I was lying spread-eagle on an examination table on the Upper East Side when my gynecologist asked if I had read Belle Burden’s memoir. This wasn’t the direction I expected the appointment to take. I assumed we’d discuss ovarian cysts or my latest Pap results. Instead, she wanted to talk about books.
“No,” I said, staring up at a ceiling tile. “But I’ve heard of it.” She snapped off her gloves, shook her head, and said, “I just kept thinking, This woman is such a dumbass.”
If you’ve somehow escaped its pop-cultural domination, Burden’s 2026 memoir Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage generated the kind of buzz ordinarily reserved for celebrity divorces and murder trials. My doctor told me that all the moms at her son’s private school were passing copies around, debating whether Burden was a victim of her marriage, a willing participant in its dysfunction, or both.
The fascination is easy to understand. On the surface, Burden appeared to possess the things many people spend their lives chasing: a close-knit family, a devoted husband, a stable life. Then, seemingly overnight, her husband cheated and left her. The world she thought she understood revealed itself to be something else entirely. That’s what makes the story so unsettling: the question isn’t only how this happened to her. It’s also whether, under slightly different circumstances, it could happen to any of us.
There is an old saying that the person you marry is not the person you divorce, but reading Strangers, I kept returning to a different thought. People change and marriages end every day, but in Strangers, there was one detail that really stuck: the fact that Burden, a lawyer, had agreed to revise her prenuptial agreement against her better judgment. The new terms stated that her and her husband’s income and assets would remain separate unless they were placed in both spouses’ names. As a result, the homes Burden purchased for their family with her trust fund became subject to division during their divorce, while the wealth her husband accumulated during their 20-year marriage remained his entirely.
Few legal documents inspire as much emotional drama as a prenup. Americans will tell near-strangers about their sex lives. They’ll discuss fertility issues, unpack childhood trauma on first dates, and announce the collapse of a marriage on Instagram before the ink on the divorce papers has dried. Yet mention a prenup and even the most emotionally fluent people suddenly freeze.
Within minutes, you’re no longer talking about assets or liabilities; you’re talking about trust. About romance. About family money. Are you cursing your marriage by discussing the possibility of divorce before you’ve even walked down the aisle? If they really loved you, would they ask you to sign one? If you really loved them, would you hesitate? Somewhere amidst those questions lies the reason prenups make otherwise rational adults lose their minds.
But if you ask Laura Wasser—perhaps the most famous divorce attorney in America, with a client list that includes Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian, and Britney Spears—prenups are not really about divorce.
“Contrary to popular belief, prenuptial agreements are not simply pre-negotiating a future dissolution,” she says. Instead, Wasser describes the process almost like a relationship audit. What assets is each person bringing into the marriage? What debts? How much money do they earn? How much do they expect their partner to earn? What are their expectations around spending? Retirement? Children? Aging parents? Inheritances?
Refusing to discuss finances is a little like refusing to discuss children, religion, sex, or where you’re going to live. It doesn’t eliminate the issue; it simply postpones it. As Wasser tells me, “The conversations incident to a prenuptial agreement are a jumping-off point for many other not-super-sexy but super-important discussions that prospective spouses should have”—ideally before walking down the aisle.
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