I was
on the way to the gym when my older sister called
me from New York to discuss my upcoming 30th birthday. It
was six months away, but with such a big milestone, she
wanted to start planning way in advance. Did I want a huge
party or a small dinner? Casual dress or cocktail attire?
Whom would I invite? Did I want to go somewhere? Vegas?
Miami? Or did I want to stay in L.A.?
Illustration by David Plunkert
(Click to enlarge)
As I pondered these
options, one definitive thought struck me: Regardless of what city
I was in, what I was wearing or what I had planned, I didn’t want
Dan on the guest list. I didn’t want Dan to be anywhere near me on
my 30th birthday. I wanted my 30th to be free of status quo
mediocrity.
This thought was
both overwhelming and freeing, and struck me with such force that I
burst into tears. I quickly got off the phone with my sister,
citing bad reception, pulled into the gym parking lot and sobbed.
Dan was my husband. And as I cried for the first time about the
state of my marriage, I knew I would be divorced by 30.
There are countless
paths to getting divorced by 30, and this is a guide to the most
common ones — 15 simple steps to guide you on your way to ending
your starter marriage. But if you are a traditionalist, storybook
romantic or just lazy and don’t want to get divorced by 30, then
read this article and do the opposite of what my friends and I
did.
Yes, five of my
closest friends all got married around 27 years old, and all got
divorced by 30. To protect the innocent, I will call them Michelle,
Aaron, Alise, Robert and Liz.
My parents, who
have been together for more than 35 years, also believe in getting
the first one over with. My mother’s first husband was a charming,
philandering cad, and my father had so little to say to his first
wife, he avoided being alone with her even on their honeymoon.
Because their second choices seemed to go so well, they are big
believers in the get-divorced-by-30 philosophy.
Dan and I met six
years earlier, when we both worked at the world-famous Hollywood
Improv on Melrose. I was a writer/cocktail waitress. He was an
actor/bartender. It was a romance made in L.A. heaven. I had only
weeks before broken up with my live-in boyfriend when Dan and I had
our first date.
I had met my
previous boyfriend at a Seder when I was in college. He was 10
years older than I, had just returned from a Peace Corps stint
building villages in Africa, and was about to finish his veterinary
schooling. I believed he was much smarter than I was, and because I
felt intellectually inferior, I allowed him to bully me constantly.
At first, his condescending antagonism was exciting and challenged
me to become a well-rounded person. I read nonfiction. Figured out
where Chad was on a map. And even went camping. But my admiration
of his intelligence soon turned into resentment, and we couldn’t
get through a day without screaming at each other. He relentlessly
corrected and nitpicked at me. The last straw came at a Peruvian
restaurant three years into our relationship. A girl walked in
wearing a purple pea coat. I said, “I like her pea coat.” He said,
“Well, technically, it has to be navy blue to be a pea coat.”
So weeks later,
when I got to know superchill, pot-smoking, laid-back, friendly,
smart-yet-not-hostile Dan, I thought: This is the guy for me! And
that is the first step to getting divorced by 30.
STEP ONE: Jump
from your horrible early-20s relationship right into a mid-20s
relationship without learning or growing or pondering what you
really want out of a mate — then marry that person.
By your late 20s,
you’ll realize you were merely over-correcting the first person’s
flaws and that the one you married is just as wrong for you as the
one you didn’t, but in very different ways.
STEP TWO: Marry an actor.
When I mentioned to
family friend Buck Henry that I was marrying Dan, he said one of
two things would happen: Dan would never succeed as an actor, and I
would resent his constant struggles and feelings of inadequacy and
leave him. Or he would succeed and leave me for someone younger and
skinnier. Either way, it would not end well. Buck, as always, was
right.
STEP THREE: Believe that opposites attract.
From day one, I
knew Dan and I had major conflicts. I liked to go out. He didn’t.
He liked to smoke pot. I didn’t. He was a meat-and-potatoes-eating,
plaid-shirt-wearing, baseball-obsessed Chicago guy. I was a
turkey-burger-and-salad-eating, pointy-boots-wearing,
reality-show-obsessed Miami Beach girl. But we pushed all those
inherent differences aside and were determined to make it work. For
a time, we enjoyed doing things the other enjoyed. I went to a few
Cubs games. He went to a few dance clubs. But as time passed, we
became comfortable enough with the relationship to stop doing
things the other person enjoyed, and only did the things we
enjoyed. So, although we had happy times curled up in bed, we
didn’t spend any time together out in the world.
