You wanna know what the secret to good blogging is?
So about three weeks before I gave birth, my husband decided that he did not like me any more and would be taking legal action on the matter. This was, as you might expect, somewhat upsetting.
I was going to blog about it. I even had a good idea for a post. It was going to be called “Top 5 skincare products for getting abandoned by your husband” or something like that (I never fully settled on a title I was happy with). Here’s what I managed to write of it:
Picture this. You’re 35 weeks pregnant. Each glance in the mirror makes you vaguely nauseous—good God, is that the fucking Hindenburg? Is that a double chin, or just a trick of the light? None of this feels great. On top of that, you haven’t had sex for a while, and well, you can’t really blame your husband—you wouldn’t fuck you right now, either. Surely once you’re back to normal—
Boom. He wants a divorce.
Well, well, well. What a pickle you are in now. 30 years old, so fucking round, and imminently in need of a new husband, since your first one seems to have done a bit of a Woopsie roughly eight months ago when he married and immediately impregnated you. What are you to do?
Why, the same thing that every woman does when the cold hand of despair and death closes around her straining throat—start a skincare routine!
But, well, you’ve made it to your thirties and you’ve never really “done skincare” before. There are so many products. You’re sure most of them do nothing. And you’re categorically unwilling to ever view a “reel” of any kind.
Well, bucko, that’s where you’re in luck—I have just the listicle review for you
This was blogging gold, obviously. I’d interleave actual skincare product reviews with agonizing lexigraphs torn straight from the tattered remnants of my heart. It would be wry and informative1 and heartrending and my second husband (who naturally subscribes to this blog) would totally love it. Writing this post in my head brought me a lot of comfort throughout the early weeks.
But I waited too long with it. I didn’t want to hard launch my divorce on Substack right away, because for a while it wasn’t clear that I was getting a divorce. For several weeks my ex basically acted like everything was normal. Sometimes he seemed to flip-flop on whether he wanted the divorce or not. Mostly he refused to talk about it. When he finally moved out, he said that he’d be back in a few weeks once he “felt more normal.” This all fucked with my head pretty badly. I feel mangled whenever I think about it.
Mostly, however, I don’t think about it. I live in another city now. I’m seeing some people that I like a lot. Work is going well. Life is mostly pretty good. I guess I’m over it?
I could relate the exact sequence of events that allowed me to get over it so quickly. The sporadic instances of verbal abuse he heaped on me over the past few months sure helped. But I don’t really want to. The topic just isn’t alive to me anymore. I’m bored of it. I’d rather talk about almost anything else.
Still, it’s something I have to blog about at least once. To close the loop, for one, and for another, to begin the totally tasteless era of slimes all the way down becoming an extended personals ad.
Whatever. Let’s move on to the FAQ.
Frequently Asked Questions
What the fuck?
Haha, yeah.
How’s the baby doing?
He’s good, he’s still a baby. He’s 4 months old now. Ideally I will have remarried by the time he’s actually forming memories and none of this will trouble him too much.
Why did he leave you?
I have theories. The dominant one is that my blog posts were not good enough and he was embarrassed to be seen with me in public. An alternative hypothesis is that my personality was bad and that I wasn’t hot enough to make up for it.
Or it might have had something to do with that ex-girlfriend he was texting daily throughout my pregnancy, what with her periodically saying things like “You should totally abandon your pregnant wife and come be with me instead.”
Wait, but weren’t you guys polyamorous?
That’s correct, which makes the situation even more impressive. Polyamory is like cheating on your wife Ultra Mega Hard Mode. He managed it though. Talented man.
Was it your fault?
For the purposes of publicly judging me online, please assume that yes, it was all my fault. All of it. I was forgetful and often late, I interrupted people and wanted to stay too long at parties, I cared too much about my job and was a mediocre cook at best. My heart was too open, my tits too fat, and my inclination towards sexual jealousy too low. I was responsible for not only the end of my marriage, but also for 9/11, AI risk, and the inevitable heat death of the universe. My Bad.
Is your ex still in your life?
He’s my kid’s dad, and it’s looking like 50/50 custody, so I am essentially stuck with him until one of us dies. Currently I avoid speaking with him without at least one other person present (mostly due to the aforementioned torrents of verbal abuse). Kind of a bummer.
