A More Perfect Union

How much are you willing to give up for your marriage?

How much are you willing to give up for your marriage? Your self respect? Your identity? Your money? Your life? Across culture, I’m noticing a particular drum being beat about the horrors of subsummation and the dark side of what can happen when a woman loses herself completely in a marriage.

“There is still such crookedness in my heart. I had thought loving two people so much would straighten it.”

― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

Last Tuesday, feminist Lindy West released her latest book. To promote it, she went on the Modern Love podcast to reveal the… particulars of her marriage and subsequent thrupledom. West became famous as a writer for feminist website Jezebel, and was widely respected when I was growing up as a prominent voice bringing awareness to issues around body positivity and fat shaming. Her book, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, was uber-successful and was adapted into a show starring Aidy Bryant for Hulu. After Trump’s first election, she wrote an article entitled Yes, This is a Witchhunt: I’m a Witch and I’m Hunting You which went mega-viral and led to another book, The Witches are Coming, a collection of essays around feminism, her body, self-love, and the horrors of being alive in 2019.

I read both Shrill and The Witches are Coming: West ends Shrill with a triumphant cry about how it’s possible to find love as a woman in a bigger body. Their wedding was covered across a few websites— “I Hope Every Fat Girl in the World Reads This” and “My wedding was perfect – and I was fat as hell the whole time” were some of the headlines. West specifically framed her wedding as a victory against a culture that told fat women they would never win, and Shrill ended with messaging around how never making yourself smaller for a man would lead to a win for you, too: wedding as prize, wedding as happy ending, West as cake topper, smizing happily ever after. I’m sure you see where this is going.

West and her husband, Aham. Aham uses they/them pronouns but West refers to them as husband in conversation. All images belong to their respective owners.

In 2022, West revealed to the world she was in a polyamorous relationship with her husband, Aham, and their new partner, Roya. (Aham is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, but this refers to the plural their, not Aham specifically.) In essays detailing their courtship, West revealed that Aham had been divorced twice by 29 and was fuzzy on the idea of monogamy. They told her they would need to be open in order to marry her, and could not guarantee fidelity. West loved them and wanted to be married, so she agreed, only to one day be told by a stranger Aham had found themselves a girlfriend behind her back. They were spotted making out in public and West was forced to confront Aham, prompting a come-to-Jesus moment. West’s current book details her road trip where she realized she was ready to let love into her life once more and fully embrace a polyamorous relationship with Roya.

I have to be quite honest with you: I was a bit skeptical of the journey from feminist thought leader to spokesperson for the poly community when the circumstances were this murky. I posted about it on TikTok, where the poly community rallied behind me and the Jezebel era commenters were furious. As I said there: West is a public citizen monetizing her private life (over, and over, and over, and over). If I were a tad meaner, I’d call it a grift, but I frame my question as one of concern: in both her books (and the YouTube interview accompanying her grand coming out), West discusses her lifetime of self esteem issues and her issues with codependence. In the YouTube video, she specifically says all she thought about or cared about was what Aham thought or what Aham wanted, and again, she framed her wedding as a moral, righteous victory over anyone who had ever doubted or shamed her.

It is probably mean to continue, but I’ll end with this: after the Modern Love podcast, West got cooked, as the kids say. In the comments of the pod, on YouTube, on Reddit, on Substack, on basically every public platform available to us, West was seen as abandoning her feminist bonafides in order to remain married. A few days ago, she posted a defensive, eight paragraph screed where she said that she really, really wanted to be poly and she absolutely chose this and no one is forcing her, you guys*. It is worth noting that two of the eight paragraphs are devoted to praising Aham and how wonderful they are. It is also worth noting that many people are frustrated that for someone who made their two-decade long career (many essays, many newsletters and books and appearances and podcasts) preaching the value of using your voice ultimately decided that what would make her happiest in the world was doing exactly what her husband wanted.

Note: I wrote the above before reading this to maintain my own perspective, but for the detailed timeline and a detailed review of the book, Field Notes for the Brave wrote at length about it here.

“And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”

― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

Belle Burden’s Strangers was one of the buzziest memoirs of Q1, arriving on the heels of a mega-viral Modern Love article (Modern Love at the scene of many a crime this quarter). The story was made in a lab for purveyors of white mess: Burden’s grandmother was Babe Paley, famously one of Capote’s Swans, married to both a Mortimer (New York oil money, Real Housewife of New York Tinsley Mortimer married a scion) and William Paley, CEO of CBS. Paley was a socialite in her own right and known as one of the most beautiful and well-dressed women in society back in her day. Burden’s father was descended from the Vanderbilts, but the marriage between her parents was short lived, and much is made of her familial trauma in the book— Babe was apparently a cold, distant mother who kept her kids in a separate house and didn’t pursue an emotional connection with Burden’s mother. All of this made for excellent fodder for journalists, and Burden’s story was covered in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, etc.

Belle Burden (top), Amanda Burden, Burden’s former husband, Belle Burden. All images belong to their respective owners.

Strangers details the sudden dissolution of her marriage after discovering her husband’s affair: he walks out during the height of COVID, says he never wants to speak to her or their kids again, and vanishes into the night. The rub? Burden gave up her career to raise their children, bought both of their properties with her family trusts (plural) and had no knowledge of or access to the shared accounts that her husband managed for twenty years.

Burden’s saga plays out like a slow moving horror story: her husband convinced her to change the prenup five days before the wedding. She puts his name on both houses, guaranteeing he’ll get a portion in case they ever get divorced. She quits her job. He asks her not to return to work when the kids get older. She has to submit her credit card statements to him like a spendthrift teenager, detailing why she needs $200 for their children’s school uniforms while he amasses a collection of Rolexes and a personal net worth in the hundreds of millions.

On TikTok, I said the book was a must-read for every stay at home mom in America: on the app, there are thousands of videos of women who gave up their careers for their families and gave their husbands full financial control, only to end up destitute and alone with massive gaps in their resumes. Ask any divorce lawyer: it’s a tale as old as time, and one that you’d think Burden would be protected from considering both her mother and grandmother were married to charming, philandering men.

I liked the book, but I admit there is a smugness that’s hard to swallow: Burden blithely details how her wealth inoculated her from everyday worries, and how special and amazing and perfect and gorgeous her life was before her husband walked out. The quote that horrified me on a cellular level was “I loved him so completely”, where she talks at length about how she spent her days waiting for her husband, how he consumed her every thought and the only thing she wanted in the world was to be a good wife and mother (which, of course, there is nothing wrong with, but Burden admits this desire swallowed her whole, snuffing out all other possibilities).

After her divorce, Burden becomes bolder, freer, more herself. She fleshes out contours of her personality she put aside in order to play the role of Wife, and her friends admit that while she was married, she was cold, distant, and a little boring. Burden’s career, friendships, and relationships outside of her marriage were completely occluded for two decades. Making her husband the center of her life was for naught— I think of Gone Girl: “Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That’s murder.”

Burden gave almost all of herself to a man who traded in his family for a one bedroom apartment and a weight set. Thankfully, Burden found a new version of herself in the rubble of her former life, but her story remains a cautionary one: there is no amount of money, love, legacy, pedigree, time, or attention that will make a marriage work.

Pandora Sykes also reviewed Strangers here.

“Women in narratives were always defined by their relations.”

― Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

I wrote 2500 words on Love Story two weeks ago, so I’ll spare you, but I’ll restate my point here: Love Story pulls a fast one on its audience by introducing us to the couple at the center and making us fall in love with their doomed courtship. As the show progresses, we slowly begin to see John F. Kennedy Jr’s celebrity eclipse Carolyn Bessette— she’s forced to quit the job that gave her life purpose, as she’s now a famous, shiny distraction. Her friends fall by the wayside. John’s sister is her maid of honor. Before she can catch her breath, her entire life is consumed by Kennedy world— becoming one of them was like falling asleep, it happened slowly, then all at once.

Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Paul Anthony Kelly as John F. Kennedy Jr.

One of the very first beats of the show sees Carolyn trading a bold lipstick for a nude, wanting to fade into the background against the glare of both the paparazzi and the expectations of the Kennedy family. At present (episode 7), she’s jobless, unemployable, anxious, depressed, and freaking out because the meat of her life has been replaced by the spun sugar confection offered by the Kennedys: all glitz, no substance.

This is no longer a love story. It’s a horror movie about waking up and finding your dreams stolen from you.

“Every romance requires a backdrop and an audience, even - or perhaps especially - the genuine ones, romance is not something that a couple can be expected to conjure by themselves, you and another, the two of you together, not just once but again and again, love in general is fortified by its context, nourished by the gaze of others.”

― Katie Kitamura, A Separation

As I’ve written about at length, marriage is prized in American society: it is seen as something covetable and precious, sacred and holy. The pursuit of marriage is placed above all else, and people will contort themselves into a myriad of shapes to avoid “failing”— entering situations they’re ill suited for to avoid public scrutiny or shame, staying in bad relationships, throwing themselves into chaotic situations to avoid being alone.

I empathize: in The Sociology of Begging Someone to Marry You, I wrote that due to the way friendship is devalued in the US, many people find themselves on islands in their late thirties, their friends having absconded into the twin caves of marriage and parenthood. I think about recent seasons of Love is Blind as visions of suburban malaise, a sickness that can propel people to marry strangers in order to have someone to watch television with on a Tuesday night.

These stories serve as warnings. I say this as a man, reporting from behind enemy lines: there are many, many stories of women devoting themselves to their partners only to end up with nothing, their identities subsumed under the umbrella of marriage. I’m not saying not to try, or not to trust: I’m simply saying perhaps we should all heed the warnings of those who came before us before jumping.

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Also: I was on NPR’s It’s Been a Minute talking about my Year of Pathetic Men piece!

All quotes in this are from books about marriages in crisis or divorce: here’s the V-day post I did with some recs.

Getting ahead of some critiques I’ve seen:

*People are saying that framing the decision as Aham’s removes West’s agency. The issue is not her agency: people have questions around the decision as it pertains to her own words and body of work. If your friend who admitted to a lifetime of self esteem issues married a person who held nonmonogamy over their relationship’s head like a Sword of Damocles, stayed with them after two affairs, and then came out as actually poly the whole time— you would have questions too.

The poly community has stated clearly that polyamory is something to be entered into with eyes wide open: it is a decision you make with your partner beforehand. West entering the marriage knowing Aham was poly is not the same thing as choosing to be poly. West choosing to stay with Aham after two affairs is not choosing to be poly. West choosing to be poly once Aham had already established a relationship with someone else is not choosing to be poly. We’ve all read The Ethical Slut. We’ve all read Polysecure! That’s not how it works.

Roxane Gay called everyone who discussed this without reading the book a gossip, which, fine: I’m a gossip. But I discuss people who make money off their personal lives every day, and West cannot have it both ways— she cannot both admit to craving public attention and then bristle when we give it to her. She has to sell the book. We’re allowed to have opinions. Jezebel era commenters on here/Reddit/TikTok are stuck in a version of the 2012-2016 internet, where a protected identity inoculates you from criticism (identity as shield). Unfortunately, it is 2026. (Interestingly, Aham ran a version of this on West, claiming that perhaps she didn’t understand polyamory because she was white.) The contours of their marriage could have remained private, but she’s sold the details to a public that respected her and has now, for the most part, turned on her.

I also wanted to write about The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives all being tortured by their husbands, but I can’t even go into it. It’s too sad. The show has quickly become one of the darkest on television, depicting the horrors of growing up in a high control religion and how patriarchy is also a trap for men: the women are all the breadwinners, and the men on the show have chosen to financially, emotionally, mentally, and psychically terrorize them as a result. I wish for every one of those women to get free from them immediately.

Next time: 30ish book reviews (q4 ‘25/q1 ‘26!)