Anna: Hey everyone, it's Anna. All right, before we start the show, I want to talk about Valentine's Day because of course we are already thinking about it over here at Modern Love. We're hoping you can help us out. We want to know the most romantic thing that's ever happened to you. Or if it didn't happen to you, the most romantic thing you've ever seen or witnessed. It could be something grand, a romcom style gesture. Maybe someone stood outside your window with a boom box or ran through the airport to stop you from leaving. Or it could be something small like someone knows you hate olives, so they always pick them off your plate before you dig in. Or someone slips a note in your lunchbox every morning to remind you how much you mean to them. Whatever made you feel that rush of romance from the big moments to the tiny ones, we want to hear about it and we want to know why it was so romantic to you. If you have a story in mind, record a voice memo and email it to us at modernlovepodcast@nytimes.com by February 4th and we might use your story on the show. That's modern love podcast times.com. And once again, your deadline is February 4th. Thanks so much. We can't wait to hear from you. Now, here's today's episode.

Anna: From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Belle Burden was living a life a lot of people dream of. Picture perfect. She and her husband were rich. And I'm talking old money rich. The elite of Manhattan society. They had three kids who Belle was focused on raising while her husband worked at a hedge fund. She thought they were a happy family. Then 20 years into her marriage, with no warning, her husband told her he wanted a divorce and he was leaving immediately. In a single day, her husband basically became a stranger to her. As Belle tried to understand what happened, she made a decision that surprised a lot of the people close to her. She shared her story with the world. First in a modern love essay that went viral and now she's gone even further and written a book. It's called Strangers, a memoir of marriage. Today I talk with Belle about how even though that night felt like a horrible and abrupt ending, it was actually the beginning of her new life. Belle Burden, welcome to Modern Love.

Belle: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Anna: We are thrilled to have you. Okay. I'm calling you Belle. But your full name is Flobell. Correct.

Belle: It is.

Anna: What is the story behind that name?

Belle: So, my grandmother's name was Florence Bell Fairbanks and she was an actress in silent films in California and she made up Flobell as her stage name. And then she died four months before I was born. And my father stood up at her funeral and gave the eulogy and ended it by saying, "If Amanda, my mother, has a girl in May, her name will be Flobell Fairbanks Burden." And everyone cried. The problem was that he had not told my mother that. [laughter]

Anna: So her mom's in the front row like, "Wow..."

Belle: She was not happy. She was really not happy.

Anna: Okay. A silent film actress. That's very chic, though.

Belle: It was cool. Yeah.

Anna: Okay. I want to pivot from the name just to say back in 2023, you wrote a modern love essay and it stopped me in my tracks. I could not stop thinking about it. Now, you've written a book which we're here to talk about today. This gives us even more of your story. In it, you talk about how one night out of the blue, your marriage collapsed and your life changed forever. This happened in March 2020. You wrote that your family, you and your family left Manhattan for your home in Martha's Vineyard. You're quarantining there during the early days of COVID. Bring me into sort of that time in your life. What was life like there as you settled in?

Belle: So, we drove up there with our two daughters who were then 15 and 12 and it was a very scary time for all of us. New York was shut down. But we were very lucky that we had a place to go to that was isolated that we loved and we really settled in. My husband works for a hedge fund, so he was getting up early and working and I was doing house cleaning and going for walks and he'd love to be in the forest chopping wood and he would bring in three different kinds like blueberry and oak and he would build these gorgeous fires. He had bought a lot of whiskey because we thought whiskey would kill the virus and so he made whiskey sours or sometimes like a hot toddy and we would sit there and we would read or we would talk about the latest pandemic news and he was very in addition to chopping the wood he he loved to make dinner. He loved to really kind of make sure that we were secure and ready for this period of quarantine. And so it was both a scary time but also very um I felt very safe with my girls in the house all the time and and just that kind of coziness together.

Anna: Did anything did anything seem off with your husband?

Belle: Nothing seemed off at all honestly. If he um if I think back on it he was he spent a lot of time in the woods and but that was not abnormal. He always did that. We were very affectionate with each other. There was absolutely nothing that made me worried.

Anna: And you've been married at this point for now how many years in...

Belle: 20 years. 20 years in 2020. [sighs]

Anna: This is this is where your modern love essay begins. Bring me into this night where everything changed.

Belle: We had a really nice dinner. And I started cleaning up, loading the dishwasher, mopping the floor, and I got a call on my cell phone and then it registered the message and I pressed play and it was a man and he said, "I'm trying to reach Belle." I can still hear it. I'm trying to reach Belle. I'm sorry to tell you that your husband is having an affair with my wife.

