Patriarchy and the Myth of Marital Freedom

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is my good friend Lyz Lenz.

lyz is a journalist living in Iowa. She is the writer behind the newsletter Men Yell at Me, and the New York Times bestselling author of This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life. In this brave, brilliant, impeccably researched book, Lyz offers us a clear solution to the systemic inequalities within the institution of marriage—and it’s far more liberating than I ever imagined it could be.

Lyz’s work has been really important to me personally in the last year. This episode first ran in February and it is the most downloaded episode ever of the Burnt Toast Podcast. Which is very interesting because whenever I talk about divorce in this space, I also get a lot of pushback…from the men, of course. But also from women who are anxious and eager to defend how marriage has worked for them.

What this tells me is that interrogating the institution of marriage is important work, wherever you are on the spectrum of married, partnered, divorce-curious, divorced, or single. And no matter what you choose personally, there are a lot of good reasons for a lot of us to be less afraid of divorce.

You can order This American Ex-Wife from the Burnt Toast Bookshop. Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

Episode 153 Transcript

Virginia

Okay, I have a listener question that seems like the perfect kickoff for us. This person says: “Is there such a thing as a good marriage that lasts a lifetime, or should we rethink the whole institution?” Lyz, go!

Lyz

Wow, really just getting right to the heart of it. So I think there are a couple assumptions baked into that question. Like the assumption that a good marriage lasts a lifetime. I think that there are a lot of good relationships that do not last a lifetime.

And I don’t think that’s always just about divorce! Life is full of complications. There’s tragedy, there’s so much we can’t control. So I think having this idea in your head of “a good marriage lasts for your entire life” is really limiting and puts us in places where we don’t want to be, where you’re just holding on to something that no longer serves you because you have this idea of what life is supposed to be. What I think we need to do is reframe what our idea of a successful relationship looks like.

But to answer the question directly: Yes, we should rethink the institution of marriage—and not just its longevity. We need to rethink the way in which we personally practice marriage and the way in which societally we enforce marriage and the rules of marriage.

Because you can be two very fair, egalitarian, loving people going into a union. You get married and five years down the road, you have two little kids and you’re wondering where all that equality went. And it didn’t leave for lack of trying, it left for lack of societal support. It left because you were not getting paid as much as your husband. That’s a huge problem. America was closing that wage gap and we petered out around 2008. We haven’t made any gains on that. And child care is unaffordable, so you then take on that burden.

And then, it’s really hard to rethink who does the grocery shop. Who washes the floors? Who does the laundry? And these are just the tiny little things where you compromise, and you compromise, you compromise. Then all of a sudden, you’re at a place where you’re waking up one morning and you’re like, “I thought I married a feminist.” You’re like, we thought we were going to be so equal and we couldn’t. And that’s the way that we’ve constructed marriage as a society.

I think it’s important to reframe our idea of what does “success” look like? We should be asking ourselves, what does a successful life looks like for me? What is my happiness? Center your happiness, because we have no guarantees in this life. Like, you can be in love with somebody and they can leave. You can’t control that, right? So you have to say, “What does a good, happy, successful life look like to me, knowing that there are variables in this world that I cannot control?”

What I’m asking women to do is to center their own happiness and center their success in a way that is radical. And probably going to be deeply destabilizing for their relationships.

Virginia

To your point about the systemic structures that are in place that make this such an impossible project: I was texting with our mutual friend Sara Petersen and she was sending me screenshots of registering her youngest for kindergarten. And there was only one spot on the form to put down a parent’s name. She was like, “So if I can’t even list their dad, that means their dad is never going to get called when the kid is sick.” It’s just built right in. There’s a default assumption of who’s doing this labor and this mental load.

Lyz

There was a study that I saw where researchers were having men email the school to set up a time to talk about their kid. The email would say something like, “I am available at this time and if you can’t make those times, then my wife is available.” And every time the school would be like, “Have your wife come in.” Even when the fathers were taking initiative, the bias of the people on the other end was to always prefer the mother. And you know, I’m never gonna go easy on a guy in any situation, but it’s also like the deck is stacked against these guys who do want to take paternity leave, maybe they do want to be the primary care parent.

With my own kids’ school, we have to keep saying, “There are two households. You need to communicate with both of us.” Like, if you sent home a form we need two copies or just send it in an email. This isn’t that hard. They just get so flustered when you’re like, “Talk to both of us. We are both the parents and we’re split up, so we’re not in the same house.”

