We Announce Weddings. Why Not Endings?

Shortly after our divorce was finalized, I attended my ex-husband’s work event with our children. I was called his wife several times, and his discomfort grew visibly with each mention. Turns out, he met up for tennis and various hobbies with men from our subdivision for months and never mentioned the divorce. I don’t know the details of how he navigated disseminating the news of our split, only that it was much different than me.

As a very online content creator, I live my life “in public.” As things were starting to unravel in my marriage, there were people – hardworking sleuths among us—who noticed the lack of wedding rings and sent emails and DMs, others who commented on a decreasing social media presence, which went from minimal to none, and then an uptick when the pressure of performing as a loving couple was eliminated and we could just be what we would always be: a family.

My ex indicated his preference was to never address any of it publicly and smuggle our divorce—and our history—out the back door. Wouldn’t that be clean and nice and lovely? Wouldn’t I be tempted to pay in blood and money to lance him and this pain from my life? I understood, but that wasn’t going to work for me. If I was living it and carrying it, I wanted the world to shoulder it with me.

Instagram direct message, April 23, 2023. Circle back: November 28, 2023.

In January, I posted a vague year-end recap that announced both my divorce and my new boyfriend in the same breath. I didn’t realize that packaging those two things together might be jarring until people started commenting on it. But I was desensitized, after eight months in an emotional holding cell.

Divorce announcements can range from poetic (Kate Bosworth—stop everything and read it) to sterile (a la Gisele and Tom Brady’s companion statements). The latter is always brief and hit the same notes: privacy, care, and a difficult decision. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.

Few have impacted culture more than Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s “conscious uncoupling.” They were ridiculed, and how odd that we mock a couple who wanted to part ways with love and respect. An idea so radical that over a decade later, we’re still talking about it.

Gwyneth, despite her tenuous grip on reality and how the other 99% live, was on to something when it came to dismantling a marriage. Because when children are involved, the relationship isn’t just coming apart, it needs to be reshaped. What if we did that with intentionality and care? What if we told people we were doing that?

Social media has a lot of people cosplaying as celebrities with their divorce and breakup announcements, and I think that’s a good thing. They’re not just for the rich and famous—they’re for the normies, too. They’re important not only personally, but culturally. This is not an essay about the downfalls of living online. It’s an acknowledgment of what is. And despite the pitfalls of the zeitgeist, it’s where we are, so it’s where the information needs to be.

From a selfish standpoint, I hate when someone just disappears their man with no explanation—his digital footprint evaporating before my eyes. We got yearly pumpkin patch photos and now we’re cut off cold turkey. But, as someone who’s lived through it, I understand the need to protect your emotional energy. The last thing I was prepared to do was field inquiries from friends and strangers about the state of my union.

It took me eight months to publicly acknowledge the transition we were going through, and I have empathy for why someone might never feel ready. But here, if it helps, are the reasons why I decided to make an announcement.

One fell swoop. Processing it repeatedly requires a level of emotional output that I didn’t have. I underestimated how much my divorce would impact every part of my life. Until I announced it, I never knew what was going to come up in conversation or end up in my inbox. I didn’t know how it was going to hit me—I could be fine, then suddenly overwhelmed. An official DA covers a lot of ground and limits how often you have to say the same painful thing.

Divorce isn’t a bad thing. It’s morally neutral. That’s a radical idea to some. But like sex, abortion, and queerness—ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Marriages will end. So why not learn how to help people through that? One way is by acknowledging it. Divorce is something adults—and their children—go through. We’re loud about engagements, weddings, births, and promotions. We show up with gifts and smiles. But the end of a relationship is also a beginning—and one people desperately need support through.

Don’t make it weird. There aren’t a lot of healthy examples of divorce and coparenting. People don’t know how to react. They pick sides, gossip, alienate, or punish one party. My goal in publicly talking about divorce was to emphasize that this hurts everyone. There’s no need to ghost, avoid, or vilify.

Control. The dissolution of a marriage will always be fodder for the gossip-hungry. You can’t stop people from speculating, but you can set the tone for how they understand and talk about it. I wanted people to know how we planned to move forward as a family. That we were going to fight like hell for love and light. I wanted my children to know there was no shame here. There is pain, heartache, and hope—and others are welcome to walk alongside us in that. But nobody was invited to make this harder than it already was.

I want to imagine a world where individuals can make decisions for themselves, their families, and their futures without fear of judgment and isolation. Where people can have their friends and community when they need them most. And that we can expand our ideas and expectations around love and family to better fit reality and not a rigid storybook that saddles us with humiliation and loneliness when the ending needs to change. Talking about it is the only way through.

Scarlett Longstreet is a writer and content creator who shares perspectives on divorce, coparenting, and millennial womanhood. She lives in Metro Detroit with her three daughters. You can find her on Instagram and Substack.