Divorce isn’t contagious.

March 5, 2023 8:44 AM

Why are people treating me this way? After 13 years of marriage, I was expecting sympathy, empathy and kindness from this group of married people who no doubt knew, or at least could imagine, how hard this all must have been for me. As the dinner conversation ventured into the ”what’s life like now” part, more of the wives started leaning in my direction, fists tucked under chins as they eagerly awaited the details of first dates and new furniture purchases — the enthusiasm I had for my new beginning....

What surprised me even more was the way married men acted around me.  I was prepared for what we’ve seen onscreen — wives carefully maneuvering the cliché divorcée away from their husbands — but the opposite was true. I noticed that men kept at a distance, were tense and side-eyed me around their wives, wary of the wild, divorced one in their midst.

Not paywalled

posted by Toddles (59 comments total)

There’s lot of contempt buried in that piece. The husbands “congealed”?

When friends of ours have divorced, we feel badly for the pain they’re going through but we certainly haven’t iced them out.

Perhaps this speaks more to the writer and her friend group than any broader phenomenon.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:05 AM on March 5, 2023 [26 favorites]

Sounds like the husbands felt like their wives might have good reason to leave them and wanted that bear unpoked.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:25 AM on March 5, 2023 [31 favorites]

This lady just flat-out needs new friends. Not to discard these women, exactly, just to meet people who don't make her sad right now.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:28 AM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

There’s lot of contempt buried in that piece. The husbands “congealed”?

It seems very clear that she does need to "win emotionally".
posted by sohalt at 9:32 AM on March 5, 2023

Thing is, divorce does seem to be contagious (Pew study).
posted by Dashy at 9:34 AM on March 5, 2023 [25 favorites]

The word "congealed" is not found in the article.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:36 AM on March 5, 2023 [28 favorites]

Perhaps this speaks more to the writer and her friend group than any broader phenomenon.

I agree that there was a lot of weirdness going on in that piece.

However, it's also true that people tend to get awkward around other people's major life events like deaths and divorces. Sometimes because they care but don't know what to say, other times because it touches a sensitive issue for them, once in a while because they are a jerk.

Taking her descriptions at face value (which I wouldn't, I'm sure the other people at that dinner would describe things quite differently), she's describing the awkwardness from other people's insecurities in their own relationships, and also her own awkwardness at getting a very different reaction than she was expecting (meaning, men pulling away rather than leaning in, and women leaning in rather than being protective of their men).
posted by Dip Flash at 9:37 AM on March 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

The word "congealed" is not found in the article.

I'm guessing that was a misreading of "congregated."
posted by Dip Flash at 9:38 AM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

I don't know why the author says “What did you wear on your date?” is a "silly" question. It's interesting!
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:48 AM on March 5, 2023 [13 favorites]

I haven't read the article and I was fascinated by the idea of congealed husbands. Like, men in suits, motionless, tilted, suspended like fruit in some sort of horrific jello salad. I would like to read that article.
posted by mochapickle at 9:50 AM on March 5, 2023 [86 favorites]

I was imagining congealed husbands as some sort of undifferentiated mass of husband -- as opposed to a husband aspic -- though I don't know how you would be able to tell my kind of congealed husbands apart from any other kind of human homogenate (possibly by the assortment of socks and sandals?)
posted by selenized at 10:13 AM on March 5, 2023 [53 favorites]

Divorce is common but it's never boring. No matter how much a couple insists that it's amicable and mutual, it's going to trigger a lot of insecurities and speculation.

It's also been my observation that divorce is contagious. People certainly fear that it will be. Having a friend or someone in your social circle take that leap might show that, you know what? It's not so scary as you thought it'd be. It's doable.

And maybe the "why did you decide to end things" conversations sound a little too familiar.

Shouldn't be surprising: Marriage, home buying, babies, and all those things are contagious too! Lots of people start doing those things because all their friends or family are doing them, too.

Isn't a trope that people worry about taking their significant others to weddings because it's going to nudge the settling down conversations? And baby envy?

The men's "worst fear" might not be the author "infecting" their wives, though. It might be they are worried about what the perception would be if they're too friendly. A happily coupled person is more presumably "safe," versus a person who might be on the prowl.
posted by jzb at 10:23 AM on March 5, 2023 [14 favorites]

I haven't read the article and I was fascinated by the idea of congealed husbands. Like, men in suits, motionless, tilted, suspended like fruit in some sort of horrific jello salad. I would like to read that article.

