You are probably sitting on a neutral-toned linen sofa right now, drafting a three-paragraph text message to your former partner about respecting your emotional boundaries. You will review it for tone, hit send, take a deep, cleansing breath, and perhaps sip a ceremonial-grade matcha. You genuinely think you are doing the work. You are not doing the work. You are participating in the absolute stylistic death of the American divorce.
Betty Broderick died this week at the age of 78, and her passing should be a moment of profound, uncomfortable reflection for you. She was the architect of the artisanal, high-effort, deeply tactile era of marital dissolution. And looking at your own post-separation journey—the quiet unfollowing, the polite mediation, the sterile dividing of the air miles—frankly, I am embarrassed for you.
When Betty felt she had endured years of psychological manipulation from her ex-husband, Dan, and his new wife, she did not retreat to a silent ashram in Ojai. She did not post a carousel of pastel infographics about surviving narcissistic abuse to her close friends list. She drove a 1989 Chevrolet Suburban through the actual, physical front door of his actual, physical house.
We have lost this commitment to the bit. We have entered a bleak era of frictionless uncoupling, where we outsource our rage to wellness apps and licensed professionals. It is sterile, it is bloodless, and it is starving the culture of necessary texture.
Think for a moment of the sheer caloric output required to leave hundreds of obscene, expletive-laden messages on a physical answering machine. Consider the dedication involved in procuring the microcassette tapes, rewinding them, and ensuring the audio quality perfectly captured the exact, furious timbre of a scorned La Jolla socialite in the late 1980s.
Today, you simply block a number. You tap a piece of glass twice, and the person ceases to exist in your digital ecosystem. Where is the craft in that? Where is the intentionality? Where is the physical artifact of your rage? You are leaving nothing behind for the anthropologists of your own life.
I spoke recently with Hannah, a 34-year-old from Austin, who told me she was reclaiming her peace by simply boxing up her ex-fiancé's mail and writing return to sender on the envelopes. Hannah, I say this with love, but you are boring, and your peace is a stylistic void. You are treating a profound emotional betrayal like a clerical error at a regional logistics hub.
We must remember that Betty Broderick was grist for at least five books, a massively successful podcast, and multiple made-for-TV movies starring Meredith Baxter. She fed an entire cottage industry of late-night cable programming. She sustained working actors. She kept the lights on at the Lifetime network for the better part of a decade.
What is your breakup doing for the local economy? Nothing. You are hoarding your emotional collapse, processing it privately in a windowless therapist's office instead of externalizing it into a multi-part episodic narrative for the public good.
This is the fundamental problem with the modern wellness movement. We have pathologized the spectacle. We have been sold a bill of goods that suggests moving on is the ultimate goal, rather than dedicating the remainder of your natural life to being a highly visible, incredibly disruptive, impeccably dressed problem.
Consider the Boston cream pie. During the height of her separation, Betty broke into Dan’s house and smeared a Boston cream pie all over his custom-made bedspread. This is a masterclass in textural disruption. It requires baking, or at least consciously purchasing, a specific pastry. It requires breaking and entering in broad daylight. It requires a deep, intuitive understanding of how dairy interacts with Egyptian cotton.
Meanwhile, you are complaining in a group chat that your ex-husband subtly changed the login credentials to a premium streaming service. Do you not see how small your life has become? Do you not see how you have settled for micro-dosed resentments instead of swinging for the fences of legacy vengeance?
The tactile nature of the Broderick divorce is what made it an enduring cultural artifact. It was an analog rebellion in a world that was just beginning to sanitize its emotional messes. She didn’t leak sad screenshots to a gossip blog; she bought a five-shot, .38-caliber revolver.
Now, I know what you are thinking. You are going to point out that her journey ended in a double homicide, which is a profound, perhaps overzealous, violation of physical boundaries. I am not explicitly telling you to culminate your property dispute in a felony. We are all at different places in our practice, and some of us simply do not have the bandwidth for the legal fallout or the prison-issue wardrobe.
But I am asking you to interrogate why the thought of such absolute, uncompromising follow-through feels so foreign to you. Why does the idea of ruining upholstery feel more transgressive to you than ruining your own spirit with suppressed anger?
The modern divorcée is obsessed with winning the breakup through skincare routines and core strength, which is a fundamentally selfish aesthetic. We have completely lost the communal joy of watching a woman methodically dismantle a mid-century modern home.
Sloane is absolutely right. You are going to a boutique fitness class to work on yourself when you could be putting refined sugar in the gas tank of a leased luxury sedan. You are choosing self-improvement over community theater. You are choosing to heal when you could choose to haunt.
We must look to Betty’s legacy as a reminder that your anger deserves to take up physical space. It deserves to wear shoulder pads. It deserves to wear chunky gold jewelry in a courtroom. It deserves to be documented in a mass-market paperback with a foil-embossed title that you can buy at an airport newsstand.
If your separation does not eventually require the casting of a moderately recognizable television actress to portray you in a basic-cable dramatization, you have left potential on the table. You have played it safe.
So, I am asking you to do a little less self-care this week. Cancel the breathwork seminar. Delete the meditation app. Go to a local hardware store.
Buy something heavy, something with a bit of rust on it, something that requires both hands to carry. Walk up to the front door of whatever sterile, beige new life your former partner is trying to build without you. And kindly, but with profound intentionality, make a dent.