JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Have you ever had that experience, no matter who you talk to - your mom, your friend, your coworker - they're all telling you, you've just got to read this book? Right now, for me at least, that book is "Strangers: A Memoir Of Marriage," by Belle Burden. This book absolutely hooked me. I tore through it in a little over a day. It recounts Burden's husband checking out of the couple's 20-year marriage at the beginning of the pandemic.
Don't just take my word for it, though. The book is in its ninth printing, and Netflix won an intense bidding war to grab the screen rights. Gwyneth Paltrow will executive produce and star as Burden. And the real Belle Burden joins me now to talk about her book and the response to it. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BELLE BURDEN: Thank you so much, Juana. I'm so happy to be here.
SUMMERS: OK. There's so much I want to ask you. I've got to start with this. When you were writing this book and publishing it, could you have ever imagined that it would get this kind of a response?
BURDEN: I really didn't. I thought it would be a very quiet book that maybe women gave to each other when they were going through a divorce. I did not get any of those famous book clubs, so I thought, really, this is going to be a wonderful accomplishment for me, but maybe not many people would read it.
SUMMERS: Yeah. Let's just take a couple of minutes, if we can, to walk through some of your story. As I mentioned, your husband walked out of your marriage after 20 years. This was during the second week of the COVID lockdown in March 2020. I just want you to fill in some of the blanks for us because, I mean, that's really only scratching the surface of what happened.
BURDEN: Yes, so this happened during the second week of COVID lockdown. We were at our house in Martha's Vineyard, and my husband and I were having a pretty cozy time there. He was chopping wood and cooking dinner. Our two daughters were there with us. And then one night, I got a phone call. I didn't answer it because I didn't recognize the number. And I played the message, and it was a man saying, I'm sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife.
SUMMERS: Oof.
BURDEN: And I was completely shocked. I thought I was very happily married. I was very much in love with my husband. We did not have a lot of discord. And initially, he tried to downplay it. But by the next morning, he had packed his bag, said that he did not want any part of our life together, including custody of our children. And then he walked out and left the island and became someone I did not recognize. And what followed was a very painful, difficult period trying to figure out why this had happened, and then eventually navigating my world in a very different state, and then also navigating a divorce that was very tough.
SUMMERS: Can I ask you about the sandwich?
BURDEN: Yes (laughter).
SUMMERS: This is one of the details in the book that stuck with me. When your husband came back to the vineyard, when you're talking to - you're going to talk to your children about the dissolution of your marriage. He asked you to make him a sandwich. What was going through your mind?
BURDEN: So we had just told them. He had just told them that he hadn't been happy and that he wanted a divorce. And one of my daughters ran downstairs, the one who was younger, 12. And the older one was sitting there with her arms crossed on the couch looking at both of us. And he turned to me and said, I'm starving - can you make me a sandwich? And a lot of thoughts went through my head. Part of me wanted to say, go make your own sandwich. You've lived here for 20 years. You know how to do it. But another part of me was thinking about my daughter sitting there looking at us and wanting to model for her that we would be kind to each other as we were divorcing.
I did make the sandwich. And I think some people see it as this binary thing, that if you're compliant, you make the sandwich. And if you're tough and clear-headed and strong, you don't make the sandwich. But it was more complicated than that. It really felt like an aspect of motherhood that was at play. Now I'm not sure I would model the same thing, but in that moment, that's what I was thinking about. I was thinking about her, not about him.
SUMMERS: This book is about the end of your marriage and going through the experience of the life you thought you'd built disappearing. But pretty quickly, you had to worry about your finances, about losing your home. Walk me through how you found yourself in such a precarious financial position.
BURDEN: Two parts with that - I had signed a prenup before we got married that my ex-husband, then-fiancé, had asked me to change to say that anything earned during the marriage would not be split unless it was in joint name. So I realized pretty quickly that I had put my money into our homes, our apartment and our house, and put both our names on the deeds. And my husband - then-husband had accumulated a lot of money and kept it in his name. So as I entered the divorce, I knew that I was at risk of losing half of our homes, being forced to sell them while he would not have to share any of his wealth with me, which was very scary to me.
I say this and I write this with full consciousness that my position was far easier, far more comfortable than 99% of women going through this. But I think what happened to me in the marriage is that I handed over most of my financial life to my husband, believing that he was better able to handle it. And as the years went by, I lost touch with the big picture of where assets sat, whose name was on what and what would happen to me if we divorced. And I think I'm not alone in this. I think there are a lot of women who end up in this position because of culturally ingrained...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
BURDEN: ...Gender roles and, you know, self-doubt, and also a need to build men up by giving them this responsibility.
SUMMERS: Is there maybe a practical lesson here for women in particular to stay engaged in your family's finances, to have those conversations? What do you think?
BURDEN: Absolutely. I think women should have those conversations with their partners at least quarterly, have a deep understanding of what their financial picture is, what assets are where, whose name is on what and really know, even if they're incredibly happily married, what would happen if the relationship ends. I've already heard of women forcing these conversations or asking for these conversations. I've heard about all-girls schools where they're going to be creating financial literacy classes in response to the book. And that makes me incredibly happy.
SUMMERS: How do you view the bestselling author that's sitting here having this conversation with me, who is about to be portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow, in comparison to that woman at the beginning of your story who was on that bathroom floor in March of 2020?
BURDEN: It is astonishing to me. It's six years later. To go from there, which was literal - I was on the bathroom floor - to here, to speaking with you, potentially having this movie made is absolutely incredible. I could not have written this story. And I do think that even though, other than death or illness, this was one of the worst things that could've happened to me because I valued my family so much, now I'm actually happy that it happened because I never would've found this life as a writer. And also, to have, you know, autonomy over my life is a pretty wonderful thing.
SUMMERS: How does that feel, getting that autonomy?
BURDEN: It feels great. I think that during my marriage, it scared me, the idea of being in charge of financial life, making decisions on my own, not having my husband's opinion, that that really scared me. But what I've realized is it's a pretty terrific feeling to wake up in the morning and know that you're making decisions for yourself and for your kids on your own.
SUMMERS: Belle Burden is the author of "Strangers: A Memoir Of Marriage." Belle, thanks so much.
BURDEN: Thank you so much, Juana.
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