When I was growing up in the 1990s, getting married wasn’t an “if” in the Midwest, but a “when”—and “divorce” was practically a curse word. Despite the statistics even then, I felt wildly entitled to a love story, and blissfully ignorant that it could one day end.
Now, the #DivorceTok hashtag has racked up some 1.4 billion views on TikTok, while the likes of Sarah Manguso and Miranda July have written best-selling novels about the same subject. It’s also become more common to split up sooner: “People are more financially independent and having kids later in life,” divorce attorney Shana Vitek tells me. “Nowadays, it’s just more acceptable to get out of a bad relationship.” As a 45-year-old woman who survived the dirty d-word in my 20s, I’m amazed at the cultural shift; we’ve moved from hushed tones to viral conversation.
I fell in love with my first husband at age 26. Although Match.com had recently emerged as an edgy new way to meet people, I was thrilled to be fixed up, the good old-fashioned way, by my best friend. He was her husband’s cousin: a sweet, broke, 28-year-old office-supply worker. Sure, our connection wasn’t entirely intellectual, and he hated that I didn’t find him especially funny, but he was there and I was restless to get to the altar. Days filled with bridesmaids duties and baby showers made me feel like I was already lagging behind.
Two and a half years later, for our wedding in downtown Chicago, I hand-made table numbers to correspond with 18 meaningful locations from our courtship, and the two of us did a choreographed dance routine. But if I felt magic in the air that day, a suffocating fog quickly settled over the marriage that followed, as I goaded him into sex during my ovulation windows and we bickered in the car after every couples’ game night.
Then, six months in, on an otherwise uneventful spring weeknight, he came home and said, “I don’t actually want to have kids. Getting married was a huge mistake.” I asked him if there was someone else. He denied it, but eventually I discovered that he had reconnected with an ex. I stood at the stove, over a robin’s egg blue Le Creuset dutch oven I’d just taken out of the box—a gift from my cousin—and stewed. At 29, I felt I’d been uprooted before I’d even settled down.
I couldn’t convince him—or myself—that we should stay together, and when I finally twisted his keys off the ring, I knew I’d never see him again. Still, every time I heard my neighbor turn her lock, a small part of me hoped, was he coming back? I didn’t even want him, but starting over felt worse. I found a therapist and sobbed to her: My student loans lasted longer than this relationship. What the hell is wrong with me? Who am I now, if not a wife? At work, I excelled in a high-profile position but struggled to answer basic questions about why I was wearing smudged mascara instead of a ring.
But life continued around me, and slowly, I began to gather the scattered lessons of my marriage. Not only had my contrived notions of happily ever after been flawed, but I’d been seeing things only for what I wanted them to be, and stifling any chance of true connection in the process. Moving on required a series of quiet recalibrations, including taking red flags more seriously earlier on—like when I declined a third date with a good-on-paper Harvard grad (a massive upgrade from my office-supply ex) when I caught him Snapchatting a woman while we were at a White Sox game.
While my marital condo sat on the market, my cat and I moved in with my parents. There, I’d come home to homemade lasagna at night and watch reruns of Friends with people who loved me and made me feel worthy again. I also booked yoga classes and a big solo trip to France, where I realized that I was living my own version of Eat Pray Love, the hot new book at the time. (An Australian woman on my flight over had offered me her copy.) As I traveled in trains across the countryside, I vowed to see the world more clearly.
Each tiny decision was a rebellion against the life I thought I was supposed to want—and a step toward a life that actually fit. But the biggest revelation wasn’t that my first marriage needed to end, or that I could be alone; it was that in love, I’d never been completely present. I’d been too busy chasing a fantasy, smoothing over doubts—and missing the things that really made two people click—as I went along.
When I look back at my 29-year-old self, I see a woman auditioning for the leading role in a love story. Now, at 45, I am happily building something from the ground up. My boyfriend and I prioritize honesty on the inside rather than perfection on the outside, and he’s taught me to appreciate both being adored and feeling understood.
Far from being a source of shame, I now regard my divorce as an inflection point, proof that I could continue to refine what love and happiness looked like for me. If I could tell my 20-something self anything, it would be to relax; my happy ending would just come a little later.