We do communicate pretty well about school stuff, but a form had gone to my ex’s house and he hadn’t seen it. I mean, God bless, it was my 10-year-old son. There’s a little bit of chaos involved there. So none of us had seen this form until my 10-year-old was like, “Oh, in three days I have this project due.” 10 year olds need to step up, this is a time to learn, but it’s also just one of those things.

Virginia

Oh, it is so real. Divorce mental load is on my list first to talk about. 

Lyz

Do you want to talk about it? I’m so ready to talk about divorce mental load.

Virginia

Yes. I need to vent for a second about our school district’s bus department. My kids’ dad lives on the same street as me now. He just bought a house a few doors down which is, in theory, the dream joint custody scenario. But getting the bus to understand that it’s going to stop at two places—like, on some days you’re going to stop here and on some days you’re going to stop here. I have resorted to putting a color-coded tag on my six-year-old that says mom or dad—I’m labeling on her backpack, not her, to be clear. But that is the only way I can ensure she goes to the right place, because the guy who runs the bus system was like, “Your custody schedule is really complicated for us. Do you think you could simplify?” and I was like, “No, I’m not going to change my custody schedule to make the director of transportation’s life easier.”

Divorce mental load

Lyz

Sir, have you never heard of people splitting up before?

Another divorce mental load thing is every year, at the beginning of the school year, I sit down—and I take a day, because I am not good at scheduling. My mind is not an organized mind. I have had to learn because I am a woman, right? So I had to learn how to be organized.

Virginia

I am expected to have these skills.

Lyz

I love it when men are like, “I’m just not good at it.” And I’m like eye twitch, eye twitch “Me either, bro.”

Virginia

Must be nice to have that option. 

Lyz

I would love to get to suck at something. My goal for the future is to be more incompetent. So I have to take a whole day, sometimes two days, and just sit down before the school year starts. And sometime in July, too, because I have to get it done early. But I sit down and I organize sports schedules, music schedules, the whole school schedule into the calendar. My daughter is a sports girl so I get the I get all the swim meets, tentative and non-tentative. in the calendar. I get that updated practice schedule on the calendar. The kids love their music lessons and can’t quit them, so we have piano and then drums and clarinet. It’s all of these things and I sit down and I do it. 

It makes me resentful because we split up because I was sick of doing all the work. And here I am, I have to take off two days to focus on this. I don’t get paid for this. And I have to do it. But I mean, I’d so much rather have this than anything else.

Every year, we go to the school open house and every year I look the teachers deadass in the eyes and I go, “We are divorced. We need two copies of what you are handing out to us.” So it doesn’t end, but at least now I can sleep alone.

Virginia

I think what we’re saying is, divorce mental load is just an extension of the way the system of marriage is built on the premise that the wife will do all the work. Because there is really no system of divorce, right? There is no way in which our systems are built for divorced families other than to continue to assume that the wife will do all the work.

Lyz

Yes. Even though divorce has been around since the foundation of America. If you read my book, you will see. It’s literally baked into our foundation. 

Thomas Jefferson, actually, wrote this brief called “in defense of divorce.” He was basically saying, we founded this country on liberty for all so we should have the liberty to leave marriages. Except it was Thomas Jefferson, so he was like, “but the man gets the liberty.” I remember reading that and I was like, whoa, Thomas! Like, thank you. And then he was actually like, a man has the liberty to leave his marriage if his wife is not putting out, basically. So I was like, oh, there it is. 

But at Seneca Falls, women were just like, hey, by the way, you founded a country on freedom and independence and then you get mad when we say we want freedom and independence. Like, hell yeah, sisters. 

So divorce has been around, and you’d think we would figure it out. But we’re not going to figure it out because that would require respecting women’s autonomy.

Virginia

And yet, as you’re saying, as I also want to say so clearly: Divorce has been better for you. Divorce has been so much better for me. It is better for every woman we know who has gotten divorced. And when I read your book, I kept thinking about how there have been so many books about mom rage. All exploring these questions: Why are women so angry? Why are mothers so angry?

And I am honestly really over that genre, not to criticize those authors who I think are doing really meaningful work. But I was talking to another divorced friend about this, and I think when we talk about “mom rage,” we usually mean “marriage rage.” Women are miserable and overburdened in marriages because of how marriage is designed to fail us, and because so many heterosexual men are comfortable with that dynamic. And so I just love that your book gives us a hopeful alternative. 

