Issue #155: What I've Learned About Love from My First Relationship Post-Divorce

And the work that goes into it.

📚 Hum by Helen Phillips: As a speculative fiction author, I’m fascinated by the future worlds others conjure—and was mesmerized by this eerily prophetic novel, out today. It begins with May, who has recently lost her job to AI, receiving a tattoo on her face. A robotic “hum” tattoos iridescent pigment that is undetectable to the human eye, but shifty enough to trick facial recognition software, making her effectively un-trackable. It’s the kind of near-future distortion that seems bizarre today, but could be easily conceivable tomorrow—just like the “Botanical Garden,” a Disneyland-like forest, May brings her children to, that isn’t quite what they were promised.

🥗 Craggy Chicken Caesar: Butter lettuce seems to be the only thing truly thriving in my garden lately, so I took it as a sign to make an adapted version of

Jenny Rosenstrach

’s Caesar-ish salad, served over chicken cutlets last night. A simple and refreshing take on another favorite, Ina Garten’s Lemon Parmesan Chicken with Arugula.

📺 “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” on Netflix: In this murder mystery most charming, Pip becomes fixated on a murder that took place when she was a girl, five years prior. In this adaptation of the YA series of the same title, Pip puts her academic prowess toward solving what really happened to Andie Bell that night.

The autumn before my husband and I separated, I accompanied him on a work trip to New York. While he went to the office, I took myself on a pilgrimage to some of my favorite bookstores. I was on my way out of Books Are Magic when The Fixed Stars by

Molly Wizenberg

caught my eye. From the moment I opened the first page, I stood transfixed by her descriptions of the juxtaposition of the safety of her marriage and the unfolding desire she was discovering outside of it. “It felt expansive,” she wrote, “Expansive, a word I couldn’t remember ever using, not instinctively in my mouth.” Her epiphany felt revelatory and foreign to me, even as I raced off to meet my husband for dinner.

Two years later, and a year after separating from my husband, I began dating my current boyfriend. Although we’re the same age and both in the counseling profession (he is a therapist, while I finish school next year), we’re opposites in many respects. He grounds my compulsion to constantly “do,” and I challenge him to create. We are both passionate about nature, but I could spend hours watching the same spider, while he prefers to explore. He is as private as he is supportive of my desire to share my life publicly. I process verbally; he is quiet and pensive. And yet, to borrow Molly’s word, it’s felt nothing short of expansive. Our relationship has always felt safe, but dynamic.

Still, entering into a new relationship after divorce has been incredibly difficult for me. I genuinely believed, for ten years, that my ex and I would be together for our entire lives and the grief from that loss still occasionally undoes me. Its ending shattered my fairytale understanding of love as easy or effortless, and made me acutely aware of how easily it can slip away unnoticed. At the start of my new relationship, I alternated between trying to sabotage it, protecting myself from another heartbreak, and doing everything I could to preserve its magic. Through a lot of work, and a good deal of trial and error, we made it through a challenging start and have built a foundation that feels full of possibility. It’s been nearly a year, and while my boyfriend and I are not following a traditional template—I’m not sure if I ever want to be married again, and we both remain unsure about the possibility of kids—we’re both committed to creating a meaningful relationship, wherever we’re headed. It’s still early days, but I’m buoyed and, admittedly, amazed by the way we’ve been able to show up for each other and our partnership. Below, I’ve distilled the five most poignant lessons about love and relationships that I’ve learned post-divorce: