever it is.
As long as you are welcoming and gracious and thoughtful about the presence of that person in your life, like it's not weird. It's just a person that's also there. And also think, why is it weird for you? Like why is that weird? Like, you know, I had this, I remember having this conversation when I had this hard conversation with a friend of mine where I was like, you who's still very happily married. And I value my friendship with her and her husband. And I was, and she was
like, oh, I just thought it would be weird for you to be with couples. I was like, why would it be weird for me to be with my friends? And why would you think that? And I'm like, this like trope in a hallmark movie where I see two people holding hands in a home. And I'm like, everything that could have been right? Like, there's no way. Right. Right. And it's also just like, yes, like I do want your husband either. I mean, God bless, but like, no, thank you. Oh, no, thank you. I love
you. Friends. And I want people to talk to. And I want community. But it's not weird. Not everybody has to be one to one partnered. I know, I just really think that heterosexuals need to just like do community more like gay people and like, be a little bit more accepting of mess and journey and not be so like, well, they're not with me here. So if they don't have a partner and then it's going to be weird if they come to dinner with me and Kevin. No, and why? Like,
if they get to sit at the head of the table, which is a great place to sit. And then they can tell you stories. I'll be so fun. And everybody is happy. And like, I don't know. It doesn't, yeah, this is it's only weird if you make it weird. All right. If you are a paid subscriber, stick around because Liz and I are going to do advice time. We are answering a question about the protocol when you're getting married, but all your friends are divorced. So Liz,
Liz, where can people find you on the internet? And where is your preferred spot for people to preorder if they would like to peer to your book? You can preorder my book any way that makes sense to you. I know sometimes people, you know, living communities where it's hard to find an independent bookstore. That that's a great way to preorder the book is to walk into an independent bookstore and to say, please, man, I have this book when it comes out. You can also preorder online wherever
books are sold, bookshop.org is a great spot. But whatever makes sense to you and you can find me online at the substachmen, yell at me. And I guess since social media is imploding, I also have an Instagram. And, but yeah, I'm hiding out in a newsletter for now until morale improves somewhere else. Absolutely. Thank you so much. This is great. Thanks for listening to the Culture Study podcast. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm telling you, we have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you do not want to miss any of them. If you want to suggest a topic for the future or ask a question about the culture that surrounds you or just submit a question for our subscriber only advice time segment, you can check the show notes for a link to our substack. If you want to support the show and get
bonus content, head to culturestudypod.substack.com. It's five bucks a month, only three bucks a month if you're a subscriber to the newsletter, fifty dollars a year, and you'll get ad free episodes, an exclusive advice time segment, weekly discussion threads for each episode, and a link to a special Google forum so that your questions go to the front of the line.
Right now, we have made enough to pay melody through I think end of April. If we don't continue to get subscriptions and ads, we don't have enough money to make the pod, so if you want this pod to continue, we need your help. The Culture Study podcast is produced by me, An Helen Peterson, and Melody Raul. Our music is by Pottington Bear. You can find me on Instagram at An Helen Peterson, the show at Culture Study Pod, and Melody at Melody is 47.