‘Staying and trying to make our marriages work was slowly killing us.’ Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images
Women initiate 70% of divorces. My separation was difficult – but friends and strangers reassured me it wasn’t a mistake
Changing my car insurance was one of the many things on my list. “I need a quote for just me and my car,” I told the customer service representative. “My husband and I are getting divorced.”
“I can help you with that,” the woman on the phone said. She paused. “I’ve been through it myself. It’s just one foot in front of the other for a while.”
“I still have to get health insurance,” I said laughing. “This seemed easier.”
I never wanted to be divorced. As a young woman looking at the “failed” marriages around me, I promised myself I would do better. Yet, seven years into my own marriage, I came to realize that many of us women were happier set free. Staying and trying to make them work was slowly killing us.
Until my husband and I separated and then started the legal disentanglement known as divorce, I hadn’t realized that to become a divorcee was to become part of a sisterhood.
When I told my veterinarian that it was difficult to schedule things because I now shared custody of my dogs with my former husband, she nodded. I’d started tearing up; she kindly ignored it. At this point, I was still figuring out where I would live and how I would support myself after years of relying on his much higher income. On her way out of the room, she stopped by the door. “I went through the same thing a few years ago,” she said. “It’s hard, but I was so much happier on the other side.”
And on a recent trip where I saw one of my mother’s friends – whom I’d known my whole life but never talked to much – we got into a long conversation about her husband who’d left her. It had been devastating for a moment, she explained, but then it was like the clouds opened, letting in the kind of weather you forget exists after a long period of storms.
“I’ll never get married again. Why do I need a man to take care of?” she told me. She had her friends, her kids, her career. She owned her own home. When I was growing up, no one had ever told me that marriage might not be something to chase after.
When I told my mother, who has been married multiple times, that I was thinking about divorcing, we had our first honest conversation about her marriages. For years, it had been an offhand joke that she’d been in so many “failed marriages”. But her first husband died, leaving her a widow in her early 20s. My father, her second husband, had stopped providing for us financially when I was a toddler – at least as a single mother, she had one fewer person to take care of. Another husband had left her.
I was left feeling like the mistake wasn’t getting divorced, but marrying in the first place.
Nearly 70% of divorces are initiated by women. One 2013 Kingston University study that charted how people felt before and after major life events found that women who get divorced aren’t just happy with their choice, but happier than they’ve been, on average, throughout their lives.
At one point during our separation, my now former spouse told me that I was acting selfishly. He meant it as an insult; it made me feel like I was doing the right thing. After my marriage ended, I found myself newly focused on prioritizing things that really mattered to me: making space for friends, creativity, and simple things that brought me joy like taking long walks outside, or playing music early in the morning when he’d been asleep.
For years, I had put him ahead of myself – I didn’t let myself get upset about things I knew he wouldn’t change. I didn’t consider travel, which would keep me away from home for too long, even when I wanted to go, and I didn’t even let myself consider whether I wanted children since I knew my husband did not. For me, marriage was like getting on to a long highway and forgetting that other roads existed. Once I considered leaving, all I saw were the off-ramps and detours I could have taken along the way.
In one 2018 study, researchers found that women often experience a 27% decline in household income after separation and a greater risk of poverty, whereas men can see a 10% increase in their standard of living. In other studies that found declines for both men and women post-separation, women are still financially worse off. Yet we are still happier. Women I knew who had left relationships that no longer worked for them didn’t hesitate in assuring me that I was doing the right thing.
As my hairdresser told me: “Divorce is expensive because it’s worth it.” She added that all the coolest women she knew were divorced and sighed almost wistfully at the thought of it.
I took a part-time job at a restaurant to pay the bills after I moved out. My first month there, a couple at one of my tables got engaged and another large party came in for dinner – bride, groom, and family all fresh from the wedding. It felt almost comical, like the universe was playing a too-on-the-nose joke. A few months later, I served a couple at the bar. When it was time to pay, the woman got out her card but the man stopped her. “You’re not paying. We’re celebrating.”
I asked them what the occasion was – people get free desserts for anniversaries or birthdays – and they paused and looked at each other.
“She got divorced today,” the man said, somewhat under his breath.
“Me too!” I said brightly. “Last week.” We congratulated each other and started talking like old friends.
The man had been divorced twice. This was her first.
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Would you get married again?”
I wasn’t sure. I wanted a long-term relationship but didn’t know what I would get out of a legal marriage.
“She’s a definite no,” he said, then leaned playfully toward the woman’s shoulder. I suddenly realized that the two of them were in love. “But I would.” They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled.
This seems to be how it plays out for men and women. A Pew Research survey found that a majority of divorced women aren’t sure they want to remarry. Most men do. Recently, I read an article about older women who refuse to marry long-term partners (again or for the first time). One of them “got engaged” to her partner and even wears a ring. They’ve been engaged for 15 years. Maybe that’s the ultimate goal. (I think “fiancé” is a much better word for a significant other than “boyfriend” anyway.)
On the phone with the car insurance agent, we went back and forth on coverage and deductibles. She set me up with insurance that would go into effect once the old plan ended. “I wish I could help with the rest of it but at least this is off your list now,” the customer service divorcee said.
She wished me all the best, with a tone in her voice that made me feel like she knew there were only good things ahead of me.
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