Lyz

It reminds me of something I once read that was about this genre of “unsatisfied housewife books.” It was just like, “They can dress up their rage, they can dress up their anxiety, they can put little frills and bows on it, but it never goes anywhere. You just have to live with it.” And I know this isn’t the end goal of a lot of these projects, but there’s a part of me that worries about normalizing that. Sure you’re mad, but you don’t go anywhere. You don’t change anything.

I was talking to a friend the other day who was like, “My job is just so hard to do with three kids and so I’m really angry at my job.” And I was like, “Is it hard for your husband to do his job with three kids? Why is it not hard for him?”

It’s easier to take that rage and channel it towards things that we cannot change. Because I think we’re really afraid of what that other side would look like. I think deep down inside we know it’s going to break our relationships. Let’s be mad at what deserves our rage. It’s the system that’s oppressing us. It’s not your job because your partner has a job and he can do it. Get mad at the person who’s not wiping the counters. But it’s exhausting, right? You’re like, “I love him.”

Virginia

We get that people love their husbands.

Lyz

I mean, do we?

Virginia

We hear you.

Lyz

It’s a concept that intellectually I grasp, yes.

Virginia

We’re just saying: Building your entire life’s happiness based on the premise of romantic love is a shaky, shaky business.

Lyz

At best. And then, people will say, “Well, he is a good man and I’ll never find anything better.” One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is to say: You are that something better.

Even if you are in a good relationship, you have to be that something better. Because, again, you do not know what is going to happen. He could Charles Lindbergh you and have a second family in Germany. Or, God forbid, die in a car accident. We have to find ways to center our happiness. Women are not taught to center our happiness. We are taught that life is miserable and that our happiness is frivolous and that we have to throw ourselves onto the pyre of marriage and motherhood. I’m saying take yourself down off that cross because we need the wood.

Virginia

Another listener question that dovetails beautifully with that is, “How do you know when it’s time to give up, versus continue trying to work on or salvage a relationship?”

Lyz

If anyone has ever been divorced—and Virginia, you can give me an amen. The moment you tell people you’re getting divorced, women crawl out of the woodwork to whisper into your ear, your emails, your DMS to be like, “How do you know? How did you know? What did you do? How did you know?”

I think, if you’re asking that question, it’s time. It’s time. 

When somebody is asking that question, I know they’re in that place where they’re looking at other marriages and other divorces and they’re saying, “My husband’s not that bad.” I can put up with this or “Well, he didn’t cheat on me. He didn’t hit me. He just doesn’t wipe the counters and thinks my writing is ridiculous.” He doesn’t have to be a villain for you to be unhappy. Why do you want to be in a situation where you’re unhappy and you’re trying so hard to be happy and he doesn’t care? 

I remember being in this place where I was evaluating my marriage against Shirley Jackson’s marriage, which was famously very miserable. I was like, “Well, if she can do it, I can do it.” My dear friend Anna was like, “Hey, so that’s not the bar.” Your life is not a game of chicken. You do not have to wait for someone else to blink first. Your happiness is enough. You don’t have to justify it. You can just say, “I am deeply unhappy. I am trying to be happy. I have been trying to work with you and it’s not working. And I would like to try something else now.”

Because if we’ve learned one thing from 2020, it’s: We only have like one wild and precious life. Why do you want to spend it training a grown man like a golden retriever to care about you?

Virginia

I’ll amen that.

Lyz

So that’s just my answer. It’s not a game of chicken. You’re unhappy. That’s enough. And women are so good at downplaying their own unhappiness or their happiness. But if somebody is saying “I’m unhappy,” they’re not being frivolous.

Virginia

I think, for me, what it took was getting clear on what I wanted, on what a happy life looked like to me—and realizing that the marriage was not supporting that happiness. It was no longer the contributing or defining factor of the happiness, that we had run our course. The happy life I was envisioning for myself didn’t have to include him or didn’t have to include being married, period.

So, how do you know when it’s time? For someone who is thinking that and maybe still really scared to hear that answer, starting from this place of what does happiness look like for me? What does the happy life look like for me? It might be a really useful kind of exercise or work to do in therapy or whatever. Because the clearer I got on that, the more I knew it was time.

Lyz

I started making a list in that last very hard year of our marriage. Every time we fought, I’d write what it was about. I remember after doing this for a couple months, and I was trying to write my first book and research it. So when I’d have these precious moments to myself—because my kids were still very little then. When I’d have a moment to breathe, my mind would just be filled with my fears and anxieties about my personal life. I was like, “In order to get my book done, in order to achieve my dream, I have to find some peace.” So I just set a little timer, fifteen minutes, journal journal journal, type type type, close it. Get to work. 

When I went back and looked at that list, it was so damning because we are so good at gaslighting ourselves. We’re so good at forgetting. We’re so good at believing we are the bad guy, right? Or we’re just not trying hard enough or something. I think there was part of me that was like, I’m just angry and I’m just overreacting. I’m tired. I’m a mother. I have children. I’m just not my best self. And then I looked back at that list, and it was damning. 

There was also something where I got a new therapist, and she was like, “You have to understand that he may never change. And are you going to be happy if he never changes?”

Virginia

Because we can’t make other people change. 

Lyz

No. You cannot control other people. So she was like, “Are you okay with doing this for the rest of your life?” And I was not. I was not okay. But that reality didn’t sink in until I had a real clear moment of oh, she’s right. It will never end and I need to either be okay or walk. So I walked.

Virginia

I was thinking about what you just said about “it’s because I’m a mom and the kids are so much work.” I feel like the kids get a lot of misplaced blame. Just like you were saying it’s not the job, it’s not the kids either, necessarily. Not that parenting isn’t a very all-consuming, physically demanding job—it is. It’s a lot of labor. But again, when you’re feeling overburdened by motherhood, is it the children or is it the lack of the functional partner?

Lyz

I felt, and I’ve talked to other women—this is very anecdotal. But we all feel like we became better parents once we became single parents because we were happier. It’s easier to parent when you’re happy.

I didn’t feel like I had to be a buffer between my children and another person. I finally got time to myself so I could be a full human. I didn’t have to worry about somebody getting angry because the kids watched a TV show where there were swear words, just for a little example. I’m sure we all have our own personal examples of that. I finally just felt like I could be myself. We could just play on the floor and dinner didn’t have to be done because the kids don’t really care if dinner is a three course meal or not. You just want some cheese cubes and to build a couch fort, right? That’s all I want. I’m like, “Hit me up with some chicken nuggets and Dr. Pepper.”

Virginia

I feel that so much. And I mean, I’m probably the person who cared more about dinner in my marriage for so many reasons. We’re still in the first year of it, there’s a lot my kids are processing and having feelings about their life changing. But there is an ease to our relationship now. There is a new closeness. And I know their dad feels it, too, which is also cool. He’s getting to parent in a different way, too. Because our stuff is no longer getting in the way of how we relate to our kids. It is such a relief. I’m getting a lot of joy out of my daughters now, that I wasn’t always letting myself have in the past.

Lyz

There’s this lament from lots of women, that you’ll lose time with your kids. And I felt that, because I was very much the primary caretaker. I’m the second oldest of eight kids and I lived in a dorm room with a bunch of women in college and that I was an RA and then I got married. Like, I didn’t know how to be alone. I didn’t know how to not take care of someone.

Virginia

What do I do if I’m not changing a diaper?

Lyz

I didn’t know how to not take care of someone. And then all of a sudden I had alone time and I was like, I’m missing crucial time with my children. If I’m not there, what will they do without their mother?

And then I heard an interview with Maria Shriver who had just gone through a divorce where she was just like, “My kids deserve a relationship with their father.” That really clicked something into place for me and I stopped seeing my time with my kids as this zero sum equation.

We do this to mothers in order to trap them into marriage, where it’s like, “If you’re not with your child all the time then you’re a terrible person.” That is really unsustainable. And I thought about my own relationship with my own father. And I was like, wow, I wish I had that unmediated relationship with him. God bless all of our fathers, he is not a perfect man. He is complicated, but I still love him. Even now, I still wish I would be able to have that kind of relationship with him that wasn’t always managed, you know? With my kids I just remind them, he loves you and you get a relationship with him. And I think that that’s a gift. It’s a real gift.

Virginia

I really had to grieve the idea that I wouldn’t live with my kids full time. I do want to hold space for that. 

Lyz

It’s a huge. It feels so hard. And it feels like it’s your significance. Like my significance has been bearing witness to the little things for these little people. And if I don’t get those moments, then I am less somehow or that’s how it felt to me. I’m not trying to project on anyone else.

