The Current - What we learn about marriage — once it ends

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Montreal writer Haley Mlotek’s mother was a divorce mediator, and her grandmother got divorced twice. But when Mlotek went through her own divorce, it challenged everything she thought she understood about leaving a partner. She writes about the history of divorce — and why some people believe it's still too easy to get — in her new book No Fault, A Memoir of Romance and Divorce.  

What does a mummified Egyptian child, the Parthenon marbles of Greece and an Irish giant all have in common? They are all stuff the British stole. Maybe. Join me, Mark Fennell, as I travel around the globe uncovering the shocking stories of how some, let's call them ill-gotten, artifacts made it to faraway institutions. Spoiler, it was probably the British. Don't miss a brand new season of Stuff the British Style. Watch it free on CBC Gem. if I might ask a favour of you, if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using. There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news too. So if you already follow the program,

thank you. And if you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. Some kids fear divorce, but not Haley Milotic.

She grew up surrounded by it. Her grandmother was twice divorced. Her mother was a divorce mediator. One of her favorite movies was even about divorce. Yes. Aaron. Aaron. Aaron. Aaron. I love you. I want a divorce.

But we just made love! I mean, you asked me. I asked you how to tell you, but then you looked so great. And I said, geez, how romantic. You know, one last time, the goodbye kiss. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, to tell you, but then you looked so great. I said, geez, how romantic. You know, one last time, the goodbye kiss. But this wasn't just a kiss. Annie, don't be childish. You know how you manipulate me.

What? It's a taste of the movie The First Wives Club. Haley grew up and married her boyfriend of 12 years. Then, 11 months later, went through her own divorce, which challenged everything she thought she understood about marriage and divorce. She has written about this in her book, No Fault, a Memoir of Romance and Divorce. She is with me in studio. Hayley, good morning. Good morning. Congratulations on this book. As I was saying to you, I came in, I keep reading about it everywhere,

which is great. Yes, we love to see that. Before I even read the book. You watched this when you were eight years old? I think 10, because I just looked up. Before I even read the book. You watched this one when you were eight years old? I think 10. 10? Because I just looked up what year it came out. Okay. So I must've been 10.

Still probably too young. I was going to say, what 10 year old likes the first Wives Club? It was me, me and my sisters. We loved it. We were hooting and hollering at it. And we wanted to rent it from Blockbuster as often as our parents would let us. Anytime it was on like TBS, we would stop everything to watch it. We just loved it.

What did you love about it? I think we loved the slapstick nature of it. Like it is very much a satire and it's very exaggerated, but there is a real honesty to it. It has a wide range of emotional moments. You know, I just screened it live at Metrograph in New York City, and it was so amazing to watch it with a packed house of people, some of whom were seeing it for many times over or for the first time.

And it starts with, it's not a spoiler, but it starts with a suicide. It's quite deep and dark, and it's very much about women and friendships and solidarity. My friend, the writer Rachel Handler, did a brilliant introduction of it where she posited that it's actually a Marxist critique of post-divorce life, which I think is exactly right. You grew up with divorce kind of around you, right? Is that fair to say? Yes, very much so. What does that mean?

I mean, for me to say that sounds, it says one thing, but what does that mean to you? My mother is a divorce and family mediator. When I was growing up, she worked out of our family basement, and that was my first job answering her phones, you know, like probably around 12, hi, you want a divorce, helping with the parenting plans, just like basic administrative work. My grandmother was also divorced twice in an era when that was pretty uncommon for women and sometimes she would start sentences by saying, you know, well, if my husband's plural, which as a 10 year old watching the first wives club, I thought was very glamorous. And then of course, now I've written this book about divorce.

So in many ways, with many different interpretations, divorce is really our family business. What did you learn about marriage and answering the phones for your mom? What did I learn? Well, I mean, I will say, you know, I didn't have much access to any personal information or anything private. But you're kind of around in that atmosphere, right? It was very like in the aura of the home. And I think, you know, I write in the book that I definitely recognized that it was unusual. My other friends' parents, they worked in offices or in

stores and they didn't have other people's lives as the backdrop to their own. But it didn't seem completely unlike, you know, my friends who had parents who were teachers or therapists. seem completely unlike, you know, my friends who have parents who are teachers or therapists. I'm often asked if that influenced my own experience of divorce. And I think, of course, it did. But I would have no way of knowing because there's no, you know, control group of me who could have compared it to what it would have been like without it. What did you learn from your parents' marriage? I think I really learned the importance of supporting each other. I was very, very lucky to grow up in a home where both my parents felt that reading and

writing were two of the greatest things that I could do. I have other friends who are journalists and writers, and their parents have often very wisely warned them about the economic conditions of journalism, which we know is very real. It is a very hard industry to work in, but they never made me feel like it was something that was insurmountable or something that I shouldn't pursue. My mother took me to the library as often as I wanted, and my father subscribed to every newspaper. And so I think that type

of environment where my sisters and I were always encouraged to pursue what it was we wanted, no matter what reality said about it, made more things possible for all of us. You mentioned your grandmother and the fact that she was married and divorced twice and referred to her husbands. What does that do to you as you're growing up? Ugh, well that's... I mean, it sounds glamorous, but... Such glamour, yes. I think that was probably my first introduction to a certain type of glamour that I think is applied to divorcees, particularly divorced women. There's, especially in pop

culture or in literature, there's a sense that there's something about divorce that perhaps because it's so taboo or because it does still have some stigma attached to it, on the opposite side, it must mean that there's some sort of strength or some sort of lack of caring that would allow you to be able to overcome that in order to live the life that you want. of lack of caring that would allow you to be able to overcome that in order to live the life that you want. I often go back to the example of the first season of Mad Men where there's a divorced woman that moves into the neighborhood and just destabilizes everything, nobody knows

how to act anymore. And I think that's an exaggeration as well, but it does speak to some truth about the assumptions that people make in your post-divorce life. What kind of assumptions did you have when you got married? My marriage... And the way that you write about yourself in the book is really interesting because there's specifics but not specifics at the same time, if that makes sense.

Yes. Well, yeah, the book is called No Fault, and it's very much about the colloquial term for a marriage that is dissolved without having any one person have to be responsible for it. And I did want that to be reflected in the writing. I understand that when one writes a memoir about divorce, hypothetically, the expectation is that you will lay everything out about why the divorce happened and how it happened. And perhaps skewer the other person. Oh, for sure. Yeah. You know, in the absence of doing it in the lethal system, why not do it in a book? But that is absolutely not what I was

interested in and certainly not the type of thing that I like to read. There are so many wonderful divorce memoirs and literature about divorce that have come out recently. And I think something that we all have in common is a certain amount of opaqueness around the details because, yes, they're personal, they're private, but also they don't really say anything about the experience of being divorced in a way that translates to the reader. I think there is much more space given when you speak about it from like a little bit of a distance to explain how you came to understand these things without necessarily going into the minutiae of it. You talked about the stigma. I mean, did you feel

when you got divorced, these are weird I mean, did you feel, when you got divorced, these are weird personal questions, did you feel that stigma that exists? In terms of talking to people about this, saying, our relationship is ending. Oh, absolutely. And in the book, it is loosely following the year of my life when I didn't want to tell people at all. When I was separated and I knew that I was definitely to be divorced, but I just didn't feel ready. I felt like I couldn't face not even anything specific, but just the fear that somebody would say something that I couldn't handle in that moment. Because marriage is a very public thing. I think there are many types of breakups that don't get the same gravity we give to

divorce that can have just as much of an impact on people's lives and families. But the fact of being married and having a wedding, the government knows something about you, your closest friends and family know something about you, and now you have to make a quite public declaration that now they have to know something different. And that's very difficult I think for everybody. There's that idea though that, as you've said, there's got to be an aggrieved party. There has to be some sort of degree of injury in a divorce. And you write that you didn't really know in some ways why your marriage ended. Do you think other people understand that?

When people's marriage ends, do they end? Some people might, but do most people understand why this thing isn't happening anymore? I think many people do, and I definitely don't want to imply that there aren't marriages or divorces where it isn't more one person's fault than the other, because there are very serious instances of different types of abuse or adultery that are absolutely unacceptable. And in that case, it's not askewring to tell what happened to you. It is just the consequence of somebody else's actions. And it's very important to tell those stories as well.

But for most people living in the times that we live in, where we have this very romantic idea of divorce, romantic in the sense that it implies that if one marriage didn't work, another one in the future might. That's quite different from how marriage has been understood historically as more of a very practical partnership. And so I think the element of being able to try again lends itself very well to a narrative where perhaps people feel like

they might have to explain before they try again why they can be trusted with the institution of marriage a second time around. What's that Samuel Johnson quote? Oh, a second marriage is the experience of triumph of hope over experience. Exactly, exactly. He gets it. People often looked at divorce as a safety valve, you say, in the book. What does that mean? How was it seen before?