Anna: What was your immediate reaction?

Belle: My immediate feeling was that this could not be true this can't be true and that my husband would explain it that it was some kind of mistake, some kind of misunderstanding. It did not fit at all with what I knew of my husband. I was wearing pajama pants and like a cozy sweater and I'd just taken a shower and I I can still feel that feeling of sort of the coziness with the just panic.

Anna: You get that voicemail. Then what happens?

Belle: I go our kitchen is upstairs. So, I started going downstairs to find my husband and he was coming upstairs and um I could tell that he knew cuz he looked worried. And he said it meant nothing. It was very short. I love you. I love only you. I love our family. I'm so sorry. I'm so embarrassed.

Anna: What are you Where are you two? Are you holding hands? Are you sitting on?

Belle: We are. Um, he's taken my hands. He's looking directly in my eye. And I remember looking down at our hands and he had his wedding ring on that's very scuffed from wearing it for 20 years. And I had no rings on because a friend had told me that COVID could hide under rings, right? Because you can't get soap and Purell in there. So, I had taken them all off and as I'm sitting there with him holding my hands, I think, wow, did I did I cause this because I took off my wedding ring for the first time in 20 years. I was someone who never took off my wedding ring and my engagement ring. And I thought maybe I had shaken something loose in the universe and that this had led to this moment. I mean, not thinking rationally, but that's that's where I was. But I think I also thought, okay, we're in this house together. We can't go anywhere. we're in lockdown. We are going to have to live here together and try and work through this and see a therapist on Zoom and you know just how am I going to manage this? Um and then at that moment my younger daughter who was 12 called for me and asked me to make her turnovers which is a thing that we have in our family. I do not make them from scratch. They're Pepperidge Farm frozen turnovers. Um, and I realize I have to pretend that everything is okay for the girls until we can figure out what's happening and what we're doing. And so I sort of raised my voice to sound chipper and said, "Okay, I'll I'll make the turnovers." And I left the room at that point and put the turnovers in the oven and then went to my shower and just where I could seal myself in and closed the bathroom door and just wailed. Um where it just I was like I just couldn't contain it any longer.

Anna: And then how does the night I mean does it like how does the night end? Do you can you even sleep? I mean...

Belle: I can't sleep. I go downstairs to check on the girls cuz I had not put the younger one to bed. Um, and they're both asleep in their beds and my husband is asleep in my son's bed. Um, my son is with friends on Long Island and he looks very peaceful and I'm sort of... Your husband... Yes. Sleeping peacefully. And I'm thinking, how how can he be sleeping? How can he be not just in a state of distress? Yeah. I haven't slept all night. I mean, our marriage is either, you know, going to go through a very difficult period or it might end. and he's sleeping and I can't quite understand that. But at 6:00 in the morning, I'm in my bed, not sleeping, and he comes in and he's carrying a tote bag and he says to me, "I thought I was happy, but I'm not. I've decided I want a divorce." And I was stunned because I honestly thought it would be my decision to make whether we would stay married or not or how we would negotiate this. Um but it was not going to be my decision. It was going to be his decision. And I looked at him and in that moment he seemed very very different to me. His eyes looked different. The warmth had gone.

Anna: Wow. from from the words he said last night which is this was a mistake you know I love you and now what did he say he says I haven't been happy and I want a divorce and I'm leaving...

Belle: and I'm leaving and I'm leaving I'm leaving the bag is packed and then he says you're going to be okay you're still young and honestly I was not young I had just turned 50 and and he walked out of the room, walked to our front door, walked out, got in his jeep, and boarded a ferry and left. Um, and one thing I didn't mention is he said before he left, he said, "You, actually, I'm sorry, he said it when he got to New York, he said, um, you can have custody of the kids. You can have the house and the apartment. I don't want any part of this life anymore.

Anna: I mean, I am just hearing about this. I didn't live it and I'm completely disoriented. I mean, I'm like... absolutely um total shock. Total just absolutely physical pain that this had happened and a double shock because there was the shock of the affair and then the shock of this decision. You can have full custody of the kids.

Belle: That really shocked me. That that shocked me. And the saying that I could have the vineyard house shocked me cuz he loved that place and the land so much. Um, but your children, but the the children was the most shocking part. It has been the most difficult part of all of this.

Anna: Did you ask him why? Why is this happening?

