The Oprah Podcast - Oprah with Belle Burden on the Collapse of Her 20 Year Marriage & Her Bestselling Memoir

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

It’s the new memoir that has captured the attention of women and as Oprah describes, “everyone is talking about it." From the outside, Belle Burden seemed to have the perfect life: three thriving kids, a happy marriage and a summer home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Then, one day, she gets a phone call that shatters everything she believed to be true about her marriage and her life. Oprah sits down with Belle to talk about the devastation that followed the shocking end of her marriage and how she slowly rebuilt her life into something better than she could have imagined. Drawing on revelations shared in her New York Times bestseller, Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage, Belle tells Oprah how her prestigious family pedigree couldn’t protect her from the pain of divorce. She also explains how sharing her story has empowered her to become the person she was meant to be. BUY THE BOOK! https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760850/strangers-by-belle-burden/ 00:00:00 - Welcome Belle Burden, author of ‘Strangers’ 00:03:30 - Belle learning of her husband’s affair 00:12:10 - After learning of the affair 00:16:00 - Being told she was crazy 00:17:48 - Telling their kids 00:25:00 - The search for why 00:26:15 - Is divorce worse than death? 00:27:40 - The shame of being left 00:30:35 - Why she wrote the NYT essay 00:34:00 - Her path forward 00:35:35 - Why she wrote the book 00:36:30 - What she hopes her book gives other women 00:38:50 - Her prenup 00:42:36 - Belle’s mother Amanda joins 00:46:15 - He didn’t want joint custody 00:49:20 - What she had to do every day 00:53:30 - How she feels now 01:01:22 - Belle on her book Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh my goodness, Bell. We got some talking to do, girl. I see that you've marked the book up, Andrew. I have marked the book. I wanted to do this book because there are so many friends that I've had who've gone through this. And I feel like I've gone through it with them. Yes. You are every woman that you have written the manual for every woman.

This is the book is just, it's a memoir of marriage, but it's also a memoir of every woman who's gone through divorce. Suddenly, hearing from her husband, I don't want to be married anymore. I'm unhappy and you thought everything was okay. And he, yeah, this is the book. Thank you. Everybody's talking about it. You're going to get into it now. Okay, I'm ready.

Okay. Ask me anything. Okay. Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the Oprah podcast. It's good to be with you here. I'm really excited to talk about our subject today. Take a moment and try to imagine this happening to you.

A lot of you don't even have to imagine it because it's already happened. Out of the blue, your spouse of 20 years. And father to your three children says this. I thought I was happy, but I'm not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don't. I feel like a switch has been flipped. I'm done. You can have custody of the kids.

I don't want it. I don't want any of it. Imagine that after 20 years. when you're just thinking things are okay. Well, my guest heard just those words from her husband and has now written an evocative, may I say, book that has struck a chord with so many women and readers. Everybody I know is talking about this book,

it's called strangers, a memoir of marriage. But if you've been through a divorce or suspect that you might be going through a divorce, it's also your story. From the outside, Bell Burden was living a life Most people only dream of. She and her husband of 21 years were raising their three children in New York City.

Summers were spent at their home on Martha's Vineyard, an idyllic island off the coast of Massachusetts. Bell, a Harvard-trained lawyer, hails from a prominent American family, filled with bold-faced names, including the Vanderbiltson John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. Her maternal grandmother was style icon,

socialite, Babe Paley. Her step-grandfather was Bill Paley, the founder of CBS. Belle grew up in a family where generations of women rarely ever discussed their husband's transgressions. But when her own husband abruptly ended their marriage, Bell decided to break that chain. First, with a modern love essay in the New York Times that went viral, and now with her new New York Times bestseller, Strangers, a memoir of marriage. Welcome, Belle Burden. Glad to be with you on my front porch.

I'm so glad to be here. It's exciting. Bell, the people are talking about this book. They really are. I'm hearing from so many women around the world, and it's really surprised me in the most wonderful way. Okay, what did you think when you wrote it? I know it started as an article for the New York Times. It did, and I thought when I wrote it that it would be a quiet book, that it would sort of get known by word of mouth,

that women would talk about it a little bit, but I did not expect this kind of response. But it really is women reading it, seeing themselves. Passing it on to other women and seeing themselves. Exactly. Some books explain things, I would say, and then there are books that name things that I think that we've been living with our whole lives

but never had the language for. You all know what I'm talking about. And Strangers is actually one of those books. So you were married for 21 years to James. That's not his real name. You believed that it was a good marriage, a solid and happy marriage. And you and your husband had recently, this is what struck me about the book, you and your husband had recently purchased a brand new, expensive sleep number mattress.

Yes, very, very expensive bed in January. Yeah. And this happened in March two months later. And he had picked out the mattress. Okay, so you're thinking if you're getting this expensive mattress, that it's at least for, you know, 10 years maybe? Yeah. Okay.

And so the sleep mattress allows you to adjust. You all may have one of these. It allows you to adjust your firmness and softness for each side. Yes. Yeah. It's something about that mattress that stood out for me. Have other people mentioned that, too? A couple of people have mentioned it, and I think about it a lot,

because it was such an investment, and it was so accommodating of both of our tastes. He likes a very soft mattress. I like a very hard mattress. It seemed like this great compromise. It also took a lot to get it into the frame. We had to have a lot of men come up and sort of adjust it and put it in. And it was really a big ordeal. And so it's one of those things I look at and think he could not have been planning this.

Yeah. And I think what is so interesting about that is everybody that I know who's gone through it, particularly people who are betrayed, and find out that their spouse has been cheating, they go back through everything and you think, where was the sign, when should I have known, what was the clue? And if you've bought that expensive mattress in January,

that is a clue that we're moving in the right direction and that we're, you know... Stable. Stable. Happy even. Yeah. And I have tried to look back and look for those red flags, either a red flag about him, his character,

or a sign that he was really moving away and planning to leave. And it's hard to find those. And then you get the call on March 21st, 2020. So let me remind everybody, I don't have to tell you, March 21st, 2020. We had just gotten the word, I think, around March 16th, that we're going to be in lockdown. So that's a Saturday after our first full week in lockdown during COVID, set the scene for us. I appreciate the way you do it in the book. I can see your one daughter.