Before no-fault divorce, it was certainly accessible, but not very available. It was something that was, you know, in Canada, you needed to get an order of parliament in order to receive it. And in the States, one of the research facts that I love is that there are often instances documented of couples agreeing with each other, that one person would just stand in front of the judge and say it was their fault so they could get a divorce. And so divorce rates were stable, but perjury rates flourished, which I think is very funny. But it was something that required a certain amount of struggle just to prove that you deserved this privilege of being able to go your separate ways. And

I don't think it's necessarily that different now. It's just more that the assumptions are really rooted in the idea that if divorce is going to be so messy emotionally, it should be made very clean, letally. I'm Nicola Coughlin, and this is history's youngest heroes, Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. I think of home a lot. I think of running into Vancouver and running to where I'm going to finish on the ocean and all you got to do is take another step and keep on going. He planned to run 5,300 miles across the second largest country in the world. Makes you believe in the human race

again. Join me, Nicola Coughlin, for history's youngest heroes wherever you get your podcasts. For history's youngest heroes, wherever you get your podcasts. What do we know about divorce rates now? I mean, again, the anecdotal evidence is what it's 50%, but people argue that constantly as well. You say that in some ways, what, divorce is like a zombie movie where the zombies are coming toward us. Yes, yes. And there's often a moral panic around divorce.

I think, you know, respectfully, the media loves to tell stories about what's happening to the family, and we see it reflected in our films, in our books, as you say, in our anecdotal conversations. And it really leads back to this idea that there's some sort of threat coming for the integral concept of the nuclear family. And the concept of the nuclear family. And the concept of the nuclear family is ahistorical. It's really like a blip in our shared collective consciousness, but it holds such a sway over people's ideals over what it should be.

There's a very beautiful quote that I include in the book with one of the researchers explaining that when people express sadness that things aren't the way they used to be, that's a safe way of saying that they're not happy with the times they live in, that it's so much easier to buy into this idea of false nostalgia rather than admit that our systems have always been flawed and everybody is always trying to figure out the best way to live. What does that idea of no fault mean to you now? I mean, because it's defined in law, but it goes beyond that as well.

Yes, absolutely. I think it's critical in many ways. It is, and this is, you know, a complicated way of describing it, but it is a uniquely feminist part of the law. In many ways, no fault divorce is designed for women and wives to be able to leave marriages as easily as men used to be able to. And as you say in the book, I mean,

those who are old enough to have lived through an era where no fault didn't exist know the difference between the two. Absolutely. And they know the freedom that comes with no fault didn't exist, know the difference between the two. Absolutely. And they know the freedom that comes with no fault, that you can stand up and say, for no reason other than choice, the marriage ends. Absolutely.

And, you know, of course, there's still like the court of public opinion that matters very much and I don't want to say that the social graces that come with going through a divorce aren't as difficult, but the prospect of going through the whole theater of the law in order to confirm that you deserve to, again, organize your life the way you want to or take care of your family the way you know is best, it's an immense right that I think should be granted to everybody. Do you think it's a right that is as firm as concrete or can it be broken up like a sidewalk? Oh, absolutely. No, no, it's not firm at all like any of our rights. It is very hard won and needs

to be fought for every day. The vice president, JD Vance, spoke in, when was it? 2021 and made a speech in which he talked about how society has run in his words this real-time experiment and that people shift spouses like they change their underwear. Yeah. He's the vice president now. When you hear that, what does that say to you? Well, in the book, I do write quite a bit about the fact that it's very common for fascist governments to go after the family when they first take power. Divorce is often a target for those types of totalitarian governments

in history and it's not a coincidence that this government that we're seeing in the United States is doing something similar. There is a great precedent for it that is a threat to all of us, everywhere in the world. You see this, and not just that language, but movements like that as people reacting to what they would see as a threat to the nuclear family? Absolutely, and I think it's really important to remember how connected all of us are in this world.

And right now in the United States, we're seeing specifically this just atrocious attack on transgender people, on undocumented people, incarcerated people, the Palestinian people. And all of that is an attempt to delegitimize a certain type of family and to create the impression that one type of human life matters more than the other. And that is, you know, I can't think of anything more evil.

I certainly don't know what the answer is, but I know that the greatest tool at our disposal to prevent that and to fight that is solidarity and to recognize how much we need each other. Should we take that for granted here in this country? Absolutely not, never. Not for a second. It can happen anywhere. I think it is a very effective way of creating fear

and consolidating power. There's a wonderful researcher in the book that I cite, Phyllis Rose, who says that the family is the smallest political unit that most people will ever be a part of. And it's very true. It's intimately tied to our experience of being a citizen in the world. And the way we shape our families is as political, if not more so, as anything else. I mean, this is a book about divorce, but it's also a book about marriage, right? And how we think about marriage now. The understanding from a lot of people is that fewer people are getting married now.

How should we think about marriage in 2025? Well, I think something that's interesting is that perhaps fewer people are getting married, but the only thing that tells us is that that's what the government knows about people's relationships. Rates of cohabitation aren't changing very much. People are co-parenting and finding lots of different ways to have romantic relationships or platonic relationships while raising families. We shouldn't be so limited in the,

perhaps the survey options that are given in demographics statistics to think about what marriage is. It really is just the license. And... Can you talk more about that? Because one of the things you say in the book is a contemporary marriage has never been pure romance. Yes. And that's the fairy tale, right? Yes, absolutely.

