2025 is the year of the ex-husband's revenge
But it hasn't stopped women from getting free
This time last year, Leslie Jamison and I both made the New York Times best-sellers list with our books about divorce. The year before, the poet Maggie Smith published her best-selling book about divorce, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. It felt like the year of the divorcees. A time when women were pushing back against patriarchy and asserting their independence.
Last year, panicked headlines announced that Gen Z was leaving dating apps in droves, more adult women were single than ever before, and fewer were having children. In response, reactionary columnists tut-tutted that women should be married, people should get over their political differences, didn’t they want to be happy after all? As if conservative institutions and their columnists couldn’t conceive of any way for a woman to be happy outside the confines of marriage.
When my agent sent me the screenshot of my book, right there with Leslie on the list, she declared 2024 the year of the divorcee. Right above our books was Elon Musk’s biography.
I quipped, “That’s the most divorced book of them all.”
It feels apocryphal now. After the year of the divorcee, the revenge of the ex-husband.
A 2024 survey found that “A majority (54 percent) of divorced men identify as Republican compared to 41 percent of divorced women,” which was the largest political and gender gap among divorced people in two decades.
Writing about the divide, Daniel Cox observed, “Part of what I think is happening is that as Americans spend more time uncoupled, they are more likely to develop a tribal approach to politics, a tendency to see the political interests of men and women as fundamentally at odds. The rising sense of anxiety felt by men and women about their place and future in America makes it more difficult to appreciate the problems of others. What’s more, these feelings of insecurity and grievance are being channeled through our politics.”
In the New York Times in July, Jessica Grose said, “Call it the election of Bitter Divorced Men versus All the Single Ladies.”
And male grievance won.
America is now being ruled by the most virulently racist and misogynistic politics. A politics of anxiety that sees women’s advancement as fundamentally at odds with the advancement of men. In October, Darren Beattie, a former Trump adviser who was made to step down during the first administration because he attended a white nationalists conference (but he’s back for round two), posted on X, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
It’s a clear thesis statement for the policies and executive orders that are now dismantling the fabric of American life — which attack trans people, education, food aid, the social safety net, and DEI initiatives, among many things.
It’s why people who have been accused of sexual assault are being vaulted to prominent positions and unqualified white men are being put in charge of the federal payment system.
It’s also a political reality that my ex-husband voted for. If you read my book, you know that when I married my ex he was a young libertarian. By the time we divorced, he’d voted for Trump. This time around, with his new wife, he had an inauguration party with the kids to celebrate Trump’s return.
A lot of people at book events and in the comments ask me how I could have married someone with politics like that. I understand the question. But it feels like when people affected by climate disaster who are crying out for aid are told, “This is what happens when you elect Republicans.” It denies people their humanity; it ignores gerrymandering, redlining, class, and religion; it presumes that if you had chosen better your reality would automatically be better. As if we could choose our way out of the failures of our systems.
But I bring it up now because the metaphor of that marriage feels salient to the reality of American life right now. The reality is, he wasn’t like that when we married. He became that over time. And it got worse when I fought for my freedom and happiness. And even worse when I finally left.
I know the next question is: How can we address this problem? How can we defuse the anger of the men who are trying to destroy our country? But again, I think that’s the wrong question, because it falls into the trap of seeing women’s freedom as the cause of male anger.
It falls into the trap of depicting this as a binary problem. As if we must accept less to protect the world from the male rage. And as I type that out, I realize it’s what women have been doing for centuries. But it’s a false martyrdom.
These are not angry gods to whom we must make ritual sacrifices so we can be allowed happiness. I think, and always have thought, that we have to find our way out. No more negotiations with terrorists.
So, here we are: My book will come out in paperback in two weeks. Hayley Mtolek’s book about divorce is also published this month. Scacchi Koul’s incredible divorce memoir will be published in March. In the past year, I’ve received hundreds of emails from women telling me how they got free and I know, as more people speak out, more people will get free.
And I am tired, scared, but also excited. Excited to see that despite the rhetoric and the reactionaries, women are still finding their way to full and happy lives. And I hope, eventually, we all will.
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"These are not angry gods to whom we must make ritual sacrifices so we can be allowed happiness. I think, and always have thought, that we have to find our way out. No more negotiations with terrorists." EXACTLY THIS!!!!!
Women have been handling men’s grievances and changing because of them for millennia. It’s time men INTERNALIZE, get some fucking therapy, and change THEMSELVES. If you want to be loved, be lovable, men!