Virginia

Yeah, I think it was a little bit of that. And my older daughter had a lot of health issues when she was little, so I feel a lot of anxiety about time with her being very precious, period. I lost her early infancy to hospital beds, and this felt like another loss. And that’s real. And for anyone who’s dealing with that, I’m with you. That’s a valid thing.

But again, seeing the quality of my time with them change for the better, that really helps. And the time to myself, absolutely. The fact that I have time to be Virginia, own person, separate from Mom. All of that is really helpful. So it’s a process. It looks different for everyone. There’s the grief and then all this still being so much better than you imagined piece. That’s just a lot. It’s a mindfuck. 

Lyz

It is and I didn’t go into divorce being like, it’s going to be great on the other side! Look at all these cultural depictions of single mothers that make it look so desirable! Every narrative, it feels like a single mom is just kind of sweaty and desperate and wears a lot of jorts and is probably waitressing. She just wants a man to come help her out. I had to just remind myself a lot, “When you had a man, he was not helping out.” Just let it go.

Virginia

Here’s another question from a listener and I think it is a really good one. This person says, “When it clicked the divorce was inevitable, what was the strongest emotion? And was there any relief?”

Lyz

Oh, it was all relief.

Because I’d been holding so fast to something. It’s so amazing to talk to women because 9 times out of 10, when you say to a divorced woman, “when did you know it was time to go?” they’ll tell you a time three years before they actually left. They’ll be like, “There was this moment that I knew, but that’s not when I left.” Then you think, how long have we just been holding and trying and working and working? When you finally blink, when you finally say, okay, I can’t, and you let it go, it’s just this surge of relief. 

From the time I asked for the divorce to the time we moved out was like four months. So that’s the rough time, and Virginia knows, she’s heard me say this to other women before. This is the hard time. You’ll get through it. It’s going to be good at the end, but this is the time where it sucks. I had such a sense of relief and my ex really didn’t want the divorce so he was working to try and convince me that it was a bad idea. But the sense of relief that I had was when I had finally just called it was so palpable. I just felt I could finally sleep at night, that there was going to be no way that I was ever going to reconsider. It felt like something had just been taken off of my shoulders that I didn’t even know I was carrying. And it was the patriarchy, this whole time.

Virginia

The whole time. 

I think I also experienced mostly relief. One thing I think was true for me, and I’m curious to hear if it was true for you, or if in your reporting you feel like it’s common: I realized afterwards that all that time when I was fighting it and trying to make things work, all of that was me grieving the relationship. So a lot of people in my life were kind of shocked that by the time they heard, even people who had known some stuff was going on, were surprised when they saw me a month later after it was decided, I was suddenly doing really well. And they were like, “Are you not processing your grief? Are you hiding your feelings?” I think there was this sense of, “Are you in denial about how hard this is?” And I was like no, I did that already. And now I’m ready for it to be good.

Lyz

I don’t know if this is true for everybody, but when you finally call it quits you’ve been going through it for so long, that ending—it just feels almost like a joy. All my good friends are divorced women and and I think they would all say the same. By the time you finally get there, by the time you finally call it, I’ve grieved. I’ve held so many things back. 

Virginia

I do think relief being the biggest emotion is a pretty universal experience, even though the rest is different for everyone. If you get to the other side and realize you actually feel mostly joy, it probably just means you did the work already, and good for you.

Lyz

I don’t think there’s a right way to feel about these things. I think it’s really destabilizing for the people around you—especially your friends who are still really invested in their marriages— to see how happy you can be on the other side. That can be really, really destabilizing. They want you to be sad, they do not want you to be happy.

Not because they don’t want you to be happy, but because this is a deeply personal narrative that we get really invested in. To see someone be like, actually, no thank you. I don’t want to and I’m truly joyful with myself and my singleness on the other side is one of the reasons like people don’t like single people. Why we find that so destabilizing. It’s like, “I have invested 12 years of my life into this man and you’re saying I wasted my time?” Well, maybe.

Virginia

I’m saying, I’m not wasting my time anymore. 

Lyz

I’m not wasting my time anymore. If that makes you uncomfortable, you might want to reflect on why that makes you feel uncomfortable. 