People get married because they love each other. And you say that it's about more than that. It's about social capital, it's social insurance in some ways. So tell me more about that and what marriage is now. Yes, absolutely. One of the other books that I really loved was by Melinda Cooper, who writes a lot about how both neoconservative and neoliberal

political movements both manipulate the family to their own ends. And you know, okay, I will say this is something I have to look up because I'm not sure if it's totally true. But I live in Montreal and somebody once told me that Montreal has the lowest rates of marriage in Canada. So let's, we'll fat-chat that. But when I heard that, it felt true because Montreal has still, fingers crossed,

and for a long time, very strong tenant rights, very strong protections for daycare, for healthcare. It's like in many ways, like the last affordable city. Yes, exactly. Big city in Canada. So, it's not that people are coupling less or having children less, but why would they need to get married if those things that we've been taught to think of privileges aren't held behind this like last cage of marriage.

And I think in like this current moment, there's a little bit too a taboo of talking about marriage as anything other than love. But the families and the couples that I see and I look up to, I think are people who have made the very practical material elements of their life central to how they express their love for each other and how they take care of their children and how they split up doing the dishes or walking the dog. Those are all expressions

of love too. What do you make of, and you didn't see this in your own family clearly, but what do you make of the narrative that this, not this generation, but the generations of now, and it's not to put the spotlight back on what Vance said, but that they see divorce as too easy in some ways. That other generations just ground it out and that it's not going to be sunshine and rainbows every day, but you just got to put your head down and deal with it. And that the generations now are looking for, looking for that safety valve that I was talking about earlier.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think with those sorts of statements, it's really important to think about who benefits from saying something like that. And especially when we look at countries that don't have access to things like healthcare or even here where it's becoming increasingly privatized, marriage is often considered a stopgap for the government services. You know, like I've certainly heard people say that when they've asked for healthcare in their jobs, they've been told by HR, well, can't you just get on your husband's plan or something?

Which is so many assumptions in one. It really does speak to me to a sense that we are all alienated and isolated from each other and have to like, you know, kind of close rank to take care of each other when it should never be like that. It should be communal and neighbourhoodly and something that we all participate in together, not relegated to this very, you know, like, this very tightly defined concept of husband and wife or spouse and spouse.

I'd said at the beginning that, I mean, I keep reading about this book before I even started reading the book. What does that tell you about the appetite to talk more openly and honestly, not so much personally, but just honestly, about what has become a facet of life. Yes. Well, I think it's like you say, the book is so much about marriage because you can't get divorced if you've never been married. And it is still a relatively recent experience that I think generationally, you know, I'm seeing many people my age start to go through it or even start to have second marriages or second relationships.

But I think it really does reflect the need to see more types of families represented in the world. Because I feel very strongly that we've all observed that there's no white picket fence for anybody and that everybody is building the life that they want in the same moment that they're learning what it is that they want. And so any sort of insight or guidance or even that sort of like gossipy, boy, you're feeling of being like, well, how did you do it, is really gratifying and really fortifying. Do people, I mean, this isn't a book that's filled with advice. Any advice maybe, I'm not sure if,

but do people come to you now and do they say, what would you say if I would, do you know what I mean? Oh, totally, I was just joking about this, that I do often have people when I'm in a group setting, they'll turn to me and be like, well, Hayley would know if we should break up. And I'd be like, please do not put that on me. I don't know, I don't know anything.

And I think that's so fascinating too, that the assumption is that if you've been divorced, you would be perhaps more pro-breakup than if you're still married. But it's not so much about being pro-breakup, but what would you, I mean, what would you want them to know? I would want to know that they're stronger than they think

and that it feels much better to be honest, even if that means saying, I don't know. I think there is a real push to make a decision and to just do something, to get out or get in. But there is a real push to make a decision and to just do something, to get out or get in. But there's a real strength that comes from just sitting still and being honest about what you don't know. Can I ask you just finally, and it's complicated, but if somebody that you know has split up,

that they got divorced, what do you say? Do you say, congratulations? Do you say, I'm sorry? It's an awkward thing to say because if you say congratulations, it might say you're congratulating them on the end of something that they really cherished. Absolutely. I always say both. I say I'm sorry and congratulations just to cover all my bases. Congratulations on this book. Thank you so much. Haley Milotic's book is called No Fault, a memoir of romance and divorce. She was here with me in

studio. We did just a fact check that stat about Montreal. There aren't definitive numbers, but between 2016 and 2020, eight in every 1,000 marriages in Quebec ended in divorce. If you have thoughts on how divorce has changed over time and how we think about divorce and how that's changed over time, you know how to get in touch with us. Email us, thecurrent at cbc.ca.