She's upstairs playing Fortnite. And then your other daughter is had made dinner, had made pasta, and you're in the kitchen. And what happens? So we had just finished dinner. I was cleaning up. I was actually mopping the floor, and I got a call on my cell phone. I don't recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail.

And then I play the message, and it's a man's voice. He sounds nervous. and he says, I'm trying to reach Bell. I'm sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife. This is a voice message. This is a voice message. And my first thought is, this can't be true.

This must be a mistake. It's a wrong number. Yeah, it's the wrong bell. The wrong bell. I realize he said my name. Yeah. And I think he must, my husband's going to explain this.

We're very happily married. We love each other. I've never seen any sign of this. How can this be? be true. And we'd had this week that was, we were all scared about the pandemic, but it was very cozy. He was chopping wood and making fires and bringing me cocktails. And it was all very cozy. And that night, he admitted to the affair, but he told me that it didn't mean anything. It had only been going on for a couple of weeks and that he loved me and only me and loved our family.

And I thought, okay, I'm stuck in this house. We are going to have to do therapy on Zoom. I'm going to have to figure out if I can work through this. It's going to be a nightmare. But this is what we're going to have to do. So your immediate response after your husband says to you, listen, it's only been going on for... For two weeks, he said. Yeah. And you think, okay, we're going to work through it.

We're going to work through it. I asked some questions. I asked for her name. I asked if she had kids. He gave me those details. And then my younger daughter called for me, and we had to end that conversation. And I went to my shower and closed the door, the glass door to my shower, and just started wailing and did it in a place where my girls could not hear me. And I texted the man who had called me.

I wasn't quite ready to talk to him on the phone. And I said, can you tell me how long this has been going on? And he said, I think about a month, so a little bit different. And then he said, but I can't talk now because my wife is in an ambulance. And she has tried to kill herself. This is the girlfriend. The girlfriend. Yes.

Yeah, his wife, my husband's mistress. Yes. And I felt such worry then for this woman I'd never met. And I went to find my husband. Well, you're a different kind of woman. You're not going to worry about the other woman. I just thought, you know, she's in distress. Is she okay?

Yeah. And I went to find my husband. He was in our guest room and he was on the phone with her. And he was almost hunched over the phone. in this very caretaking pose. And I remember thinking he's caretaking of her and not of me. And I've just learned that our marriage is in crisis

and he's had an affair. So you realize he's on the phone with her? And that he looks concerned and caretaking. About her? About her. And it was such a cold feeling thinking that he was worried about her. Yeah.

And he told me, she's going to be fine. She took some sleeping pills. She's going to be okay. And then a few hours passed, he went to sleep. I stayed in my room in torment. Okay, well, let me just read this part. I love this part where you say,

you write that she had taken the pills the moment I, James' wife, first heard about her. Yes. Right? Wasn't I the one, is what you say. Wasn't I the one who was supposed to be falling apart? Wasn't he supposed to be worried about me? Exactly.

She captured my husband's intention at a time when I needed it most. Yes. What did you realize about your marriage in that moment? I wasn't quite able to put my head around it. Of course you couldn't. I just knew that everything had changed, even in that moment. And then it changed a lot more later. But I just thought, wait, something is really wrong with this picture.

And something is really wrong with both of them, actually, because I'm the one who's gotten this devastating news. Yeah. yet no one is concerned about me. Well, that is the moment when reading strangers that I realize, oh, this is going to relate to so many women because I lived through this with Gail. You all know Gail's been my best friend for 50 years now,

and I can share this because she's talked about it herself. But on the night that she discovered her husband with another woman in her house, in her bed, which is about the worst thing. I think that's one of the worst. The night that she discovered that, I said to her, you got to pick your head up off the floor. And the moment that you talk about him being on the phone with the woman who's in the, with his mistress,

I remember Gail called me and she said, I just found him with this woman. And I said, well, where is he now? And she said, he's gone to take her to the train station. Yep. There you go. And I said, girl, this is very telling. You don't even know how bad this is. This is really bad. It's a very bad sign.

Where he is supporting her. Yep. You walk in on him. You find them naked and he then leaves to take her instead of consoling you. Yeah. You're already out of the picture. They're already a mile ahead of you. That's how it felt.

Yeah. And I should have known that night that this was not going to get better. And in fact, it did get a lot worse. I thank you for listening to the Oprah podcast. When we come back, Bell shares how, things became even more difficult for her and her children after finding out about her husband's affair. Ah, where are my gloves? Come on, heat.

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I'm talking with Bell Burton about her New York Times bestseller, Strangers, a memoir of a marriage. I think it's a must read, especially if you're married, ever been married, thinking about marrying. Let's get back to our conversation. Okay, so that first night lying in bed, after you find him on the phone with her, you feel a little different. Your concern changes. You're not like, oh, I'm so worried about her. You're like, what's wrong? No, I'm actually a little bit just shocked that she wasn't, she wasn't worried about me either.

She kind of stole the attention in a way when I really deserved that attention. Yeah, yeah. In that moment. Yes, yes. And that was very painful. Well, obviously she turned out to be okay. She was fine. Like, once I knew she was fine, that's when it shifted to just astonishment.

Yeah, that she stole the attention. Yes, yes, that's how it felt. And then I didn't sleep that night. He did. but at six in the morning he came into my room, fully dressed, with a tote bag packed, and his whole affect had changed. It was very cold. His eyes were very icy, and he said to me, I decided I want a divorce.

I thought I was happy, but I'm not, and I'm going to leave right now. And he did. He walked out of our house. He got in his Jeep. He got on a ferry and he left the island. You were on Martha's Vineyard. Yes, on Martha's Vineyard. Exactly.

And he went to New York, I believe, to see her. And it was that moment that he became someone I really did not recognize. Therefore, the book, strangers. He became a stranger, literally. Because the man you had known would never have done that to you. The man that I thought I knew would never have done that to me. I really, I thought he was a very devoted, mild, kind person, and he had never told me once that he was unhappy.

Okay. A lot of times people don't say they're unhappy, but you sense the unhappiness. You had never sensed the unhappiness or disconnection. Because when I first started reading, this book, I thought it was going to be about, oh, you thought you were connected, but you recognized all the signs of being disconnected.

And you had always been strangers all along. But it wasn't that at all. It didn't feel that way. I felt real intimacy with him. And I did accept a little bit of remove. He was a little bit removed, a little bit distant. But I felt like that was a quirk in his personality. Right.

And I guess there was more bubbling beneath the surface, maybe. Yes, yes, yes. But it was not a situation of realizing, oh my gosh, She's been leading this double life all along. And I know those of you who are listening who have been through this, and I know this is a big club. A lot of members in this club of women who've been betrayed. You're going over in your head all the things, all the signs.

You could have seen the sign. What did I miss? What did I miss? And one night you became convinced that James had fathered the other woman's toddlers because he told you that she had toddlers, right? Yes. that toddlers about three and one year old. Yeah.

And when you confronted him, he said what? Well, at that point, he had stopped answering my phone calls and told me that I was too upset for him to speak to. But I caught him in the middle of the night. He picked up the phone at about 1 a.m. because I was spiraling, thinking that he had actually fathered them. And he said, stop, you have lost your mind. And he hung up the phone.

But that seemed in this world where, everything that I thought was impossible was now possible. I thought even that could be possible. Yeah. It hasn't been two weeks or a month that you're now the father of the toddlers. And a logical thought for somebody who... Yes, it happens. Yes, it happens all the time.

And you write, I felt like I had lost my mind, like his exit had transformed me suddenly from an intelligent, stable wife and mother, to an unhinged lunatic, a mad woman. Somehow I had become the dangerous person in this story, the volatile character rather than he, the man who had left his family. Yeah. It's amazing to me, and I think this happens to a lot of women.

Overnight, somehow we are transformed into the hysteric. But I do think that, based on all the people I know who've gone through this, that that's a tactic. Yes, I think it is. That's a tactic that the men use. Absolutely. In many instances, I realize, where I'm laughing because I remember

a girl goes, I am not crazy. Exactly, yes. In many instances where the man, the husband, the spouse, is saying you're crazy, you're hysterical. And I think there was a wonderful line that you wrote where you said, once a woman is painted as a hysteric. The rest of the story is washed away.

She's dismissed. Yes, she's absolutely dismissed. And it happens very quickly, even though he did something that was fairly unhinged to walk out on your family during a pandemic. Yes. Within 12 hours, I was too upset.

I was too angry. You're overreacting. You're hysterical. Actually, everything is fine. He kept saying everything's fine. This is fine. So let's go to the everything is fine. So how long before you all told the girls?

Because this is what is so unbelievable. I'm always amazed at working mothers, working parents who have a whole life outside and then have to come home and be present for their children and not be hysterical for their children. So you didn't tell the girls at first. I didn't. A therapist advised that I wait because the pandemic was so scary. And so that we should wait until the pandemic was less scary.

And of course, that never happened. Right. And I thought I was hiding it from them. I did not do a good job. I was crying all the time. I had trouble getting out of bed for a very long time. And what are you telling them is the reason for that? I just pretended like I was okay,

even though my eyes were swollen. My older daughter actually knew she read a text on my iPad almost immediately, which happens a lot, I think. So she knew and she had to pretend that she didn't know. And then my younger daughter didn't know, but then I think after... How old was your older daughter at the time? 15. Yes.

And then my younger one was 12. And I also have a 17-year-old boy who was with his friends. And the younger one did not know, but then when she found out afterwards, she felt betrayed that I hadn't told her. So I think that was a mistake. I wish I had told them, I said their dad had gone back to New York to go to work, even though New York was shut down.

And I wish I had just said, this is happening, and told it in a factual way so that we could all go through it together. I think you needed to give yourself a day, though. I mean, yes. You have to collect yourself. And I... As I say, many years ago, in the 70s, I interviewed Betty Rollins, she wrote a book called First You Cry. It was one of the first books about breast cancer. First You Cry.

And I remember saying to Gail that somebody should write a book for women going through divorce that says, first you pick your head up off the floor. Yes. Because you're so literally, every person that I know who's been through it who finds himself in the midst of betrayal for the first time, it's like your chicken with your head caught off. And it's disconcerting, really, to your whole being. And I spent a lot of time on the bathroom floor, which you think is. It's a cliche, but it's actually not.

I think we spend a lot of time there because no one will come in the room. Right. And also it's like this cold floor that it made me feel like I wasn't going to fall through the earth. Yeah, it holds you up. It holds you up. Yeah. Okay. And a lot of tears.

So how long before he comes back to tell the children? It was a month. Wow. I thought, we've got to tell them. This is crazy. We've got to tell them. And initially he didn't want to come. He wanted me to tell them.

And then didn't he want to zoom? Then we were going to zoom. Oh, crazy. And I felt mixed about him coming because he was in New York. I was worried he would bring COVID. I didn't know what kind of person was going to show up because we had not been communicating. But finally decided he should be there in person to tell the girls. And we called my son beforehand.

And then he arrived. And my first thought when I saw him coming up our walkway was that he seemed really happy. He seemed elated. which was so incongruous to the wreckage that he had left with me. Yeah. And he came in and we sat in our living room. I had my arms around both girls. And he told them that we were divorcing, that he hadn't been happy.

And it's just that terrible moment. It's terrible for any family when this news is delivered to kids. Okay, but here's the thing. That you're leaving out, Belle, this is the good part. Oh, yes, yes. This is a good part. he's telling the girls, and in the midst of telling girls, he says, can you get me a sandwich?

He did. He looked at me and he said, I'm starving. Yeah, can you make me a sandwich? And part of my brain thought, part of my- cameraman goes old. Yes. Part of my brain thought, you used to live here, go make your own sandwich. I'm not going to make you a sandwich.

And then my younger daughter had run down the stairs. She was very upset. And my older daughter is sitting there with her arms crossed looking at her father. And I'm having a doctor. dialogue with myself that I think a lot of mothers have, which is I should model that we are going to be kind to each other, that we're going to work together, that we're not going to be nasty ever, that there will be love and caring here, even if we're divorcing. So you made the sandwich?

And that side won out. And I went into the kitchen and I made the sandwich. And as I'm making it, I think I am going to make the best sandwich ever. I will not make a terrible sandwich. I want him to leave thinking, how could I leave this woman who makes such a great sandwich? And, of course, the sandwich represented so much else, a represented home and the warmth of this life. And my caring for you and what you've received here. Exactly. But I don't think he saw it that way at all. I think he ate it and didn't think about it again. Yeah.

One of the things you write in strangers is that some people say the end of a marriage is 50-50, always 50-50. but you ask, is it 50-50 when the unhappy person doesn't say that they are unhappy? Is it 50-50 when you didn't know that there was this disruption going on? And I wonder, does it matter in the end? Does it, whether it was 50-50 or 2080? I think it's one of those things that if it happens like this to you, it's frustrating when people say, oh, well, it takes two to tango, two people have to end a marriage.

And I don't think that's fair because I think that you need at least a beat to be able to work on it. That's not somebody who's been through it. No, that's definitely not. And in some cases it is because there's conflict and there are a lot of issues. But you have to communicate that you're unhappy.

You have to give someone a chance to go to therapy or discuss or something like that. So I resisted, and I still resist, that idea that it was 50-50. After a quick break, Belle Burton talks about the shame she carried after her divorce and that one nagging whisper during her 21-year marriage

that she wished she had paid attention to. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real power move is leveling up your business. with FedEx Intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move.

Hi there, and welcome back to my conversation with Bell Burton, whose New York Times bestseller strangers, a memoir of a marriage, is resonating with so many women, especially anyone who has experienced divorce. Did you go through the five stages of grief or the stages of grief, you know, shock, denial, anger, bargaining, all of that? I think I did. I would say that definitely shock, disbelief. Anger was never the dominant emotion. And I certainly felt it at times. I think I was so overwhelmed by sadness and shock that anger. came in spurts, but it was not the dominant thing. Yeah.

And I wrestled with it later again. And then I think there was, bargaining probably was there, and then acceptance definitely was. Yeah. I ended there. Well, I have learned through all of my conversations over all these years that acceptance is the key to everything. I mean, whether it's a diagnosis for disease, whether it's a breakup of a relationship, if it's a job,

getting to acceptance as soon as you can, is what changes a trajectory for everything. I really agree. I really agree. And I had to get there on my own because I thought I could land on an answer and that that was key to being able to accept this. And I never got that answer.

I didn't get it from him. I didn't get it from my detective work. I just never got it. And what shifted it for me. That's why this book is, you all are going to love this book if you haven't read it already is it's so important. It's because every woman wants the answer to why? Yes. Why? Why did this happen? Why did I do something? What is the why? I went through all of those

lies. You couldn't get to the why. I couldn't get to it. And I worried actually that readers would be frustrated that I never get to it. But I think what happened for me is I think it's done the opposite. The reason why the book is so popular is that you didn't get to it and so many women haven't gotten to it. Exactly. I think that's right. And what changed it for me is shifting the focus because I wasn't It was like trying to get blood from a stone. I wasn't going to get it from him. So I had to shift the focus to myself. My stepmother's a family therapist,

and she uses this trick where you picture him and myself on a stage and the spotlight's on him, and I have to move it in my brain from him to me. Okay, that's really important. And I just wanted to say, as I was reading it, I was thinking, you did this as a memoir, originally as an article, and then now a book, but you did as a memoir about your life,

and, you know, going through analyzing what it happened in your marriage. But it becomes sort of a manual, I think, for other women who are going through it. First of all, you mentioned your stepmom. In the book, I remember when she tells you that divorce is worse than death, and at first you didn't seem to agree. Did you come to realize differently or think differently about that? Divorce is worse than death. I know a lot of you who are going through it have been through it,

feel that way? Yes, I think it's hard for me to say that because I watched her lose my father and how horrible that was to be a widow. And she's a therapist. Yes. And she told me. She told me. And she believes that it's worse because he is out there living a different life. And I had to really look back at our love story and reevaluate it and feel that rejection, which is so painful. Yeah. But my children still have a father. And a lot of, you know, when there's death, people lose important people to them. Yeah, I understand that. And I know a lot of people are going to challenge it.

But what I think she meant, and I have said that to my friends too, this is worse than death because if your husband had died, you come to accept that he is dead and nothing's going to change. And you couldn't have changed that. Yes. And your narrative can stay the same. And your narrative can stay the same. If your husband betrays you, suddenly leaves you. you're still left with all the whys and the wise and the wise and a lot of shame too and a lot of shame

a lot of shame so tell us why you were feeling shame when you're not the one who walked out on your family i felt it so intensely i really felt so much shame as i re-entered the community that i'm a part of there i felt like i was um i had failed and keeping my husband interested in me loving me i had failed in keeping my family intact. I felt like I was less than all these other women who had stayed married. And I think for me, there are so many people who have been through this,

but when you're going through it, you're not aware of that. You feel like you're the only person this has happened to, and you feel so isolated. Page 145, you write. I felt a deep sense of embarrassment about it. James was the one who had an affair who walked out, but the shame had become mine.

I had made it mine. I was an abandoned wife, a woman rejected by her husband, a woman who had failed to keep her family together. I would be the outsider. I think a lot of women, particularly in your social circles, think this. I would be the outsider among all the married people, all the intact families, all the women, all the women who were wanted by their husbands. Yes.