After two years of
dating, we decided it was time to move in together. Our fundamental
oppositeness, however, was reflected in where we lived. I lived in
Miracle Mile and loved being surrounded by fun bars and restaurants
and museums. He lived in Venice and loved being surrounded by the
ocean, the grime and the homeless hippies.
But I was looking
forward to living together and putting an end to the constant
overnight bags, so I gave up my love of Hollywood and headed west.
We rented a cute, two-bedroom bungalow on the canals, and I did
enjoy the ducks and the jogs on the beach. But I felt isolated from
my friends, who were just miles away. And I loved complaining about
it. So now I was unhappy living in Venice, but happy to have
something to complain about. And Dan was happy living in Venice,
but unhappy I had something to complain about.
STEP FOUR:
Adhere to an arbitrary timetable.
In the back of my mind, no matter how independent, untraditional
and nondomestic I pretended to be, I always had a timetable. Date
for two years, and then move in. If that goes well, get engaged at
three years. And then get married.
The night before
our three-year anniversary, I stayed up fantasizing about how Dan
might propose, the ring he would painstakingly pick out for me, and
how we would shop for a condo together. By the end of the next day,
it was apparent that not only was Dan not planning on proposing —
he had actually forgotten it was our anniversary!
I yelled at him,
and all my quiet hopes came loudly spilling out. He was
dumbfounded. He had no idea he was supposed to propose, no idea I
had a relationship schedule in my head, no idea that even though I
pretended to hate clichéd romantic gestures, I still craved them.
Dan told me he didn’t quite see the point of marriage. And, of
course, I came back with the age-old, “Well, if it doesn’t matter
one way or the other, then why not just get married?”
Which led to ...
STEP FIVE: Give a passive-aggressive
ultimatum.
Three weeks after
our three-year anniversary, Dan rolled over in bed and said, “So,
how do you want to do this?” And I knew that was a marriage
proposal. Not the kind I really wanted, but I took it.
His complete lack
of enthusiasm toward our three-year relationship, and my focus on
our future instead of our present, should have been indicators that
it was a great time to walk away. To realize our best days together
had passed. But in the same way you might continue to watch a TV
show years after it jumps the shark because the first season was so
good, Dan and I both plodded on. Because our first season together
was amazing at times. We would get off work at 2 a.m., steal carrot
cake from the Improv fridge, and eat it in bed while reciting hacky
comedy bits we had heard that night for the 80th time. We would
laugh hysterically, until we started choking on that amazingly
sweet cream-cheese icing. In the beginning, Dan had no money, so he
would give me bouquets of sour-apple Blow Pops — my favorite
flavor. And I would happily clean out the piles of head shots and
soda cans from his car. Soon the Blow Pops stopped coming. And
instead of me cleaning his car, I nagged him to do it.
I was so invested
in my timetable that I didn’t give myself the option to not get
married. Instead, I gave him a lot of attitude about not wanting to
marry me. And he fell into the trap of begrudgingly giving me what
I thought I wanted.
If you feel your mate is moving forward in the relationship only
because it seems like the thing to do, because you have given him a
passive-aggressive ultimatum or because you have been harping about
it for weeks, go for it! You will be divorced in a few years.
Guaranteed.
STEP SIX: Get married for a down payment.
My desire to get
married was caused by a combination of factors. My backwards notion
that being married would make me a complete person; my rigid
internal clock; and the fact that I really, really wanted to own
property in Los Angeles, and at the rate my career was going, I
would never be able to afford a place on my own.
My father always told my sister and me we could have either a
big, fancy wedding or a down payment. And I wanted that down
payment. It wasn’t my only reason to get married, but it was a
reason. That, and I loved Dan, of course.
STEP SEVEN: Plan the divorce while you plan the
wedding.
After the rollover proposal, I went by myself to a jewelry store
and bought my ring. Dan paid me back with a check. It might have
been the least-romantic purchase of an engagement ring in the
history of courtship, but I bragged to friends and family that we
were such an amazing couple that we didn’t need the usual silly
traditions.
