'Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage' Is The Most Misunderstood Bestseller Of The Year

He broke the news during a lockdown stay at their Martha’s Vineyard property. In Burden’s account, her husband seemed to change overnight. “A switch had flipped,” she writes. He didn’t want any part of their life together and told her she could have everything, even custody of the children. 

This is the basis of her new book, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. It debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for weeks. Hollywood took notice. A Netflix adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow is now underway. 

Strangers has been widely promoted on social media as essential reading for women. One viral TikTok video bemoaned that women are “unbelievably naïve when it comes to marriage.” She pointed to Strangers as proof. The book “really shows you what men are.” The caption hovering above her head throughout the video betrayed her conclusion: don’t get married.

Readers have interpreted Strangers as an indictment of marriage, men, and even traditional gender roles. They are wrong. Burden’s memoir indeed captures a cultural malaise that has made women skeptical of relationships. But this angst is not a product of marriage or men in general. It is a product of an increasingly individualistic society that has undermined love. Men and traditional gender roles are not the primary villain of Burden’s book; divorce culture is. 

Readers have interpreted Strangers as an indictment of marriage, men, and even traditional gender roles.

Burden’s roots are deeply American. Her lineage includes ties to the Vanderbilt dynasty, socialite Babe Paley, and Chief Justice John Jay. There was every reason to believe that Burden would follow them: she studied law at Harvard, worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, married a fellow lawyer, and had children. Her life was a picture of conjugal bliss. Until it all came crashing down.

One day her husband was eating dinner with the family, just as in love with her as he had always been. The next, Burden discovered he was having an affair. He told her it meant nothing, that it was a mistake. But his remorse was short-lived. The next day, he told her he was leaving her. 

Burden details the isolating, maddening experience of trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Her husband refused to elaborate on his reasons. He simply didn’t want to be married anymore. She searched the past for anything that might resemble a clue or warning of any kind. She could only find the crushing revelation of how much of her life she had entrusted to him. She held out her heart in vulnerability and watched as the person who promised to forsake all others forsook her instead.

Though educated and successful, Burden became what the Washington Post calls an “exceedingly affluent tradwife.” She chose to take care of her children while her husband continued to work. Forsaking career and financial independence to rely on a man turned into a messy financial battle when her husband unilaterally divorced her for apparently no reason. Some see Burden’s story as a cautionary tale for women who would do the same. 

It is no coincidence that Strangers has become popular at the same time as Yesteryear, a book about a tradwife influencer living in a nightmare of her own making. Both are cautionary tales of traditional life gone wrong. Burden’s horror story, suffused with what The New York Times calls “1950s-housewife elements,” is seemingly designed to make women think twice about depending on a man. 

Such conclusions mistake the cause for an effect: 1950s housewives were not living in a divorce-on-demand legal system egged on by a culture that celebrates it as a pathway to empowerment. We do.  

Expressive divorce shifts marriage away from promoting the well-being of the family and toward personal happiness.

Burden’s sorrowful tell-all is a rare perspective in today’s media landscape. Popular culture frames divorce as a pathway to liberation and fulfillment for women. Reformation recently launched a divorce-inspired clothing line. Target sells “Dump Him” sweaters. “Divorce parties” are becoming more common. But Strangers shows that the knife cuts both ways: No-fault divorce has given women the ability to unilaterally end their marriages by giving the same power to their husbands. Even as women’s workforce participation has risen, mothers still disproportionately reduce their working hours after having children. The rise of divorce culture “empowered” women at the cost of putting the most vulnerable women—stay-at-home wives—at risk. Strangers gives voice to that perspective.

It is a chilling one. According to a Harper’s Bazaar article, Strangers is “making people hate their husbands.” Women walk away from the book feeling shaken and angry. The overwhelming public response echoes what Burden’s therapist affirmed to her as a crucial component of her healing process: what her husband did was wrong. 

Compare that to the reception of another bestseller: Eat, Pray, Love. The feminist cult classic tells the story of Elizabeth Gilbert, who one day realized she was unhappy in her marriage. She initiated a divorce to her husband’s protest. Despite the pain her desertion caused her husband, women view Gilbert as an icon of female empowerment. Her story even inspired copycats. 

Members of Burden’s affluent community tried to offer a similarly redemptive reading of her husband’s betrayal. Gilbert left her husband to “find” herself; perhaps Burden’s husband could do the same. “James leaving Belle could be a good thing,” a golf club friend said at a dinner. “My father left my mother for another woman, and she was the love of his life. They were so happy together.” Burden was stunned: “This was a good thing? This was a love story? What about MY love story with James?” When told from the perspective of the spouse left behind, unilateral divorce turns out to be more traumatic than empowering.   

Tasteless as the comment was, it embodied the assumptions made by a culture that sees divorce as an instrument of self-expression. We now live in an era of what author Barbara Dafoe Whitehead calls “expressive divorce.” Expressive divorce shifts marriage away from promoting the well-being of the family and toward personal happiness. The divorce rates more than doubled since that revolution began. 

The praise of Elizabeth Gilbert’s divorce created the culture that made Belle Burden’s possible. Expressive divorce is today’s cultural orthodoxy. According to that orthodoxy, judging Burden’s husband is difficult. He failed to communicate his reasons for his divorce. But his failure to justify himself is expressive divorce. Any reason for divorce is a good reason. Any reason easily turns into no reason at all.

Strangers shines a spotlight on the unforeseen and often unacknowledged victims of women’s liberation: women.

No-fault divorce penalizes stay-at-home wives. Women can still get married and embrace dependency, but it is in a far riskier climate than before. Many laud equality of right and opportunity for men and women to divorce. Hopes for equality of responsibility led many to reject alimony (financial support after divorce). Even Betty Friedan acknowledged that no-fault divorce put housewives in a terrible position. Her dogmas about liberating women led her to accept the cost.   

Strangers shines a spotlight on the unforeseen and often unacknowledged victims of women’s liberation: women. The moral judgment directed at Burden’s husband is incoherent in a culture that has eradicated the concept of marital duty. Our culture sees marriage as a means of personal fulfillment, one that either spouse can end at will. Vows now adhere as long as the “feelings” last. Burden is haunted by her marital vows throughout the book, returning to them with the sorrow of a widow.

Our hearts break reading her story precisely because old wisdom about marriage is deeply embedded in natural reason and tradition. The “liberated” women who read Strangers and weep are haunted by a ghost of a culture whose death they cheered on.