And that was so deeply hard for me. And I happened to be in a community where everyone was married. I felt like the only person who was not married. And so you kind of cross over from one day to the next, from being a part of something to being different, to not being a part of that thing. And your ex-husband wanted you to tell everyone that the separation was mutual, but what stands out for me,

and I think it's going to be so helpful to so many of you hearing this story, is that you didn't hide, you were embarrassed and all the things that we just said, but you didn't hide. You would go up to people in your social circle, and say out loud. I would say my husband left me. I don't know why, and I am in agony. And the moment that he asked me for it to say it was amicable,

he tried to tell me it would be better for me. I felt this full-bodied certainty that I could not do that, that I could not lie about it, that I would not survive this if I tried to lie about it. So when I ran into people, I just said it. And I never stopped saying it. And some people could handle it and some people could not. When did you make the decision to do that?

The moment he said, I want you to give you. Yes, and that was only a weekend. And I just knew I couldn't do it, which is contrary to my personality. I'm shy. I'm very private. But I just knew I could not spin a false narrative about this. This was what was happening to me, what was happening to my kids. Okay, so everyone has their own social circle.

and, you know, whether it's your school or your church or your community or your girls club, your book club, yours happens to be in Martha's Vineyard. And nearly two years after your divorce, the New York Times published an essay, was I married to a stranger? Why did you want to write that article? It was in their modern love column. It was. I always love a modern love column. Me too. about a year after he left when we were moving towards divorce,

I felt like there were so many different narratives about what had happened, including from him. Okay, go. Okay, let's stop this for a second. I just want to ask you, so when you go up to someone and you say, when you make the decision, you're going to say, James has left me and I don't know why and I'm in agony.

I'm sure people didn't know what the hell to do with that. A lot of people did not. Yes. And I understand. I'm not sure I would have. known what to do with it. I'm not sure I would have... But the word it spread, right? Oh, everyone was talking about it. Yeah, this was hot gossip. You walk into a room and everybody is talking about it and you know. Some people are uncomfortable with it. I had a couple of men that I knew well turned away from me and

walk away from me without saying hello. And on the other hand, some people really move towards me. And it's taught me a lot about how to respond to someone who's going through anything, anything that's a sudden change or a difficult thing. I had people stop me on the street. and say, I'm so sorry you're going through this. Or another woman who grabbed me by the shoulders and said, I'm going to take care of you. And it was such a beautiful thing. It really lifted me up.

But there were harder reactions too. And I think for all those people, people bring their own family histories to these things. And their reaction is definitely influenced by that. When the article first came out, tell us about the reaction. I can't remember where you were. and one of your friends.

I was on Martha's Vineyard. It came out on June 30th, yeah, um, 2023. And I was so excited because I had wanted to be a writer when I was a teenager. And I, when I started trying to write down exactly what happened,

I got very interested in the art of it again. Um, and when it was picked, I just thought, oh my God, this is incredible. So I felt this pride and excitement. And it really,

some people were incredibly congratulatory. and supportive and for other people it made them very uncomfortable that I was speaking about this and writing about it. And for some, I think it made them, they were more critical of me writing about it than of him leaving. Wow. Which really surprised me. Even accusing you of being a bad mother. Yeah. Which was really painful for me because I had put myself through that same question. Am I doing something harmful to my kids? By telling the- By telling the truth. By telling the story, by exposing the story. By exposing the story about their father. They knew everything in the story. They had lived the story. But there was this idea that you should never, ever speak these stories out loud.

Because? Because it harms your children by harming their father. And that it's just not something we talk about. We keep private things private. And I, from the beginning, from the moment he asked me to say that it was amicable, I have always felt like being open and honest about this was my path forward. There was just going to be no other path than open honesty and doing it in a way that was not vindictive. So that's one of the things I really appreciate about the story because, so. So many women who have been betrayed by their husbands live in the space of being vindictive. And they are so filled with so much anger. That's why I thought it was interesting that you said when you were going through the stages, anger wasn't one of the places that you landed.

But so many women speak from a space of anger and revenge and being vindictive. But you never blame. You're just always trying to analyze, trying to figure out what's happening. Yes, I hope so. Some people may not buy this because I wrote a book, but I had seen friends who had been through divorce and could not get themselves out of that place, even long after the divorce was over,

and it just infused their whole being. Yeah. And I just did not want the rest of my life. Being the angry divorcee became their thing, yeah. Yes, which may not be fair, but I just didn't want to be consumed with it. I didn't want to be consumed with what I got and didn't get, and I didn't want to be consumed with the betrayal.

So I decided that when we signed our divorce agreement, that I would be the marker, that I would not live in that place anymore. And in the book, I really tried to, and in modern love, too, not speak from that kind of place, to really speak factually about it. So you started writing strangers

because you were trying to figure out yourself, how did this happen to me? Yes, like all writers, I think, I was writing to figure it out. Yeah. And to really put things in place. And part of that actually was reconstructing our love story, our life as a family, my own family of origin, and try to really look, since I wasn't getting any answers from him, look at myself and look at the decisions I made over 20 years that kind of put me in the place that I was, not in a place of blame, but just like, okay, so I made these decisions about finances. I made these decisions about career, and here I am.

And now what do I want it to look like going forward? So you just brought up finances. I wanted to say this. I hear a lot of women, a lot of women. It made a similar mistake as you did, allowing your spouses to handle all the finances. And you write on page 95 about, I lost touch with both the big picture and the details of our financial life,

depending on James to tell me what to do. I felt some shame about it, about not being involved, about not asking questions, but I was afraid I wouldn't understand it that it was too complicated for me, even though I was a former corporate lawyer. I settled into the vagueness, the luxury, and privilege of not knowing.