"Christ what an as(pic)hole"
posted by Mayor West at 10:43 AM on March 5, 2023 [34 favorites]

Maybe mushed together in a heterogeneous mass of partially-melted Gummy Husbands
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:49 AM on March 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

I haven't read the article and I was fascinated by the idea of congealed husbands.

Husbands in aspic.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:49 AM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

"At the restaurant, the men were threatened instead of sympathetic. When I was part of a couple, they had me figured out. Now that I was single again, I was a rogue agent capable of anything. And from what I could tell..."

The author has recently published a novel and appears still to be in novel writing mode. Whole lot of mind reading going on here. Possibly expandable into a short story.
posted by BWA at 10:50 AM on March 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

mmm gummy husbands mahhhh....
posted by BlunderingArtist at 10:57 AM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: men in suits, motionless, tilted, suspended like fruit in some sort of horrific jello salad.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:01 AM on March 5, 2023 [16 favorites]

When I was going through a divorce, I absolutely experienced the stiff-arm from some people. I've no doubt that, whether conscious or subconscious, these people feared divorce cooties.

Then, when my wife died (before our divorce was finalized), it got even worse, because many people can't deal with a 35-year-old dying and shut you out because they just want to shut the whole thing out.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 11:20 AM on March 5, 2023 [53 favorites]

I was absolutely iced out by some of my couple-friends when I separated and subsequently divorced. Not by everybody and not as exaggeratedly as the column (but writers seem to experience things 20% more than us normals) but it was there.

I will say this: at least she was invited to the party with other couples. Usually the shunning quietly happens by not being invited in the first place.
posted by kimberussell at 11:48 AM on March 5, 2023 [28 favorites]

Yea, my experience was similar to kinberussel’s. At times it felt like some of our (formerly mutual) fellow couple/parent-friends could only conceive of us as a unit, and since my ex started dating someone seriously right away, she continued on in that role in their minds and social activities.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:56 AM on March 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Not having been at this event, it's hard to say what the mood was like, the 'felt' emotional/interpersonal context, but I thought there was something a bit unusual about this story from the get-go:

My best friend’s birthday party at Don Cuco in Burbank seemed like a safe place to make my debut as a divorcée.

Ok, so right away this person is saying that she went to her best friend's birthday party and, to some degree or in some way that is referref to but not really explained, she made it About Her? It wasn't simply that she went to her best friend's birthday party by herself:

After 13 years of marriage, I was expecting sympathy, empathy...[from people] who no doubt knew, or at least could imagine, how hard this all must have been for me...To help me get through the evening, I ordered the biggest margarita on the menu...The pressure to succeed, emotionally and professionally, was palpable...Despite this odd moment, I sang for my supper...I couldn’t help but say, “Divorce isn’t contagious, Braaaaaad,” stretching out his name to match the depth of my annoyance...Wide-eyed and full of girlish giggles, the wives nodded along and peppered me with questions

Divorce is really hard, and I don't know these people, nor was I there. I'm in no position to judge. From an outsider's perspective, it sounds like this woman got maybe a little drunk at her best friend's birthday party and used the opportunity of all of these people being together for a different reason to make herself and her life the center of attention because she (very reasonably, in a general sense) wanted and expected sympathy. I would understand if all of this behavior made the situation awkward for other people there without anyone really being at fault.
posted by clockzero at 11:57 AM on March 5, 2023 [38 favorites]

by the women’s health and empowerment website intimaterose.com

Aaaaughhhh.
posted by clew at 12:10 PM on March 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

People get so puritan when a woman in the group decides to her freedom is more important than anything else. They act like the divorce/separation/affair is going to "get on them". Common in my experience.
posted by lextex at 12:15 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I find her account ambivalent about whether divorce is hard: a) nothing was wrong! The relationship with the great guy just wasn’t romantic! It’s all possibility from here! vs. b) needing to win emotionally, expecting? support.

(Divorces mostly look really hard, to me, even when a lot of the hard is "why did I stay with awful so long?". But admitting it’s really hard means you have bad vibes, aren’t one of the elect, etc. I sure can’t tell whether she’s bringing more of this worldview than she’s receiving.)
posted by clew at 12:19 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Perhaps the husbands don't like her any more than she likes them.
posted by Grangousier at 12:22 PM on March 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

This is not all that great, more like a journal entry. Different friend groups react differently to divorce. Mine didn't act like hers because for whatever reason most of my friends aren't married.

