The idealist in me wasn’t entirely certain that our society needed even a tongue-in-cheek primer on how to end a marriage. Yet, if one looks objectively at the plethora of relationship-guidance books, the thriving need for marriage counselors, and the success of Dr. Phil, perhaps the occasional archaeological dig through the detritus of a failed marriage is needed. Usually when a relationship ends more or less amicably, or at least without SWAT teams in riot gear, the answer to “what happened” is “I don’t know; it wasn’t any one thing; it was just a bunch of things.”
In How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage, debut memoirist Sascha Rothchild painstakingly deconstructs with wit and brutal self-honesty all of the things that went wrong before and during her marriage. In a book that flirts with narcissism and wobbles along the line between self-examination and self-excusing, Rothchild manages ultimately to give a clear view into the well-meaning self-delusions that plague all of us and that set in motion the cascades of small failures in our lives.
Broken into 30 chapters or “steps,” How to Get Divorced by 30 begins with “Step 1. Don’t Invite Your Husband to Your Thirtieth Birthday Party” and neatly closes the circle with “Step 30. Arrive at Your Thirtieth Birthday Party Single.” “The problem was, Jeff was my husband. And not wanting him to be with me on my thirtieth birthday was a feeling I couldn’t ignore. In the scheme of relationship red flags, that one was crimson.”
Rothchild’s voice, that of a young, and somewhat frivolous woman, may be slightly off-putting to readers for whom the paradoxes of intense introspection and self-conscious image awareness have faded into the recesses of memory. But, Rothchild deserves a chance here.
I don’t remember the first time I saw Jeff. I don’t even remember he first time I spoke to him. I was too busy being single, self-absorbed, and skinny. And because I was the new girl at the illustrious comedy club the World Famous Improv, I was the new conquest for all the comics. I lapped up the attention with the grace of a drunk warthog. I wore sheer skintight tops with no bra to show off my toned body and perky boobs. I wore tons of eyeliner to let people know I was a badass. I was like a starving caged lion just let out into a room full of injured wildebeests; not sure which to eat first, I haphazardly flirted with everyone, including the other female servers.
This sort of hyper-caffienated navel gazing appears at first glance to be frivolously self-indulgent. However, Rothchild dutifully collects each piece, each seemingly pointless incident, and with the skill of a veteran prosecutor, binds the parts into a damning testimony. From intellectual, witty, and emotionally remote parents, “Susan and John,” to Adam, the world-saving, emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, and Berns, Rothchild’s adored big sister possessed of “heaps of compassion mixed in with the perfect amount of bitchiness,” not to mention Jeff, the stable, lethargic, pot-smoking husband, How to Get Divorced by 30 is populated with a cast of bright – nearly Technicolor – characters. Each character and each incident plays a role in the chain of events that becomes Rothchild’s doomed marriage, and Rothchild herself.
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