Forming the Pack- Trash the Dress Excerpt Chapter 6

Scarlett was actually the one who decided to end her marriage. “The biggest disappointment for me was that I couldn’t be happy even though I had everything that I’d ever wanted. I had the perfect life, perfect husband, perfect job and everyone else wanted what I had, but it still didn’t make me happy.”

She told me, “I felt like getting a divorce was the only way that I could fix myself and maybe find happiness in my life.”

Rory, a 30-year-old patent examiner from Massachusetts also had marital reservations. She confided, “I thought we were wrong for each other, I thought he would never stop lying and gaslighting me (Let me save you an Internet search: gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception), and I was afraid that I would always be the breadwinner. I ignored every single worry and doubt; rationalized them away one by one and told myself that my fears were ‘normal.’ I was afraid to go through leaving him—again. I didn’t want to deal with the heartbreak and the reality of a failed relationship. I was scared of being in my late 20s without having captured the American dream. I thought he was the best that I could do and didn’t believe I deserved more.”

Lack of self-confidence was a deciding factor for other divorcées to marry. Kate, a 30-year-old technical assistant from Connecticut got engaged to her high-school sweet heart at age 20, because, “We were such good friends and had been together for so long, it just seemed natural that the next step was to get married.” 

However, when they married one year later, Kate had second thoughts. “As I walked down the aisle for a moment I thought to myself, I am marrying him because I know I will never do any better.” She struggled with body image, self-esteem and depression all through middle and high school.

Jackie, 26, from Pennsylvania, experienced a situation similar to Kate’s. She said, “I struggled with anorexia and bulimia as a teenager. I was always very self-critical and sensitive as a child, and I had low self-esteem for many years.  Some of those traits influenced my decision to marry my ex-husband, as I never realized I deserved better treatment than he ever gave me.”

Jackie’s divorce was in progress at the time of our interview, but 36-year-old Patricia from Massachusetts is a veteran and knows the struggles Jackie is facing. Of her marriage at age 22, Patricia recalled, “I was insecure, plain and simple. I picked a man who couldn’t really hurt me. He was a nice guy from a nice family with nice friends. He was very into me and that was enough for me. I had no idea who I was, why I had picked jerks before, and that an identity couldn’t be given to you by someone: I had to carve one myself.” Patricia did end up carving her own identity by earning a Ph.D.(that’s Dr. Patricia Leavy now!), becoming a women’s studies expert and authoring books including Low–Fat Love.  

If only Sydney, a senior online news editor in Florida, had Dr. Patricia Leavy’s advice to consider prior to her own marriage at age 20. “I had no goals in life,” shared Sydney. “All of my goals had been shot down, one after the other, so instead I aligned my goals with his, even though I wasn’t much interested in them.  It was the easiest way to feel like I was actually doing something worthwhile.  When I did finally go back to college (I had dropped out to be with him) I had to deal with his jokes about journalism school, how the only gainful employment I’d find was writing obituaries.”

Ana, a publisher from the Philippines who married at age 26, told me, “I knew the person was not right for me, but I thought to myself, ‘this will do.’ I wish I had enough sense of my own self-worth and confidence to know that I deserved better than ‘this will do’ in anything—not just as a partner, but also as a person. In hindsight, when you know who you are, what you are capable of, you don’t simply settle. You make better, wiser decisions. Basically, I should have asked for a marriage, rather than a wedding. That is the difference between a lifetime and a day, a love affair and a relationship.”

Social media manager Paige, now 34, gave up goals when she married in her 20s. “I come from a very small town where we all basically marry young. It was the easiest way to get out of Dodge,” explained Paige of her hometown in the state of Georgia.

Paige married young at her own will, however, many twenty-something divorcées faced pressure from their families and religious organizations.

Avery, a 27-year-old research assistant in Ohio, told me, “Part of the reason why we got married so soon was because we moved in together about five months after we first met. We were very involved in the church and our youth pastor was encouraging us to get married so we wouldn’t set a bad example to the youth we were leading. They all looked up to us. My rationale was, ‘I love this man and want to grow old with him.’ We stopped having sex after we got engaged and perhaps this was a motivating factor that brought him to want to tie the knot so early.”

Willow, an online editor from New Jersey, had a similar situation: “My mother brought it up after she found out we were sleeping together. She was a born-again Christian and said we needed to get married to make it right. He was all for it and proposed that Christmas day.” Willow’s marriage began when she was 20 years old and ended when she was merely 23. Thanks, Mom.