We were the type of couple who could be honest with each other
about how many people we had slept with. Dan could smoke pot and
play Grand Theft Auto for hours on end without me getting
upset. I could go out with my friends, get drunk and come home in
the middle of the night, and he wouldn’t be fazed. We never felt
jealous or threatened, and we rarely fought. We were the couple
that other couples envied.
While trying on rings, I was vaguely aware that I specifically
picked something nontraditional — dozens of beautiful, glistening
pave diamonds instead of a larger stone — so I could wear it on my
right hand after the divorce. Of course, I kept this to myself. I
was planning my divorce at the same time I was planning my
wedding.
STEP EIGHT: The invitations have already gone
out.
So if I was already thinking about divorce, then why plan the
wedding? Because the train had already left the station, and it
felt too late to turn back now. And because planning the wedding
was fun, exciting and a great distraction from my usual life.
We had only 38 guests, lots of cupcakes and no cheesy band. It
was held at my close friend Michelle’s house.
Michelle had just
gotten married three months before. The big diamond rock on her
finger came with an over-the-top Beverly Hills wedding with fake
snow and a fairy-tale dress. Her husband was a successful standup
comic. That, incidentally, is STEP TWO, Subset B: Marry a comedian.
Comedians are even worse than actors because they are not only
battling between total self-absorption and insecurity; they are
constantly trying to be funny.
My wedding was perfect. I walked down the makeshift aisle to Joe
Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” My friend Mat, who is
a talented comedy writer, got ordained online at the Universal Life
Church and married us with a tight seven-minute set. Our vows
consisted of jokes about Dan’s countless fruitless auditions and my
bouts of neurotic rewrites of movie scripts. Nowhere in our vows
did we say anything about “till death do us part” or words like
love and forever. I ate for the first time in
months at our reception. And everyone laughed when Dan’s best man
raised a glass and toasted us with “To the best five years of your
life.”
STEP NINE: Compromise to the point that both parties are
unhappy.
After the wedding, Dan and I bought a condo in the Valley with
the money my father gave us for a down payment. I hated living in
Venice. Dan hated Hollywood. So we settled on a place we’d both
hate: Sherman Oaks.
STEP TEN: Cling to distractions.
The other big postwedding purchase was a giant flat-screen TV we
named Ruby.
Dan sat in his chair and smoked pot. I sat on my couch and
constantly did my nails. And we watched Ruby together. Hours and
hours of TV watching. The next two years became a blur of previous
seasons of Amazing Race, Deadwood and
Lost. One summer, we watched so much Alias that
my cat Spork actually learned how to meow to the opening song. It
was as though Dan and I never needed to say another word to each
other, because we were now married.
I went to work. Dan went to work. At this point, I was getting
writing jobs and he was getting acting jobs. Years before, when we
worked at the Improv, we needed each other for support and
encouragement and a sense of stability in a crazy, scary town that
will eat your soul and then puke it up because it has too many
calories.
But we both got to a point where we didn’t need each other so
much anymore. And although there was plenty of general contentment,
there was no more need. And at the time, we both mistook need for
love. So once the need was gone, there wasn’t much to fill up the
space. Except for Ruby.
On a Saturday night, soon after my realization that I didn’t
want Dan at my 30th-birthday party, he and I were watching
Match Point on Ruby. Toward the end of the movie, he
pressed pause, turned to me and said earnestly, “If you ever want a
divorce, just ask. No problem. But please, don’t kill me.” I
laughed and at the same time felt a deep pang of loneliness. He
knew me so well. While watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers get away with
murder, I was in fact thinking I could just kill Dan. In a warped
way, it seemed a better solution. Instead of becoming a
cold-hearted, baggage-laden divorcée, I would be a grief-stricken,
mysterious widow. Assuming I didn’t get caught, of course.
And how could I want to divorce a man who not only knew what I
was thinking, but also had the sense of humor to joke about me
murdering him? But watching Dan rock in his chair and take another
hit off his pipe, I became certain that knowing someone doesn’t
mean you should be married to him or her. Sometimes truly knowing
someone makes you see you shouldn’t.