Virginia

It’s that sort of comparison shopping thing we were talking about, where women are wanting to know, “Okay, what went wrong for you so I can reassure myself my situation is not that bad.” There is a lot of notes comparison that goes on and then your happiness on the other side, if they’re adding up the columns and being like, “wait, but I’m deciding I should stay,” they don’t know how to balance that. I get it. I was there. 

Lyz

One of the reasons that I really wanted to write the book in the way that I did was because it is a real, personal place where politics hits our personhood in a way that is really hard to untangle because marriage is a legal system. It is a political system. We use it for our tax base. There’s a whole genre of political guy out there who says instead of funding the social safety net, we support marriages. Instead of giving kids free school lunches, we just make sure mom stays home more. This is public policy from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to George Bush.

It’s used as a system of social order, but it’s also personal. We love people, right? We want relationships. It’s a way that the political has become entangled with the personal. I think it’s worth reflecting on where that actually meets our oppression and what works for our liberation.

And there is a class of person for whom it works—upper middle class white ladies. Like, let me talk to my people here. You might be like, well, “My marriage works for me. I have a nice house. Like, maybe he’s not the best partner but economically, I’m fine.”

But it’s intersectional, bitches. Think about who gets excluded from this. Historically, Black women are excluded, because, well, slavery. They couldn’t have relationships or marriages for a very long time outside of law. And then when that became legalized, even Sojourner Truth was like, “hey, we’re emancipated maybe let’s not get married because it seems like another form of enslavement.”

So when we think about who gets to keep a marriage and who doesn’t, who gets access to marriage and who doesn’t, it’s cut along the same race and class divides as everything else. We want to pretend it’s just this little bootstrapping thing, slap on enough lipstick, hit the right dating apps, anybody can get married. And that’s just not true. It should not be a social solution. And I think we really need to interrogate personally what makes your marriage work. Is it because you have a housekeeper? 

Virginia

You can afford a nanny, 

Lyz

You can afford a nanny. Is that why your marriage works? I mean, I had a housekeeper, that helped my marriage. 

Then it’s just like these little Rube Goldberg contraptions that we like rely on or someone else’s underpaid or unpaid labor to compensate for our own misery. I just think it’s worth reflecting on and realizing that it’s just not a great system.

Virginia

You can outsource a lot of it and that can enable you to function for a long time, but it doesn’t mean the marriage or marriage as a system is functioning and benefiting you.

Lyz

Maybe it might be easier for you to save money in the long term. But is that worth your freedom? Is that worth giving up your career dreams and hopes? I don’t think so. There’s that line from Cruella Deville in the remake of “101 Dalmatians” with Glenn Close, where she was just like, “More good women have been lost to marriage than war and disease.” And she’s right. But they have to put that in the mouth of the villain so it’s easier to dismiss.

Virginia

She was onto something, 

Lyz

Not with the skinning the puppies, not the puppy slaughtering. I have two dogs. We love dogs. I am anti-skinning dogs, just to tell the people.

Virginia

Alright, I want to run through a couple last listener questions because this is some nuts and bolts stuff that I think folks will find really useful. What helped in the early days of separation? Any resources to recommend?

Lyz

If you can afford a good therapist, I would recommend finding one just for you. If your therapist became a couples therapist, get a new person. You need your own person. You need your own person in your corner. Any good therapist would also give you the same advice. Get your own therapist, if you can afford one.

If not, tell your friends what you need. It is so hard to ask for what we need. I think there were some early days where I was lonely and I was texting my two best friends who live far, far away from me. I was just like, “I don’t miss my specific husband, but I miss having someone.” And then my friend Anna—Anna always showing up with a good quip—was like, “literally, why?” And I was like, well, okay, I’ll tell you. I just miss somebody having dinner with me. She’s like, “listen, your ex was not good at being a conversationalist when you had dinner together. So why don’t you just ask your friends?” And so I did.

I had to be vulnerable with my friends because people don’t know what you need. I had to say, “Hey, guys, I really could use somebody having lunch or dinner with me once a week on these days.” I could really use somebody coming over and having a glass of wine with me on my patio. Does somebody want to go on a walk with me? Those were the things that I had to ask for. It really helped. It helped to build community. It helped me make a lot of different types of friends in different walks of life that I thought was really helpful. 

So I think the very specific advice is, especially when we are doing all the labor in a relationship, we develop this like sense of hyper competence. I can do it all. I can do everything. Don’t. You don’t have to. You can just ask for help.

