Show notes
In spring 2020, Belle Burden’s husband of twenty years announced without warning that he was leaving. This is her account of the years that followed: the divorce, the prenup she signed without pushing back, and the reconstruction of a marriage she thought was happy. Full spoilers throughout, and the show’s first nonfiction pick.
Alex and Lindsey get into how reliable a narrator Belle is early on versus late, and whether she knew herself well enough at the time to judge whether her marriage was working. They dig into the prenup as the book’s engine, the muscles she let atrophy at James’s request, and the difference between a partner who promises to protect you and one who empowers you. Plus what drew these two together in the first place, and the question underneath the whole book: what separates loving someone from consuming them.
Also: the double standard in the responses to Belle’s essay, what the divorce cost the children, and the strange experience of reading a divorce memoir that doubles as a window into how the one percent live.
Cry count and ratings at the end.