Dissolving a long-term relationship, which also involves legal paperwork, is pretty much always hard, all "amicable" means is you both tried not to be assholes during the process. You can still feel lots of anger, resentment, etc.

I do know that a woman thinking about divorce will seek out women who've done it to ask questions. That's what I did, because it was a scary thing and I needed reassurance. I wouldn't be surprised if the author eventually got approached this way by an unhappy married friend. But that's not the same thing as contagious.
posted by emjaybee at 12:34 PM on March 5, 2023 [9 favorites]

I've iced out a pair who got divorced. I know why they got divorced, at least what they wanted me to know. But after the event, it became a problem where I was sort of nagged to take sides by the both. Whatever problems they had were not my problems, and being reluctant get drawn in, I ended up distancing from both. Which is regretful, really, but this is a drama that needs not expand to third parties.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:38 PM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was iced out by some, but they were mostly friends with the ex prior to marriage. I'm not sure I'm missing much, as I always kind of felt out of place at their social gatherings anyway, which were mostly an excuse for drinking. Before walking away, I will also note that husband aspic can lead to divorce.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:49 PM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Perhaps the husbands don't like her any more than she likes them.

Maybe they like her ex-husband more than they like her.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:16 PM on March 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: how you would be able to tell my kind of congealed husbands apart from any other kind of human homogenate?
posted by lalochezia at 1:21 PM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: that could have been any husband aspic
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:23 PM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

I really appreciate that people are trying to engage with this article as if it's a piece about divorce and its impacts on your other relationships, when it's actually just another in a long line of weird myopic "think" pieces about LA culture. I can understand why readers might have been thrown off by the fact that it's being published by the LA Times, when this spieces' native habitat is the NY Times, whose editors never seem to tire of being loudly, proudly wrong about California and Californians (for a recent example, consider "Is New York Turning Into Los Angeles?").

It's a wonderful thing that the vision of husbands in aspic was born in this thread. May it live on in our hearts forever. But let me assure you, then when you see a line like this in a piece,

The stereotype perpetuated in the news media is that divorce is as ubiquitous in L.A. as the Erewhon Skin Glaze smoothie.

You can safely stop reading.
posted by angrynerd at 1:32 PM on March 5, 2023 [21 favorites]

Out of curiosity I checked out her instagram, and the second photo depicts a new tote bag that reads "unreliable narrator" - perhaps a little on the nose?

Anyhow, if there is some larger kernel of truth here, it's probably that compared to say, 30 years ago, hetero married women in their 30s/40s are more likely to be the 'bread-winner' or at least have an equal income to their husband - so whereas the common movie/TV trope is of the divorcee tempting the married men, yeah, no wonder that trope is a bit dated.
posted by coffeecat at 1:33 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Divorce may be contagious--all human behavior is contagious. But I don't think that means that it's necessarily the fear of contagion keeping people away. Divorce is also depressing and forces people to confront the reality that marriage isn't necessarily forever. People want to believe they've got it all figured out and live in a bubble of domestic contentment that will never end. It's understandable (shitty, but understandable) that they veer away from the truth. The same thing happens to people who are widowed. They do it in every other aspect of life as well. That's related to but conceptually different from a fear of contagion.

Also, you can expect people to have feelings about a woman who is sexually available and interested--and a freshly divorced woman is often very interested in sex indeed.

Finally, it's just weird for everyone, including the divorced person, when you have to reconfigure relationships. I mean, it's also weird when you have a group of single friends and one of them acquires a serious relationship. Things change. Change is weird.
posted by HotToddy at 2:07 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Why would you cite the census via IntimateRose.com when you could just...cite the census? It is public information.

Other than that, yeah. Divorce is hard.
posted by blnkfrnk at 2:24 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

The men's "worst fear" might not be the author "infecting" their wives, though. It might be they are worried about what the perception would be if they're too friendly. A happily coupled person is more presumably "safe," versus a person who might be on the prowl.

I went through my divorce in a town where we really didn't know anyone. Moved back in with my mom for a year until ex and I sold the marriage condo and split the proceeds. Was amicable and still is, 25 years later.

What I didn't think through was that the town where my mom lived was a VERY family-oriented, suburban bedroom community with very few divorced people. I bought a condo in town and by mutual agreement, ex and I enrolled our son (age 4) in day care and eventually elementary school here.