Belle: When he left, I didn't have a chance cuz he left very quickly. So, I just kept calling him. I would go to places where the girls couldn't hear me in the garage, in the woods, in my bathroom again, just calling and just begging him to tell me to explain to to tell me what was wrong with me, what he wasn't happy about. Um to say that he was in love, which happens, you know, make anything make sense. it's it would be an explanation. Um, but he he couldn't do it or he wouldn't do it. He said it was not my fault. Um, which should be reassuring, but it's also just a non answer. Um, and he really would give me nothing. And the only thing he would tell me is that he felt like a switch had flipped and that he thought he wanted our life, but he didn't. He thought he was happy, but he wasn't, and that he was done.

Anna: At some point, you you have to tell the kids. Yeah. Um, how did how did they find out?

Belle: So, a a therapist I spoke with had advised that we not tell them until the pandemic became less scary. And of course, as we all know, it did not. Um, it just became more scary. But after a month, I just thought, I can't keep pretending. I have we have to tell them.

Anna: And up up to this point, sorry. What had you been telling the kids about where he was?

Belle: I said he was in New York working. He had to go back to work.

Anna: And did the kids try to reach out to him? Do you know? Or did he?

Belle: Not that I know of. Not that I know of. And did he reach out to... He did not reach out to them to my knowledge. So this conversation about what had happened would be the first time he was I mean certainly you were talking face to face again he was talking to the kids.

Anna: Okay. So how did you decide to eventually...

Belle: um my husband was on his way up to the island his boss had lent him um use of a sea plane. He arrives and I watched him come up the walkway and what I thought to myself is he seems happy. He seems like kind of, you know, spring in his step. And he said he had 45 minutes until he had to go back to the sea plane. Actually, I think it was 90 minutes. I can't remember if it's 45 or 90, but something short.

Anna: And wait, why?

Belle: Um, he said the pilots had to go back. Um, so I sat on the couch with the girls, my arms around them, and my husband sort of paced in front of them and said the same thing. I've been I've not been happy and I've decided that we're going to divorce. And my younger daughter turned and was smiling and I think she thought this was like some big act and was a joke. Yeah. And then she looked at my face and saw how sad I looked and and she just screamed. And my older daughter just sat very calmly with her arms crossed just she was just watching her father. Um and my husband looked at me and said, "I'm starving. Can you make me a sandwich?"

Anna: Oh my god, Belle.

Belle: And I had one of those moments that I think we have as parents where I have a whole dialogue with myself. What what would a good mother do in this situation? This is my child's father. I want her to feel like things will be okay, that we'll be friends. I'm a child of divorce. I hated if my parents spoke badly of each other. You want to feel like your parents are going to get along. And of course, another part of me is thinking, "What are you talking about? I'm not going to make you a sandwich." Um, but I went with making the sandwich. So, I went to the kitchen and I really tried to make the best sandwich I possibly could cuz I thought if I'm going to do this, I'm not going to make a bad sandwich. I will I will make the best sandwich he has ever had so that he will say to himself, "How could I possibly leave this woman who can make these incredible sandwiches?" This is what I'm thinking to myself. I mean, I'm laughing, but it's a dark laughter.

Anna: It is. It's really... But was the sandwich banging? What was on?

Belle: It was to I mean, it was I wouldn't say it was unusually banging, but it was it was a good sandwich. It was like toasted bread and put it on a nice plate and got a nice napkin. God. So, I was, you know, I was performing. Um, man, you know, part of me regrets it. I should have been like, make your own sandwich. But I I that's what I did.

Anna: You did it. Mhm. You make him this amazing sandwich. Bring it to him.

Belle: I start walking around the house looking for him, assuming he's going to be with one of the girls. Yeah, he is not with the girls. Um, and I eventually find him in the basement. And I said, "What are you doing? What's going on?" And he said, "I'm looking for our prenup. If you have it, you have to give it to me." And I said, "Please don't do this now. Please go be with the girls. You have to go back to the airport." The whole point of this visit here 90 minutes or whatever you have. Please go back to see the girls. He didn't. And um eventually he gave up and he came upstairs, took the sandwich from me, ate the sandwich by the door, and then left again. And then I got a text from my husband saying, "That was a great visit." with an exclamation mark. I feel like I've just lived one reality, a moment that all parents dread, all children remember forever. But he was trying to make it something that was good.

Anna: You write in your book, you know, you grew up in a very prominent New York City family. Your lineage, I guess that's the right word, includes John J. is that correct? the Vanderbilts, you know, your grandmother's Babe Paley, really incredible magazine editor, socialite. This world that you grew up in in New York is not a world that a lot of people have access to. Did you feel like there were certain norms or expectations around how marriage what marriage should be in the way you were raised?

