Why You Need a Divorce

The institution of marriage isn’t doing so hot. In the United States, fewer Americans are getting married than ever before, while many are getting married later in life, if at all. What’s to be done about it? According to journalist Lyz Lenz, blow it all up and start over. In This American Ex-Wife, a blistering memoir-meets-manifesto about the fraught gender politics of marriage and divorce, Lenz details how the end of her marriage became the beginning of her life. Raised religious and married at a young age, Lenz walked away from an unsatisfying partnership to rebuild her life on her own terms, only to discover that happiness, liberation, and freedom lay on the other side. “I believed that I would be a sad sack single mom, like you see in all the movies, but when I got to the other side, I realized, ‘This is actually great,’” Lenz tells Esquire.

Esquire sent this email to their subscribers on February 22, 2024.