Are you still going to be polyamorous?
I dunno. It’s a preference I continue to have, but not something I’m going to insist on. If I fall madly in love with someone monogamous, I can roll with that.
Do you still believe in love?
Yes. I fully stand by what I wrote in Against Against Romance. I still think the right way to marry is to fall in love, and stay in love. I’m right about this. I’m so right about this that I’ll openly claim it even in the face of this extreme public embarrassment. The fact that the person I married failed to stay in love with me does not make me less right about this.
Nevertheless I must admit that Aria Schrecker is currently absolutely husbandmogging me and has the right to point and laugh at me one (1) time. Use this ability wisely, Aria.
Can I come to your divorce party?
Yes. It will be a totally insane mega rager in Washington, DC. I already have a venue picked out and it’s sick. There will be a DJ and a hot tub and tawdry Kiss The Divorcee games of skill and chance. I will be ritually signing the paperwork to a cheering crowd of onlookers and then throwing a bunch of stuff onto a big bonfire. It will be awesome, because it basically has to be better than my wedding, and my wedding was amazing. This’ll be better though. Don’t miss it. RSVP here.
Are you hot?
I look like this. Consider marrying me.
Just how bad is your personality?
If you will please consult the chart:
“Less difficult than the average person” is not something I get a lot, but it’s true that I am intrusive, bossy, and not remotely distant. I am extremely close. In fact I am RIGHT BEHIND YOU.
Will you marry me?
Maybe. Fill in the interest form.
I don’t want to marry you, but can we engage in a torrid romance that ultimately ends with both our hearts shattered and our souls permanently altered?
Yes. Just check the option on the interest form.
I don’t have time for a torrid time-wasting romance, but would still like bragging rights to say that I got to smash viv from slimes all the way down. Can we just hook up?
This is also an option on the interest form.
Are you really over it?
I mean, yeah, kinda. As over it as anyone ever gets, probably.
I will relate exactly one anecdote from the end of my marriage. When my ex finally decided that he “felt normal” enough to give me a clear answer about whether he wanted a divorce or not, he asked to do a post-mortem. What happened? I talked for several minutes, laying out at least six different stories for what might have happened—various combinations of actual incompatibility, errors in judgement, personality flaws, bad luck, and exacerbating factors. Then I asked him what he thought happened. Eventually he said: “I just think that there is something wrong with me.”
Which I found very unsatisfying. Really, something wrong with him? That’s it? That’s what he had for me? But he refused to elaborate. Next asked me what I was going to do.
I told him that I was going to be fine. That I was seeing a couple people, figuring out childcare, having a good time. And that of course what he had done to me was utterly evil and despicable on every imaginable level, but that this was fine, because I was going to take all my memories of our marriage, put them in a box, and put the box away, and never look inside it.
And here he got kind of nasty. I couldn’t do that, he said, because then my understanding of our relationship would be incomplete, and that I would be doomed to repeat the same pattern again.
And I said: no, I don’t think so. Because I’ll write on the lid of the box: “There was something wrong with him.” Anytime I’m tempted to look inside the box, I’ll just glance at the lid. And that will be all I need to know about it. And I’ll be fine.
Readers, I have physically instantiated the box.
It contains my rings, our old apartment keys, our ketubah, the smashed shards of the glasses we stepped on at our wedding, and any other miscellaneous object I find around the house that reminds me of him. It all goes in the box. The box lives under my couch. I haven’t gotten rid of it; I’ll never destroy it. But neither do I feel particularly tempted to look inside it. It contains pain, and no additional useful information.
Maybe someday that’ll change. But I’m planning my sick ass divorce party. I’ve got this really quite good baby. I’m excited to meet my second husband. It’s possible that I already have. I’m awake, and alive, and I believe in love.
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…timing!
The only two skincare products worth bothering with are sunscreen and maybe retinoids. For retinoids, the strongest one you can get without a prescription is adaptalene gel. Just do that one and maybe a moisturizer at night, and sunscreen in the morning. Any sunscreen, just pick one you’ll actually use. The sun is bad for you!