Belle: Um, in some ways, yes. I think because of where I grew up in terms of the Upper East Side and then um you know going to private schools there was um you know an expectation that you would meet your mate and you would get have a nice wedding and you would get married and you know there was sort of a playbook for that. Um but I think it was more internal because I'd been through two divorces. my parents' divorce and then my mother's divorced from my stepfather and I had a year deep yearning for um to be married for eternity and to have an intact family. I think it was the thing I wanted most in life. Um and I had also seen my father and my stepmother who had a wonderful marriage and that was my goal.

Anna: What did you think made a good marriage?

Belle: Well, I've given more thought to that now I think. Um but um I actually thought I was improving on the model when I got married, when I chose my husband. Why? Because um the men in my family, I love them very much, but they have tempers. Um they they have tempers that are not super scary, but more like stomping your feet. And sorry, I just stumped my foot. [laughter] And um and there's always a lot of yelling. And my husband from the day I met him was always very calm. He didn't believe in yelling. He was um our house was really free from yelling other than children yelling. Um and so I thought I had really improved and I I would pick someone who was wonderfully calm in that way that I I did not have growing up.

Anna: And steady it sounds like.

Belle: Yes, very steady.

Anna: But when the divorce was finalized, how much time had passed since that night on Martha's Vineyard? Like how long did it take to get there?

Belle: He left in March of 2020 and we were we signed our divorce agreement in October of 21. So all things considered, quite fast. Quite quite fast. Mhm. But I really made a decision, which I think is hard for people to put together with me writing a book. But I really didn't want to live in the divorce anymore. I didn't want to live in the, you know, he walked away with this and I was married to him for 20 years and I, you know, so I remember signing the agreement like I am signing this and I am putting it behind me. And then I went back to my maiden name, which went felt very empowering. And you have to have that in your divorce agreement. The judge has to agree to it. And then I went through this process of changing my name on my passport and my driver's license. And and each step and and really taking control of my financial life. And each step felt like a better focus than looking backward at what I got or didn't get or anything like that.

Anna: Back to flow bell. Back to fair burden. I the whole thing right back. What was that? A reclamation? Was that a a statement? What What was the What was that?

Belle: It was um I was very clear on it very early and it wasn't so much discarding his name, which is my children's name. Um and that was a little bit hard for my kids. I think they wanted me to stay one of them and our last name. But for me, it really felt like coming back to myself, who I was before I got married, to my family of origin. And obviously, it's another man's name. It's my father's name. It's not that feminist, but it felt really good. It felt like a very tangible way to come back to myself. M

Anna: Um, now 5 and a half years later, do you feel like you have any clarity on why this happened?

Belle: The closest I can get to it um because he still has never offered me an explanation. Yeah. Is does come from him, which is the idea of the switch going off. And I think a lot about playing roles and I had used to think of it as he was playing you know the role of husband and father believing that was his role and at some point I think he was playing that role for himself and at some point it became unsustainable for him and he took off that costume and he wasn't able to do it gracefully or in a way that he could explain. And that's how I think about it.

Anna: Took off that costume. Wow.

Belle: Yeah.

Anna: I wonder if your understanding of this will continue to evolve. And I also wonder whether that question of why will become less and less important to you.

Belle: It has become less important to me. And I' I think I've made peace with the fact that I won't know because I'm not sure he knows.

Anna: Do you like this person you are now?

Belle: A lot more actually. I really do. I really do. Which I never would have said. Um, and I don't think I would could be this person if my marriage hadn't ended. And I would never have ended it. You know, I'm still shy. I'm still a little bit awkward socially. I Some of that is some of that is still tough for me. Um, but I feel like I fully inhabit my life right now. And I think when you're married and have all the cushioning and all that stuff, you I don't think I was. It's a different kind of happy ending.

Anna: It is a different kind of happy ending. Your book ends with you running into your ex-husband in the city.

Belle: Yes. I was walking with a friend um and we were walking near Brooklyn Bridge and um I heard my name, someone calling my name, Belle. Belle and I looked to see who it was and across that kind of road where you get on the Brooklyn Bridge. Um my ex-husband was standing there waving at me and smiling. What did he look like? He looked very happy and cheerful and like we were long lost friends. He's just like, "Everything's fine." Like, he just doesn't see the toll that all of this took. And um there is this man I was with for 20 years, slept in bed with for 20 years, and I do not know him anymore. I do not know how he spends his time. I do not know his character. I do not know what how he makes decisions. Um and also that he really does not know me. So I say hi and um I could see out of the corner of my eye he was still standing there but I just kept moving forward.

Anna: Belle Burden. Thank you for sharing your story. I mean it so powerful. Thank you.

Anna: We reached out to Belle's ex-husband for comment on some of the things we talked about in this episode related to their divorce and custody of their children. This is his response. 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 lovingly support and be lovingly supported by my children.