Essays

November 12, 2021

Contemplating Divorce? You Aren’t the Only One

Sarah Jessica Parker in HBO’s Divorce

By Rebecca Sorensen

Over the past few decades, the US has transitioned from a country where the majority of adults are married to a country where the majority of adults are single. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the share of Americans getting married has fallen to its lowest level on record.” That data, published in 2020, was pulled from a 2018 government report. And there are early signs the pandemic could influence this ratio even further. 

Online divorce-agreement service legaltemplates.net reports that interest in separation skyrocketed by 57% from February 13, 2020 to April 13, 2020. Mental health professionals attribute this to the “disillusionment phase” of the “Phases of Disaster,” when “optimism turns to discouragement, stress heightens and negative reactions occur.” 

Anecdotally, I’ve seen this trend play out over the past year and a half in my small-knit community outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. At socially distanced outdoor gatherings, conversations heated up quickly around solo stoves. There was the story of how one woman’s marriage disintegrated after she rekindled an old flame over Facebook messenger. Another was testing out a War of the Roses-style living arrangement: her husband’s in the basement, she’s upstairs, and the divorce attorney’s convening both sides in the kitchen. Half of a seemingly perfect couple spoke of anxiously awaiting a court date. And then, there was the woman who told me about watching her ex’s moving truck leave the ‘burbs for his new girlfriend’s downtown apartment.

All this marital fallout wasn’t exactly surprising. When the world came to a screeching halt, many of us were forced to face old problems that we had previously swept under the rug.

That was the case for Heather, a 50-year-old communications manager for a local non-profit who says her divorce was 10 years in the making. “I knew things weren’t good with us,” she admits. “Covid just exposed that truth. It confirmed that yep, things aren’t working and I definitely want out.” 

When her husband’s ex texted her (by accident or divine intervention, who knows), the romantic message was the proof she had been looking for to pull the plug on her relationship. “You put it out in the universe and it’s amazing what happens,” she said of the exchange. “I knew in my soul I would die unhappy in that marriage.” Her husband ended up moving in with the woman, and now Heather feels free. “This is a gift to my children, my career, and my longevity. I am not angry he left me for someone else. I am grateful it finally worked out, and the stars aligned to make it possible to move forward,” she says. “I am still raw from it all, but excited to live again.”

Moving companies aren’t the only ones making out. Julie Spangler, the matchmaking guru behind Spangler Selective Search, tells me that she’s seen an avalanche of male clients looking for soul mates. “For single people, Covid magnified their loneliness. While many women found community in Zoom happy hours, men had more difficulty connecting and felt very isolated,” she says. Such partnership doesn’t come cheap; she charges upwards of 10k for her services. Still, men are biting. “They told me over and over again, ‘I don’t want to ever be trapped alone like that again.’” 

“People always ask me if Covid led to more cases. I’ll say that if anyone was thinking about divorce before the pandemic, they are definitely calling me now with a strong emotional reason to get it done,” says divorce lawyer Kim Walker of Kimberly T. Walker Law Office. “The pandemic brought it all out.” The urgency was echoed by another attorney I spoke to, Jim Vedder of Moss & Barnett. “My client asked if it was possible to finalize her divorce that afternoon,” he says of a recent exchange. “Definitely a first!” 

Aside from putting massive amounts of pressure on a relationship, the pandemic seems to have led many people to the same realization: Life’s too short for this shit. As licensed family therapist Sandra Ronan says, “There’s definitely a theme out there. People want to quit and move on.” Ronan thinks that the pandemic is just one of many current challenges causing people to want to change their lives completely. “Between the threats of climate change and the reality of the pandemic, we are living under an umbrella of uncertainty that intensifies our anxiety and whatever personal issues we have going on within our marriages,” she says. “We thought this would all be temporary, but we’re left realizing that after we get through this one there might be another pandemic on the horizon.”

Maybe the return of a routine is enough to make a marriage work again. Or maybe, the yearning for a deeper personal connection lingers. Ronan says it is up to us to find our way out or back into our relationships. 

“We know there are always problems in the best of marriages,” she says. “But we’re ultimately responsible for our own misery and our own joy.”

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