What I also did not think through was that 4-5 year olds are right in the middle of Big Time Birthday Party Phase. The kind of parties where the whole class is invited, and parents stay for the party because the kids are too young for drop off and pick up. I spent many, many of those parties actively avoiding the husbands and only chatting with the wives, lest anyone think I was on the prowl for a new husband.
posted by sundrop at 2:26 PM on March 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Wow, angrynerd - you weren't kidding. I started gritting my teeth at "But waves of expectations in Los Angeles often leave a cold foamy sting on the skin in their wake" and barely made it to the part you pointed out. I almost understand this myopia coming from out-of-towners (LA takes a while to "get," I think, and is nearly opaque to visitors), but this person has ostensibly lived here for some time?
posted by queensissy at 2:50 PM on March 5, 2023

by the women’s health and empowerment website intimaterose.com

Aaaaughhhh.

At least like five years ago, their deal was "legit pelvic health products your doctor asks you to use after surgery, sold in a pink bag in case you're feeling insecure about it," but maybe they're branching out.
posted by nebulawindphone at 2:51 PM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

AskMetafilter: can I eat these congealed husbands?
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:00 PM on March 5, 2023 [15 favorites]

How long have they been unrefrigerated?
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:51 PM on March 5, 2023 [14 favorites]

Straight, married men being emotionally unavailable? Egad, I've never heard that take before. /s
posted by dances with hamsters at 3:55 PM on March 5, 2023 [11 favorites]

Based on the first few comments here, I expected to read something a bit more, I don't know, comprehensive? This reads like a diary entry rather than an actual article.

Usually the shunning quietly happens by not being invited in the first place.
Yeah, this is my experience. It is also often set up long before any actual separation happens, through false or exaggerated stories told to various 'friends of the couple' so as to pre-empt where the blame is placed when it happens, much to the surprise of the non-instigating party to the separation.

But maybe I'm projecting too much ...
posted by dg at 4:27 PM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

GELATI MAN.
posted by clavdivs at 4:28 PM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

They're not sending their best.
posted by grobstein at 5:11 PM on March 5, 2023

I can't be the only divorced person -- I don't think this phenomenon is intrinsically gendered, though it may play out differently across genders -- who was kinda unpleasant to be around during the divorce process?

I mean, I tried to keep the splashback off my friends. I didn't entirely succeed. (I'm proud of myself for succeeding at it at work.) It was a rough damn time, and I can't blame a soul who stepped back from me then. (Though my friends pretty much didn't, and I am grateful.)
posted by humbug at 5:11 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yikes, there is some weird projection in these comments around single or divorced people, especially women - could we lay off that? Not every unmarried person is “on the prowl” or “sexually available” and it’s gross to paint people with that brush. It endorses the stereotype that an unmarried person is dangerous, highly sexed, or otherwise threatening.
posted by punchtothehead at 6:53 PM on March 5, 2023 [15 favorites]

Maybe they like her ex-husband more than they like her.

Yeah, this is common even in non-married breakups. You find out who your friends are, and who your ex's friends are.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:40 PM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Congealed husbands" made me think of "The Huddle" from that Inside game. (Don't click if you're sqeamish about that sort of thing)
posted by Seboshin at 7:46 PM on March 5, 2023

who was kinda unpleasant to be around during the divorce process?

I don’t know if I was unpleasant, but almost certainly annoying. Not too surprising, since all of a sudden I was feeling things with the raw nerves of an adolescent, and had a similarly teenage sense of self-centredness. Worst of all, I started taking improv classes. Thankfully it passed within a year or so and my friends no longer have to deal with someone on a sort of Eat Pray Yes And kick.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:59 PM on March 5, 2023 [14 favorites]

So You Just Announced Your Divorce Bingo (McSweeney's)
posted by medusa at 8:37 PM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

So DTMFA is ditch the mother fucking aspic? It makes so much more sense now.
posted by BeeDo at 9:11 PM on March 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

The reaction one gets to divorce could be highly contingent on a number of factors. If you were, for instance, a divorced woman in a small Southern town in the mid-80s (hi, Mom), then it was standard to be hit on by some married men, shunned by others who thought you’d “give their wives ideas,” and shunned by a whole lot of married women who didn’t really trust you, their husbands, or both. It might be easier everywhere today, or have been easier elsewhere back then.

