It’s peak wedding season, and my own divorce is waiting on a judge’s signature. People are being congratulated with Dutch ovens and serving bowls for dinner parties they may not ever host.
Marriage comes with an etiquette system for asking people to help build a home. The registry says the embarrassing part for you. Divorce deserves the same grace.
Meanwhile, I was standing alone in my new-to-me condo kitchen, rereading a text I had drafted to my mother, trying to make quartz countertops sound like a normal thing to need.
“Would you and Fred consider making this my birthday, Christmas, divorce and condo-warming gift?” I wrote, referring to the countertops and single-basin sink I had been fixating on. I attached a screenshot of Calacatta almond quartz, as if the visual aid might make the request seem less unhinged.
The price point is why I piled on the occasions. But I am a 44-year-old man with a mortgage and two dogs, so “birthday and Christmas” was not really the headline. Divorce was.
My mother’s response was not yes.
“Your stepdad and I are in the ER. I can’t think about this right now.”
Fair. Terrible timing, but the shame had been there before she even replied.
It’s hard now to imagine a wedding without a registry, but that etiquette had to start somewhere. Marshall Field’s, the Chicago department store whose State Street flagship is now a Macy’s, is often credited with introducing the modern bridal registry in 1924, when the list helped couples steer family and friends toward china, silver and crystal patterns. A century later, couples don’t even have to pretend they want china. Home funds are now common enough that The Knot has said the share of couples including them in registries has increased 55% since 2018.
A few years ago, when my now ex-husband and I got married, his parents paid to finish turfing the backyard of our house so we could have the wedding there. My parents covered the tents, tables, chairs and sound system. These were not small gifts. But they turned a backyard into a wedding, so nobody had to defend the cost.
For the registry itself, we mostly wanted cash. We were new homeowners in Los Angeles with nothing left for a honeymoon, so we used a platform called Hitchd to let guests click a link and donate to our new life. It helped pay for Hawaii and the house. I was a newlywed, so the ask came pre-forgiven.
Then the marriage ended, and the household went with it.
You can’t roll up half a backyard and bring it to a condo. The things that once meant “our future” became community property: the patio furniture, the dog bowls, the good knives, the drawer organizer that only made sense in that kitchen. Things to divide, keep, sell or leave behind.
Someone should build the divorce version of Hitchd. Call it Ditchd.
Actually, people already have. The Associated Press reported that Fresh Starts Registry, a divorce-registry service, had 50,000 to 70,000 monthly visitors, part of a broader shift toward talking more openly about divorce. So the need is not hypothetical. What still feels missing is the etiquette – a graceful way to say: we did not make it, but I’m accepting contributions toward a vacuum.
A divorce registry sounds tacky because gifts are supposed to be fun, and replacing the half of a home that didn’t come with you is mostly just sad. I took the Instant Pot; the air fryer stayed. Asking for another one felt like showing everyone exactly how we split the kitchen. I did most of the cooking, and I didn’t realize how much I loved our beautiful countertops until they weren’t mine any more. So yes. Countertops made the list too.
Divorce turns one household into two, usually at the exact moment everyone is least equipped to comparison-shop bath mats. First come the lawyers, movers, closing costs and a new internet account. Then come the dumber purchases: trash bags, forks, a shower curtain, a couch the puppy has not peed on yet. None of it feels giftable. All of it has to be bought anyway.
I wasn’t destitute. That almost made the asking harder. I landed in the annoying middle: technically OK, but still buying my life back one receipt at a time.
By the time I drafted that text to my mother, I had already spent my share of the house making the new condo feel like mine. The beige living room carpet became blonde oak flooring because the new puppy I “won” in the divorce still wasn’t potty trained. A handyperson painted the dated dark cabinets soft sage; I switched the hardware to matte black myself. I put bougainvillea and olive trees on the balcony, because maybe the dogs wouldn’t notice they had lost their backyard. At the old house, bougainvillea had covered the pergola in papery magenta blooms. Here, I had one in a pot.
But in LA, the money runs out quickly.
I left the bedroom carpet and dated bathrooms alone. After the floors and cabinets, the old counters dragged the whole open-concept room back into “this was what I could afford”. Replacing them would mean I could stop balancing a cutting board over a burner. At the sink, I wouldn’t have to stretch on to my tiptoes – and I am tall – just to see my dogs asleep on and beside the couch.
This was the case I made. My mother used to be horrified by how much my husband and I spent on Uber Eats. She gave us gift cards for Christmas that I joked would barely cover a dinner and a half. Now I was cooking almost every meal at home. The kitchen was where I could save money, feed myself and two expensive dogs on one income, and make the condo work as a home.
The ER text made the timing comically indefensible. But the shame wasn’t really about timing. Marriage gets a table at Crate & Barrel. Divorce gets a Target cart full of things you already owned in another life.
Maybe I’ll get the counters, maybe I won’t. For now, the quote sits there like one more line in a ledger that already has a mediator, a new floor and moving costs on it – one more number I keep staring at like it might solve something.
I didn’t want a party for the divorce. I wanted permission to ask for help with the life I now had to build.
Still, I can see the kitchen as it could be. The new sink. The cleared counter. Dinner at home. The dogs asleep in view. The bougainvillea on the balcony, doing the best it can.