What do you want to say to all the women doing that right now? If my book does one thing, if it makes women pay more attention to their finances, and what's going on in their relationship or their marriage financially, I will be so happy. Because I think I'm not alone in what I did. I handed it over to him in this very trusting, loving way. My father had died two years before,

and I was looking for a safe harbor. He said to me, I'm going to take care of you. And honestly, it felt romantic to me to hand it over to him. He was this man in a gray flannel suit going off to work, and this was how he was going to take care of. of our family. And as you lose touch with it, for me, I convinced myself

that he was better able to handle it, that, oh, gosh, it actually was very complicated. He made it seem very complicated. It actually isn't. It's not hard to learn this stuff. And what I would want, what I ask friends to do is to read your tax returns,

understand where your assets are, whose name is on each thing, and have the conversation or have some understanding about what will happen if the relationship ends. Even if you're the most happily married person on earth, you should know what will happen to you if it ends. Okay. I often say that y'all who have watched me over the years have heard me say this, that life speaks to us in whispers and you don't pay attention to the whispers, you get a little thump upside the head. You don't pay attention to that. You get a brick, and then you get a brick wall. that pre-up was whispering to you for months, was it not?

Can you tell us about that? The pre-nup was a big whisper that I carried with me for the 20 years. It was still whispering to me. It was a very standard pre-up that my family wanted me to sign because I had some inherited money. Yeah, because you come from generations of women. Yes. And my money was in trust.

It was protected. And we had a standard pre-up that said, whatever you come into the marriage with remains yours, but whatever is earned during the marriage is split or anything you put in joint name is split. This is the pre-up that my brother signed. It's very standard. But my then-fiance said, first he was very offended by the pre-up,

and then he asked two weeks before our wedding that the pre-up be changed to say that anything earned during the marriage would not be split unless we affirmatively chose. to put it in joint name. And I trusted his logic. I wanted to please him. My lawyer, who was a great lawyer at a big New York firm, said, do not do this. This is not good for you. You want to be home with kids. He's going into finance. This is not smart. And I convinced him using the arguments that my fiance was giving to me. And we changed it. And I knew as he became wealthier and I depleted my assets and put them into joint name in the form of our house and our apartment.

Lord. That this was not going to be good for me. But yet I did not act on it. I just kept trusting. You felt it, though. I felt it. I knew it was there. I knew it was there, and I felt it.

That's what I'm saying. It was whispering to you. It was whispering. And there were other things that were whispering in that financial story that I should have paid attention to. There was, you know, he really wanted me to document all of my spending. he would not openly share how he was doing financially. So you didn't know what he was doing, but he knew what he were doing.

No, exactly. He always knew what I was doing, and I did not ask enough questions. And I think that it felt like protection, but it also, I say this in the book, the flip side of protection is control. Yeah. Right? Where you're just not, you do not have agency. And one of the great parts of my life now is having that financial agency and not having anyone have any control over me in that way.

When we return, what does Bell's ex-husband say about her version of their marriage? We're coming right back. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim-on-denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when West Jet welcomes you on board. Here's to West Jetting since 96.

Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at WestJet's dot com slash 30 years. Thanks for joining me on the Oprah podcast. I'm talking with Belle Burden about her powerful memoir, strangers. If you know someone who's experienced a painful separation or divorce, share the link to this episode. Here's more of our conversation. Well, you come from generations of women who had experienced infidelity and divorce,

including your mother, Amanda Burton, grandmother, Babe Payton, grandmother, Babe Payton. Those of you may know who Bay Paley was. You write, I thought I had ended this legacy, right, by marrying someone so steady, so unassuming, someone who didn't have a public presence, right? Someone who didn't flirt with other women, at least not in front of me. Because he never showed you any signs.

None. I really thought, and I thought about it, I thought I'm picking someone so different. Yeah. This is... I'm not going to make the mistakes my grandmother made. and my mother mate. I'm going to learn from it. And I repeated it in a much more spectacular fashion

because their mates actually wanted forgiveness and wanted to come back. Mine did not. Mine was just gone. And I really wondered, are we doing something to attract this? Are we looking for this? Why have I ended up in the same place

as my mother and my grandmother? And my grandmother had died when I was nine, but she really was very present during this time that was so dark from me. It was like she was like, like she was all around me trying to, like, help me through it. Comfort you? Yes, and comfort me.

Her spirit comforted you. Yes, it felt that way. Your mother is joining us. Welcome, Amanda. Welcome. Hi. Well, I'm so glad to be here with you, too. We're having such a good conversation.

It's great to see both of you on that beautiful balcony. So what was your reaction when Bill told you she was going to write her story, Amanda? Well, and when she decided to write the book, I was a little nervous because we are a family that is very quiet about private issues and private affairs. But I could see that Bell was in a lot of pain and that she saw a way forward by writing a book that would both help her and give her a way to deal with her very difficult situation. Amanda, was there anything in the book that surprised you or that you didn't know about your daughter

or the fact that she actually wrote the book, I'm sure, was a surprise? Yeah. Well, it was not quite a surprise because Belle had been a great writer. Yeah. And she gave it up. So this was a way for her to kind of reclaim an essential part of herself. And the surprises in the book were one that she was so courageous and brave and took on a very formidable subject,

which is really about male entitlement. As I was saying to her here, it feels like it's a manual for women getting through it, even though she was just writing about herself, because it is so pure, so honest, so piercing, it connects on a really deep level. So you must be very proud at this point. I'm very proud, and I think, you know,

I've heard many people come up to me to talk about the book, and I really believe Bell has helped many, many women. Yeah, I think so. Because they can identify this and because they feel less alone. And that is really, really important. And she's also given women a person. pathway to one self-examine and look at their situation without bitterness. Yeah.

And move forward by focusing on their future one step at a time. Yeah, I think she actually did so accurately for herself, take the spotlight off of him and put the spotlight on herself and her well-being. And that's why I think the book is going to be so helpful to so many people. I would agree with you on that. How did you feel when she was sharing with you about your mother, Babe Paley, who died when she was nine, being such a presence with her throughout this? What do you think your mom would have thought of Bell's decision to speak out in this moment?

