The latest trend in post-divorce self-care is loudly swearing off the institution of marriage, taking a brief vacation, and immediately returning to buy a ring. Are you falling behind?
You probably think you’re being very brave by declaring you will never marry again. You sit in your curated living room, burning an overpriced cedarwood vessel, telling your friends that your divorce taught you the ultimate value of independence. It is a cute phase. But frankly, it is starting to look a little dated. The cultural vanguard has already moved on to the Three-Week Pivot: a lifestyle practice where you loudly renounce the legal entanglements of matrimony, spend exactly twenty-one days away from your current partner, and instantly capitulate to the very institution you swore to destroy.
Look to the effortless grace of Alison Greenberg, a rom-com writer, and Barry Loudis. Both were divorced. Both had firmly established that they had no desire to ever remarry. They had achieved the peak aesthetic of modern, trauma-informed, unattached attachment. And then, they spent a mere three weeks apart. Did they cling stubbornly to their stated convictions? Did they respect the boundaries they had so publicly set for themselves? Of course not. They threw them in the garbage and got married, with Greenberg breezily declaring, “Joke’s on us.” It is the kind of breathtaking lack of ideological object permanence we should all be striving for.
You are probably resisting this. You are probably hoarding your hard-won autonomy like a vintage ceramic bowl. But holding onto your personal growth is exhausting, and quite frankly, terrible for your skin. Just ask Sienna in Denver, who recently abandoned a three-year journey of intensive solo-polyamory therapy because her boyfriend went to a conference in Chicago for a fortnight and she got bored of making her own pour-over coffee. The Three-Week Pivot asks us to release the heavy, unchic burden of actually meaning what we say.
The modern divorcee is realizing that maintaining firm personal boundaries is simply too high-maintenance for the current season.
It is time to stop pretending your profound life lessons are permanent. Draw a bath. Pour yourself a glass of whatever unfiltered orange wine is currently trending. Look at the person you swore you would only ever casually date, book them a three-week trip to somewhere with spotty Wi-Fi, and prepare to completely betray yourself the moment they return. It is the only elegant way forward.