I remember going to my therapists office one day, I couldn’t fix this lawnmower that I had in this house I rented and I was just crying. I was like, I can’t do this. She was just like, “ask for help, dumdum.” She didn’t say dumdum. But it was just like, why don’t you offer 50 bucks and post on the Facebook marketplace or ask somebody to come mow the lawn while you try to figure out the mower. She was like, you do not have to carry this all by yourself.

So those would be the like practical things. And take up a hobby, that one thing that you always wanted to do. I started stand up. It’s not going to be my career, I just wanted to do something I’d always wanted to do and never had the time. 

Virginia

I also want to say, your friends will be so glad you made those specific asks. They want to help, but people don’t know how. If you’re like, I would love to have dinner with someone this weekend. We all are looking for that guidance.

Lyz

We all want to be asked out on dates by our friends! I literally love it when a friend will text me and be like, hey, can you like grab a drink real quick? And I will be like, I am there. Just ask. Just ask. 

Virginia

I feel like my community ties are so much deeper now and it’s because I’ve had to ask people for help. It also means I’m more mindful of volunteering to host a playdate or like, do you need me to pick your kid up from this activity that our kids are going to be at? Because I’m aware in the back of my head that I’m asking for more favors so I want to also be helpful where it makes sense that I can be helpful. I just feel so much richer all around for it. 

Lyz

I feel so much more connected to my community. I take myself out on a little date to this like restaurant in town that’s kind of fancy. I have made a lot of friends that way. The bartenders are my friends, the restaurant owners are my friends. I think I have pastor dad energy when I go into a place.

Virginia

You are very extroverted. My introvert people, you don’t have to do that. 

Lyz

I’m the only extroverted writer in America. I am so extroverted. It’s quite a problem. But I have a great time.

Virginia

Another question I have here is: Could you talk about how divorced life isn’t lonely? You mentioned being lonely in the early days, but I think this is a big fear that women have that they’ll be so alone and miserable. And that has just not been my experience, but I didn’t know if that was just being a really good introvert.

Lyz

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. We all need alone time. For me, I come at this a little bit differently than you introverts, but I really had a hard time being alone with myself. There was a lot about myself I did not like, I didn’t want to be with, I didn’t want to have to face. And a lot of that was some past trauma I was repressing. Read my second book, it’s in there. But I would go and talk to my therapist, and she’s like, you need to find a way to be comfortable alone. And stop filling it with adopting cats. 

Virginia

Cats are great. 

Lyz

Listen, if you need to use a pet or for us an emotional support, that is fine. I’m here to tell you, adopt as many dogs as you need. 

But that aloneness part of it was really hard for me to grapple with. Once I did—and I think being alone in the pandemic really played a huge role in having to face myself. I remember just like a settling and just feeling so peaceful. 

There’s nothing more lonely than sitting on a couch next to the person who’s supposed to love you, who has nothing to say to you. I have never been more lonely than when I was married. And sometimes now that I am not married, I am alone. But I am not lonely because I have friends of different ages and different walks and different backgrounds. Somebody is always available. I have parties at my house where I don’t have to worry about stressing out my husband and I can go out to eat, I can take myself out on dates, I can have hobbies, and I can do all of these things.

My life is so much fuller and richer with so many different types of relationships that I didn’t have the space for before, because I was trying so hard to make that heterosexual pact work. I was alienating people. Because I also couldn’t be honest about my life while I was still trying to protect that relationship. Now I just feel like I am often alone, but I’m not ever ever lonely. Oh God, I love my long walks now with my dog. We will just go walk for miles and miles and I’ll listen to an audiobook or nothing. It just feels great. Or those nights where I make a bowl of pasta and tuck myself into bed at 7pm.

Virginia

Ooh yes, with a book.

Lyz

Well for me it’s True Detective and a glass of wine. You think you’re better than me, reading all the time.

Virginia

I mean, it’s probably a romance novel.

Lyz

Slut! Let’s go!

Virginia

A very spicy one.

Lyz

I tell this to potential dates all the time: The bar for you is not being better than the last shitty guy, the bar for you is being better than me in my bed alone, with my vibrator and a glass of wine. 

Virginia

Good luck to you, sir. 

Lyz

Because that’s a great night. Then I fall asleep early, turn on the green noise on my little calm app. I sleep like a baby. It’s great.

Virginia

Alright, last question we’re going to do: What is something that has been unexpectedly positive after divorce for you?

