The Underappreciated Power In Getting Divorced Young
There can be strength in ending a marriage that's no longer working.
Tinseltown, DFree and lev radin via Shutterstock / Trendify, genphoto_art via Canva Emily Ratajkowsi recently made a radical pronouncement, taking to TikTok to claim, “I find it chic to be divorced by the age of 30.” She offered a PSA to women whose marriages are ending, noting, “I don’t think there’s anything better” than being a young divorcee.
There’s an under-appreciated power to be found in getting divorced young.
No one enters into a marriage expecting it to end, yet getting a divorce isn’t necessarily a failure. As Ratajkowski explained in her TikTok post, “If being in your 20s is the trenches, there is nothing better than being in your 30s, still being hot, maybe having a little bit of your own money, figuring out what you want to do with your life.”
She added an asterisk to “being hot,” noting in text overlaid on her post that she equates “being hot” to “having boundaries.” She gestured towards her own situation, explaining that she tried the “married fantasy,” only to realize that the image she’d projected of what a marriage meant wasn’t what she thought.
“Then, you’ve got your whole life still ahead of you,” she continued.
Divorce shouldn't equate to shame.
Too often, announcing a divorce is met with sympathetic platitudes or the judgment call that the people involved in a marriage that’s ending must be damaged, somehow. The reality is far more nuanced. Just because a particular marriage between two particular people didn’t work, doesn't mean that marriage is a failure, or that the former couple has anything to be ashamed of.
Photo: Karolina Grabowska / Pexels
Sometimes, marriage will work for a while, until it doesn’t. Life is bound to make inevitable twists and turns, depositing us on uncertain shores, far from where we started.
What if we saw divorce as a door to the future opening, waiting for us to step through?
There’s a possible correlation between getting married young and subsequently getting divorced. As noted in an article from Forbes Magazine, "couples who marry at 25 are 50% less likely to divorce compared with couples who marry at 20."
The Forbes article also explained that people in the US are waiting longer to get married, reporting that "in 2012, the average age for women marrying was 26 and the average age for men was 28… In 2022, the median age of marriage was 32 for men and 30 for women." Interestingly, the divorce rate in the US has dropped over the past few decades. The Pew Research Center reported that the divorce rate in 1990 among adults ages 25 to 39 was 30 divorces per 1,000 married individuals; in 2015, that rate dropped down to 24.
Aging provides us with a stronger sense of who we are as people. As Ratajkowski noted, with passing years comes wisdom and stronger boundaries. We begin to understand ourselves better and act in accordance with our values, and sometimes, that leads to divorce.
It’s time to shift the narrative of what getting divorced means.
Reframing it as a failing of marriage to prioritizing other parts of life can help reduce the shame that so often accompanies the end of a relationship.
I’ve often heard it framed in the following way: the marriages that are supposed to end in divorce are the ones that do, inevitably, end. There’s no actual shame in that. Getting a divorce is a choice that shows strength. There’s power to be found in realizing the relationship you’re in isn’t serving you and making a major change.
As Ratajkowski exclaimed, “For all those people who are stressed… about being divorced: It’s good. Congratulations.”
That’s not to say divorce is simple, or it’s not marked by grieving various losses, ones that could take years to heal from. It’s more to say that we don’t have to define ourselves in such finite terms. Divorce isn’t a failure. Divorce is a sea change, a shift in expectations — the opening of a door.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.