My mother was very attached to Bell when she was a little girl. And it was very painful that she died when Belle was so young. but my mother would have been completely over the moon about this book. She would have been so proud of Belle and doing something that neither her mother or her grandmother could do. Wow. Well, thank you, Amanda, for joining us. Thank you. It was great to spend time with you both.

Thank you. Bye, darling. One of the things I like about the book is its restraint, as I was saying, you don't write from a place of blame. But from the very beginning, you were shocked that your husband didn't want to, you know, he seemed to want to give up his role as being an immediate father, not that he didn't continue to have a relationship with his children, but when he said what he said to you, were you surprised? I was really surprised.

He said it the first day when he was leaving, when he was walking out the door, that he did not want custody. He said I could have full custody. And I thought he would change his mind. Yeah. And I'm a child of divorce, and I really believe in joint custody. It's what I would have wanted. So I served up a joint custody agreement 50-50,

and it came back blacklined with all of his time taken out. And his reason was that the children were older. He said they were fully formed human beings. Yes. And that he was a great dad, but he was not going to be the next part of his life. He also thought it was better for them not to go back and forth. He didn't want them going back from household to household. Household to household.

But my youngest was 12. She really wanted a bedroom in his apartment, and that was really painful. Did he continue to engage with the children? He's always been very kind and sweet with them. He keeps in touch with them by text. They see each other for a dinner, for a hockey game, that he does not do the day-to-day parenting, the emotional stuff, the college applications, the Spanish test.

That is not what he has done. He's stuck to that commitment to not being that kind of parent. As I was saying earlier, the thing that's hardest to reconcile for so many people is that the thing that I thought you were, you weren't. Yes. And I remember when you all went back to New York and you're going back to the apartment and he met the girls there. And he sees you on the street and he says everything was great. Yes. So this is in May.

Yeah. We hadn't seen him since the sandwich. Yeah. And I thought I run, he walks by me on the street. I think we're going to have a conversation, something. Because he's just seen the girls. He's just seen the girls. And the girls have had a really hard time.

And he looks at me and he says, everything is fine. They are fine. Everything is fine. And again, I did not say anything back because I thought he's not going to give me anything. But I did want to say, what are you talking about? Nothing about this is fine. This has been an emotional trauma for our family. What do you think perhaps maybe the girls tried to let him think everything was fine?

Maybe they may have tried to act that way. But I think he really believed that if he said it enough times that everything was fine, that it would be. As I said, I know you didn't set out to write a guidebook, but it turns out through your own emotional devastation, you show a way forward. One of the things that impressed me is that even though you felt on some days like you couldn't get out of bed, you forced yourself to do the walk. Yes. Let's talk about that. A friend asked me just to walk like down the driveway. This is when I felt like I couldn't get out of bed, like a weighted blanket was on top of me. And I finally did it. I walked down the driveway and I thought,

okay, I can do this. The fresh air feels good. The trees feel good to be in nature. And I went a bit farther every day. It eventually became an eight-mile walk every day. This was COVID, so we had more time. Yeah. And I would go one direction, one day in a circle, and the other direction the next day. And as I walked, I would rarely run into anybody or see anybody. And I would weep as I walked. And looking back on it, I think that I was literally walking through the pain. I was feeling every part of it. And that was really good for me. And I think moving my body, that's sort of meditation of your feet on the pavement was helpful in kind of getting me just a little bit more alive, like a little bit better. So, you know, one of the reasons why we were comparing

it to death, because there is a grieving that takes place. Yes. You're grieving the life you had and if you've been betrayed, you're grieving how did this happen and what did I miss. You're grieving the life you had and you're also grieving the life you don't think you now will have. Exactly. It's both. Yes. And you're grieving the actual person who you miss. Yes. And you're grieving the narrative that you've been telling yourself for years that this person loved you. You don't fall out of love immediately, even though this is happening. Right. And people assume you do, but I never had a chance to fall out of love with him. I had to do that on my own after he was gone. And that was very painful because I think that's a really important thing to say. Yeah. Because a lot of women, the moment you're not, tell your friends. Right. They think you're done. Then it's done.

It's over. Yeah. And the friends are like, like forget him. Exactly. Yeah. Get him out now. Yeah. Exactly.

And I really was in love with this man. And it took a while. I kept when I would see him at a graduation, it was like my hand wanted to hold his hand. And it took a while for my body to catch up to that. And how long before you were able to be able to release that? I think it took. It definitely took longer than a year.

I would say maybe a year and a half. It took a long time for it to catch up. Yeah, it really did. And I think I kept having fantasies that this was some great mistake and that he really regretted it and he was really sad. And I had to... How long did you think that he was going to call you and say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

I'm coming back? For a long time, I think also almost a year. And I just kept thinking that he must be in pain and sad too. And I don't think he was. No, he was bouncing up the steps when he came to tell the girls. Exactly. The thing that you saw in his countenance, his presence, you looked out the window and said, gosh, he looks really happy.

He was elated. He was. He was. That's what's really hard to accept. So hard. So hard, because you are the opposite. You are on the bathroom floor. You're on a bathroom floor.

You write on page 207 slowly over many months as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in, joy boy and a boy in, joy point of replacing the not knowing with knowing, the nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control, all made easier, of course, by the fact that I had enough to feel secure to make my children secure. And I love this moment when you say, this is better than everything I lost. This is better than the life I thought I wanted. So what had transpired in all this? A number of things had transpired. I was then divorced. I had returned to my maiden name.

I was fully in charge of my own finances. I was now starting this life as a writer. And I never would have left my marriage. I never would have thought there was reason to leave my marriage. And I don't think I was self-actualized in my marriage. So it was almost like the universe delivered this to me so that I could end up in this new state, which it's a totally different kind of happiness,

a totally different kind of joy, but I would choose this joy again and again. And you started to feel it in little increments, taking small steps. Yep. When you, I think it was several months after he left, was it the summer when you started letting the kids come over? Yes.

Something you wouldn't have done before? No, I would not have. I would have thought, oh, God, they're going to make a mess, and it's too loud, and I just was a little more brittle. Mm-hmm. And they just started coming over in droves. I think kids can be sometimes more comfortable when it's just one parent. And they were happy and they were loud and they were toasting things in the kitchen.