Once I realized I didn’t want Dan at my birthday party, I
started to confide my unhappiness to my closest friends. Maybe
divorce is catching. Once a friend does it, you realize it is a
viable option — like suicide. Most people who commit suicide have
had a close friend or family member previously do the same. Or
maybe divorce isn’t contagious, and it’s just a coincidence that at
29 years old, most of my friends were also unhappy in their
marriages. Their experiences add to the list of steps to take if
you want to be divorced by 30. Such as ...
STEP ELEVEN: Move in together to save money.
After being married
for five years, my friend Aaron was a shell of his once-acerbic
self. His path to getting divorced by 30 was to move in with his
girlfriend way too quickly because it made financial sense. Then,
once moved in, they fell into wedding plans and a marriage. Their
wedding was spectacular. Guys in gorilla costumes and everything.
But once again, the wedding does not make the marriage. Like many
men, Aaron did not leave his wife. He just brooded in quiet misery
until she left him. Now single in his early 30s, he has never been
happier, in his usual curmudgeonly way.
STEP TWELVE: All your friends are doing it.
Like a Christian kid doing the bar mitzvah circuit in eighth
grade, you can feel pretty left out if you’re not part of the
27-year-olds’ wedding circuit. No parties. No presents. No center
of attention. That’s how my friend Liz felt, so she decided it was
time to get a boyfriend quick, and get married even quicker. She
married the first person who came along. Even though he was in an
awful band, called her the wrong name in bed once and never paid
for dinner.
Liz’s marriage lasted only three months. She is now 30, much
wiser, and I’m pretty sure she will be more discerning before
getting engaged again.
STEP THIRTEEN: Marry your high school
sweetheart.
Although marrying your high school sweetheart is a safe bet to
end in divorce by 30, we continually view it as the height of
romance.
Robert and his HS GF briefly broke up in college, only to decide
two weeks later they couldn’t live without each other. They got
married their senior year and enjoyed the constant cooing whenever
anyone asked how they met. It was 10th-grade biology. He sat behind
her. She passed him a note. And after their first date at the mall,
nothing was going to get in the way of their intense,
I-will-die-for-you first love. Except when at 28 years old, he
realized they had little in common other than lots of memories.
Which brings me to ...
STEP FOURTEEN: Ignore your spouse and dive into a new
addiction.
To escape from his daily discontentment, Robert started playing
World of Warcraft. Once he hit level 70, his wife had an
affair with a co-worker. And he was divorced soon after.
STEP FIFTEEN: Beat a dead horse.
This general late-20s relationship melancholy transcends sexual
orientation. Although not technically married, my friend Alise went
to the West Hollywood courthouse to get domestic-partner papers
with her live-in girlfriend of three years. A year later, Alise was
tired of the lesbian bed death, the constant talking riddled with
miscommunications, and the biweekly therapy sessions.
Marriage shouldn’t be that hard, and if it is, it’s time to
leave. The brink of 30 is a good age to realize that beating a dead
horse won’t make it move any faster.
Once You’ve Made It Through the Steps
Aaron, Alise, Liz, Robert, Michelle and I all got divorced
within a month of one another. Michelle and I actually left our
husbands on the same day.
Each couple had different degrees of fighting and sadness and
aftermath. After struggling with my feelings for a few months, I
couldn’t ignore my despondency any longer. I waited for Dan to come
home, and the minute he walked through the door, I said, “I’m
unhappy and think we should get a divorce.” He said, “Okay.” It
turns out he was unfulfilled as well. I was just the first one to
say it. Which makes sense, since I was always the chronically
list-making, perpetually planning, compulsive organizer. And he was
the laid-back, pot-smoking, expend-as-little-energy-as-possible
guy.
Like Aaron and Robert with their spouses, Dan waited for me to
decide to leave. Men are more comfortable with the status quo. Even
if that status sucks. Even Alise, who was sort of the “girl” in the
relationship, made the decision to leave her wife. My theory on
this is that men are ultimately too lazy to get divorced. The
numbing misery is better than the paperwork.
A few days after
Dan and I spoke, I flew to Miami to get away and to tell my parents
I was getting divorced. Minutes after being picked up at the
airport, while driving over the causeway, I blurted out that Dan
and I were done. My mother sighed and said, “It’s very sad when a
five-year marriage only lasts two and a half years.” Then my father
asked if I had a quarter for the toll.