Given a likely cultural fluidity of reactions to divorce, I wonder further about the alleged “contagion” of divorce. How did that study compensate for possible a priori cultural traits in social subnetworks that could lead to higher rates of divorce? “Social contagion” is a possible explanation, but I don’t think degree-of-separation statistics provide a sufficient razor for distinguishing that from “people likely to get a divorce are more likely to be friends or relatives of other people also likely to get a divorce.”
posted by gelfin at 10:03 PM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

fascinating analyses of a pretty nothing piece. all her men acquaintances avoid her at a party because she is sexually threatening, self-absorbed, self-pitying, contemptuous in ways that commenters here flat-out made up (the invented "congealed"), and because they probably liked her ex better than they liked her even though that is explicitly ruled out ("These were my people — no one was from my ex’s camp"). but you can't expect a woman to tell the truth, so we can assume those are probably the reasons.

now, her women friends all crowded around her, full of sympathy and interest and lively conversation. and that's because

why is that, again?

now hang on just a sec while I review the comments to find out why that might be. I'm sure nobody here believes that men's treatment of a woman is more likely to be deserved or accurately reflective of her character than other women's treatment of her, and if you take her word for it that the men treated her the way she says they did, you'll also take her word for it that the women treated her the way she says they did. so I'm sure I just need to reread the comments ten more times and that'll all come clear.

(no no I kid. it is very obvious that she showed up at her best friend's party and because she had recently gone through what most of us assume is a miserable experience, it swiftly became her party. all the women there, beyond being her friends and being nice types, had been decently socialized and did their part to make her feel welcome and interesting even though she was not the guest of honor. whereas the men, having either been raised in a barn or been socialized to trust that their female partners would handle any and all onerous or non-pleasurable social duties, left the hard work of comforting a potentially unhappy women to other women, safe and secure in the knowledge that women do women's work. that's all.)
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:44 PM on March 5, 2023 [25 favorites]

Why would you cite the census via IntimateRose.com when you could just...cite the census? It is public information.

Housing is so expensive in LA, IMO it's possible it has a noticeable impact on the divorce rate.

The median amount of time people have lived in their home in LA is also almost 20 years, or 3X as long as the median in the US. You can't move and can't get a divorce because for the majority it means you have to literally leave; if you are lucky just to Riverside. Unlucky means Arizona or Texas.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:46 AM on March 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yikes, there is some weird projection in these comments around single or divorced people, especially women - could we lay off that? Not every unmarried person is “on the prowl” or “sexually available” and it’s gross to paint people with that brush.

I went back to re-read what I wrote since I used this phrase. I thought it was clear that I was talking about a perception that exists vs. projecting this onto people.

I don't think, nor mean to suggest, that every unmarried person is "on the prowl" or whatever. But it's definitely a perception that does exist and may inform people's behavior that the author has been observing.
posted by jzb at 8:58 AM on March 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Nothing strange going on in that group, because the men would know that if they made a comforting gesture towards the author they might have an argument later with their spouse. This was alluded to by the author when she expected the other women to be suspicious of her around their spouses, not seeing the implications that the men were aware of this. It goes back to the idea that most men are easy to read: Straight Male Friend - SNL
posted by Brian B. at 9:02 AM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I get the impression that the OP was expecting her social life (during and post-divorce) to follow the script of Loretta Lynn’s song “Rated X”:

Women all look at you like you’re bad, and the men all hope you are
…
And if your best friend’s husband says to you, “You sure started looking good,” you should have known he would

I can certainly imagine wanting to feel that irresistible and powerful after dissolving a relationship.

I can’t imagine resenting my female friends for failing to shun me, though, or assuming their husbands would step forward to comfort me while the wives seethed with jealousy. Maybe it would make me feel desirable, for a minute, but the loneliness and objectification would be hard to stomach in the long run.

I wouldn’t want a friend group that acted like Loretta’s, you know?
posted by armeowda at 12:29 PM on March 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Putting aside the narrator's mind-reading and assumptions for a second, I for one didn't read anything in the article that suggested she "made her best friend's birthday party about her."

One friend asked her about her divorce and as she talked about it, more friends joined that conversation. People (women, mostly) asked her more questions and she answered them. People (Braaaad) made jokes and her friends were generally interested in hearing about her life update, probably because it's very different from their experiences (I gathered from the article that she was the only divorced person at the dinner).

Unless I'm missing something, this seems like one of many normal conversations friends have when they get together. This part of the evening looms big in her mind because she was sharing her big news with her friends. But this is just what friends do? We update each other, talk about our news, jump around to other topics of conversation.
posted by Taro at 2:55 PM on March 7, 2023 [4 favorites]