And it was just so happy and joyful. And I found I was just so much more relaxed in it. I think because all these things that I depended on, like these structures, had fallen away, I could be more relaxed. I didn't have like this tight grip on everything anymore. And I thought, okay, this is a silver line. that I can be like this. And friends noticed, too.

They noticed that I was just a little easier, a little like I let things go more easily. You softened around the edges. I softened around the edges. I really did. And that felt much more like the true me. Yeah. And so in the end,

you learned about the stranger he was, but you had been also a stranger to yourself. I think that's exactly right. I think that the title really works in that way, too, because I had really lost that self-knowledge, I think. In a marriage that I thought was very happy, but I had moved over those 20 years farther and farther away from what I believe were my passions and talents

and a true knowing of myself. And why had you done that, do you think? I think a couple of reasons. I think with three kids and the chaos of family that can happen, but I think in our situation, his career became so dominant. It was like the family enterprise, and everything moved towards that. And that was why he missed parent-teacher conferences and couldn't go to the birthday party on the weekend.

And I think when that happens, it is very easy for the other parent to really lose sight of that. This passage felt so visceral to me. After you signed the divorce settlement, you write, I thought I will let this go now. I will not live in this conflict anymore. I was successful for the most part in letting it go. I don't think about the details of our divorce.

I don't focus on what was lost. What remains, what still brings a lump to my throat, a chill to my bones, is not about money. It's a possibility that there was a timetable, a clock, that I didn't hear ticking. It is his willingness to make me afraid when I was already devastated, already on the floor. It is what he made clear within weeks of leaving,

that he believed my contributions to his career, to our family over 20 years amounted to nothing. Wow. What do you now know were your contributions? I believe, I think women who are not working, taking care of kids, have meaningful work in other ways. But when there is this family enterprise that you're supporting, I do think that's a huge contribution

and that it should have been acknowledged in the divorce. I want to talk about this idea that runs, through the book, that healing doesn't always come with reconciliation. I mean, that's one of the things that comes clear here. How did you come to accept that you can heal even when the apology or the explanation or the why did this happen to me never comes? It's very hard. It's very hard to move beyond it when you don't have.

have that kind of neat wrapping up. And an apology would have done it too, or an acknowledgement would have done it too. But I didn't get the explanation. I did not get the acknowledgement either of the pain that he had caused. So I think the only thing that worked was really just moving it to the side and really focusing on the type of work I wanted to do, the things like my legal cases, and having sort of that existential peace with a vacuum of knowing, you know, just sort of like parking it somewhere in my head. And the where I park it with him is what he said the first day, which is that a switch went off.

And that's what I believe. I think a switch went off. There were the whispers over the years on the financial story, but I think I just had to park it somewhere. and then move on from it. And accept that that's it. I really just had to accept. I wasn't going to get anything else.

That you're never going to get the answer. Yep. Okay. So the New York Times recently published an interview with you, and when they reached out to your ex-husband, he provided the statement. He said, while I disagree with many of her recollections as well as her overall mischaracterization

of my relationship with my children, I do not wish to comment in more detail in order to protect them from further violations of their privacy other than to say that I continue to loving me, support and be lovingly supported by my children. What do you think of that response? I was actually happy that he responded.

There's been so much silence that I was glad that he spoke up, said something. And I don't disagree with some of it. I think that he has been always loving with them, and they've been loving and supportive of him. And I'm glad for that. I'm really grateful for that, that they have that kind of rapport. But I don't think I mischaracterized him in the book, during the marriage or after the marriage,

I was very, very careful with my words because I knew my children would be reading this. And what I hope... What do your children think of the book? They're funny. I printed it and put it on my desk and I said, come read it whenever you want to. And it sat there for three weeks.

And then I found my girls reading it in bed and then it was on the floor. I think kids just don't take it as seriously as we all do. Yeah. I think they're very proud of me. and they're also very loving and supportive of their dad. So it's like they have both things.

Yes. But I think that what I hope I've done, which felt really important to me, is to recreate what he was as a father during all those years and all the wonderful things that he did with them. Because when it ends the way mine did, all of that kind of gets erased for me and for kids and for him. And I wanted that there to be a record. But he was there, chopping the wood that night.

He was. He was doing all of that, and he was clamming, and he was taking them to musicals, and I didn't want that to be lost. And I hope that some part of him is glad that there's a record of that. What is your relationship with your husband, ex-husband? It is cordial. We will communicate with, he sent me the flood insurance bill that he received for the house, or we will communicate about my youngest graduation, which is in May. So it's cordial. We will both go to the graduation. We will both go to the graduation.

Very important to her that he be there. So there's no anger and it's cordial, but it is not close, and I don't think it will ever be close. Are you, I was saying to your mother, I know she's proud of you, are you proud of yourself for writing this book? I am. I am. I'm really, I can't quite believe it, actually. I can't quite believe that I have announced now to the entire world that, um, that, um, my husband left me, that this is now in print everywhere.

It's, you know, it's kind of an embarrassing story. But I have always seen the purpose in it. I've always imagined that one reader who's going through it, who feels very alone, and that this might reach them. And I just am so excited and proud that I, you know, took each step and that I was able to write this and get it published and that it's now out there in the world. Yes. It's out there in the world.

Bestseller. Bestseller. Thank you, Bell Burden. Thank you for joining me on my porch. And thank you to you, Amanda, for being a part of our conversation. I know that by sharing your story, I mean, because so many women have already talked about it, that you have validated the experience of countless, countless women who've been betrayed, who have felt abandoned, who were lied to, who didn't understand, who were told they were crazy.

you're giving hope and that is such a beautiful thing. Thank you so much. Strangers. It's a memoir of marriage, available wherever books are sold. But you're going to see your story in here if you've been through any kind of betrayal, any kind of divorce. Thank you. Thank you so much. You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.