Their casual attitude calmed me down considerably. It was just
divorce, after all. Scary, yes, but I would get through it and come
out the other end new and improved. When Dan told his family I
wanted a divorce, they were convinced I was just trying to avoid
rewriting my latest script. I thought this was extremely funny but
not at all true. And just to prove them wrong, I finished my
rewrites before we even divided up the china.
I got back from Miami, and Dan and I began the unpleasant
process of sleeping in separate rooms, reviewing where it all went
wrong and putting the condo on the market. He jokingly blamed MTV
for our divorce, since I had been working there for the past year.
I jokingly blamed the Cubs, since they, of course, hadn’t played
well for the past year.
Dan and I didn’t need a lawyer, because we weren’t contesting
anything. We would sell the condo and split the profits, if there
were any. We each took a bookshelf. Dan would take Ruby and pay me
for half of her. And I, of course, would keep Spork, who had been
my cat pre-Dan.
As we were packing up our divorce documents, I started telling
Dan some story, and he said, “We aren’t married anymore. I don’t
have to feign interest.” And the reality of the situation hit us.
We were doing the right thing by not fighting to keep the marriage
together. There were no kids. No reason to live in misery year
after year. Better to cut our losses now and never look back.
The plan was, Dan would move out once he found his own place in
Venice, where he really wanted to live. And I would stay in the
condo until it sold. A few uncomfortable days later, he signed a
lease, and his best man came over to help him move out his chair
and bookcase and Ruby. I didn’t mean to be home for this but timed
it a bit wrong and walked in just as Dan was walking out for the
last time. He gave me a knowing nod and said, “Well, bye.” And I
said, “Bye.” And Dan was gone.
I slowly walked
around the now half-empty condo in a daze, feeling like I was in
purgatory. Everything was in flux. It wasn’t my home anymore, but I
didn’t have a new one. I would be legally divorced soon, but
technically wasn’t yet. I was on the precipice of a seemingly
momentous birthday, but wasn’t quite there. This overwhelming
feeling of transition was paralyzing, and I just stood in the
center of the living room and stared at the blank walls. And then I
glanced into the kitchen and saw the garbage.
Dan had been taking out the garbage for years. It was my
least-favorite job, and one he naturally adopted once we moved in
together. Maybe I’m setting women back 20 years by writing this,
but taking out the garbage is dirty, smelly, unwieldy and, plain
and simple, a man’s job. And all of a sudden, it hit me: From now
on, I was going to have to take out the garbage myself.
Before I understood what was happening, the tears welled up in
my eyes, I crumpled to the floor, and I sobbed. This was the second
time I cried during my entire divorce process.
I wasn’t really weeping about the trash, but about the death of
my relationship. But it was much easier to concentrate on the
garbage. So after a few minutes of self-indulgent keening, I picked
myself up off the floor, marched over to the garbage, pulled the
bag out of the can and bravely took it to the dumpster down the
hall.
After tossing it
into the stinky dumpster, I felt a surge of accomplishment. I
thought, If the worst part of divorce is taking the garbage out, I
am going to be just fine.
That week, I bought myself a new TV, 2 inches bigger than Ruby,
and named it Stringer Bell. I was on a Wire kick. I
frantically cleaned the condo so it would be spotless for the
hordes of people who came to the open houses. And I marveled at
myself in the mirror. I had effortlessly lost 15 pounds.
One night, a few days after Dan moved out, I met Michelle for
drinks at a bar off Pacific Coast Highway. A strange phenomenon
occurred as two newly divorced 29-year-olds watched the sunset. We
both saw each other’s eyes for the first time in years. We stared
at each other in amazement. We were independent. Unchained. Free.
Ready to make a whole new set of mistakes in our 30s.
For my birthday, I decided on a small lunch with close friends,
afternoon shopping with my sister and mother, who had flown into
town, and, in the evening, a big party at a bar with lots of
acquaintances. I didn’t drink much, and was in bed by midnight. The
whole thing was anticlimactic. But I fell asleep that night as a
30-year-old who knew I would never again be unhappy on someone
else’s terms. I would only be unhappy on my own terms.
And with that thought, I slept
soundly.