Lyz

The housework. I thought as a single mother, I’ll have less time. I’ll have less help. No. My house is cleaner. My house is still cleaner. I have two dogs. I have an Alaskan Malamute who is 123 pounds. She sheds, she’s dirty My house is still cleaner. The housework is still less. And it’s not because my standards have dropped. My standards have actually gotten higher. 

I did the whole TikTok trend of reorganizing my fridge with all the clear containers because I’m easily influenced. And I was like, “This is crazy and unsustainable.” But it’s not crazy and it’s not unsustainable because I’m sustaining it. It’s easy for me to just say to my kids, “no just put it in a container” and then they do and they don’t fight. Well, my teen daughter fights me on everything, but that’s just her job. But that was the thing where I just was like, I’m gonna be this harried, overworked single mom and I found out that actually, I have way more free time. The house is cleaner. Let’s get a third dog. No, no, no.

Virginia

I think you’re good. As your friend, I think you’re good on pets.

I relate a little bit to the cleaning thing. Well, I think I’m unpacking my own slightly compulsive tidying tendencies that sometimes creates more work for myself. But just having my own space, was the thing I didn’t expect. I already loved my house. I already thought I liked how it looked. And then my kids’ dad took a lot of art with him that was more his taste, and suddenly I have blank walls and what am I going to put on them? Just putting more pink in rooms has been really thrilling. Just the subtle ways that I’m making it mine. That is my joy. 

Lyz

Oh, I love my bedroom. I love going into my bedroom because it’s mine. It feels safe. It feels beautiful. I bought all these crazy duvet covers and sheets and all these fancy throw pillows that he would have been like why? And I make my bed every day. I put the throw pillows on which I never did. It’s a joy. It’s a pleasure. It’s so fun.

And I know your listeners can’t see this but there’s a little picture behind me, that is a woman being burnt at the stake but she’s lighting a cigarette and that’s a little thing that I got that I never would have been able to spend money on before. It’s a joy. Making your space your own. I love it.

Butter

Virginia

On that note, we should do Butter and talk about other things that are bringing us joy right now. Lyz, what do you have for us? 

Lyz

Okay, True Detective, season four. Jodie Foster. Kali Reis. She’s a newer actress. She’s so great. She’s a former boxer turned actress. I’ve never seen her in anything before. She’s now alongside Jodie Foster in True Detective Season Four. It’s so fun. It’s it’s demented. It’s everything you want out of a crime drama in the middle of the winter. 

I’m also really obsessed with the jewelry of Susan Alexandra, who’s this independent jewelry designer based out of Brooklyn. I was out in New York one time and a friend had these really beautiful shrimp cocktail earrings.

Virginia

Oh! Where you got that cool necklace.

Lyz

I looked up her stuff and it’s shockingly affordable. I was like, oh, this is jewelry that I love, it has a sense of humor, is beautifully designed and well made and I can afford it! So now I have this fun little Lyz necklace. Those are two things I am just like obsessed with right now.

Virginia

Those are excellent Butters. I’m just gonna give a real quick plug for and with full disclosure, I’m only on the first season. I’m late to this game. But the remake of The First Wives Club seems like a very appropriate Butter for this episode. 

Lyz

Oh, I haven’t seen it yet. 

Virginia

Well, it’s Michelle Buteau, who I love. She’s a fat Black comedian and just phenomenally talented. I’m blanking on the names of the other two actresses, but it’s a remake of the 1996 movie, now featuring three Black women all breaking up with shitty husbands and reclaiming their lives. I’m halfway through season one and it is a delight, so I’m hoping it continues to stick the landing. 

Lyz

Good. I’ll cue it up after I watched Jodie Foster solving this very complicated crime drama in the middle of Alaska.

Virginia

Let’s tell folks where they can find you and how we can support your work. Of course everyone is going to buy This American Ex-Wife.

Lyz

You might think it is not for you. Then buy it for a friend. But also read it. I’ve been told it’s an easy read.

Virginia

I can confirm that it’s propulsive.

Lyz

Buy This American Ex-Wife wherever books are sold and then I have the newsletter,

Men Yell at Me

, which you can find by Googling or going toLyzLenz.com. Those are the places.

Virginia

It is always a delight to hang out with you, my fellow American ex-wife. Thank you.

Lyz

Thank you for joining me in the trenches.

Virginia

Happy to be here.

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay who runs @SellTradePlus and Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!