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Personals contributor Alex Zaragoza (also of the great newsletter Sick Daze) shed lights on a scant-understood phenomenon: divorce Rumspringa. This eventful period of hooking up, acting out, and trying out controversial new style directions is especially common to those who got married in their 20s and 30s, but can strike anytime. Alex spoke with those who have survived (and cherished!) divorce Rumspringa. They took us through the thought processes behind sleeping with colleagues, seeking revenge, and having to walk in the the Women’s March with one’s bosses after accidental meth use.

A favorite part: “During her divorce, my straitlaced sister strongly considered a tongue ring, nonsensically inspired by the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie, who’s not even pierced in that area.” Counterpoint: We can all agree that Fergie has a psychic tongue piercing. Like how you don’t have a literal third eye. You know I’m right! Read more from Alex below; write to me with your true tales of divorced behavior any old time.

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Have a great weekend. I’m listening to Rachel Podger play the summer concertos from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. And the Pope blessed the Knicks!— Amy Rose Spiegel, senior editor, The Cut

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By Alex Zaragoza

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photo: Getty

After she ended her marriage, Rachel, a 37-year-old living in Queens, was recovering from a violation: Her husband, the only person she’d ever slept with, had shared nude photos of her on Reddit without her consent. For two months after her ex moved out, Rachel didn’t go out with new people as she processed her grief and betrayal. Plus, at 31, she’d never dated before. The first weekend she broke the seal, Rachel had two threesomes, which she referred to as a “double-double.” From there, the double-doubles multiplied. She hooked up with abandon over the next few months. “I kept doing it just to see what would happen. Which, honestly, could have gone badly,” Rachel says. Instead, “I was working something out of my system.” She believes having “a lot of fun, sexy experiences” post-divorce also served a greater purpose: She felt a sense of agency after a life-altering breach of trust. “My self-worth is still a work in progress,” Rachel says, “but I’ve come a long way.”

Rachel was in the throes of a divorce Rumspringa, the wild period surrounding the end of a serious relationship in your 20s or 30s. It’s a brief but instructive time. You learn about the world through exploration, like devout Amish teens tasting freedom. Their Rumspringas are rites of passage allowing them to dabble in modern life before their baptism into the faith. They might drive a car, wear jeans, or, as pop culture has led us to believe, get shithoused at the club. A divorced 20- or 30-something might have different temptations than a Pennsylvania Dutch teen, but the premise is the same. In a divorce Rumspringa, you’re crazed with new possibilities to balance out the strife and heartache. That looks like taking a more voracious approach to sex, spending, or whatever else makes you feel alive. (Also: getting shithoused at the club. Both kinds of Rumspringa seem alike in this respect.)

A divorce Rumspringa might be shocking or destructive, but it doesn’t have to be anything other than a clear break from your married lifestyle, especially if you’re still young and reclaiming a lost “ho phase,” or simply investigating what it’s like to hook up with people to whom you aren’t legally committed. You might also want confirmation that you’re still worthy of affection and attention. Women are socialized to think about our value in terms of desirability, and nothing shatters a sense of self-worth like divorce: Cue the weird hookups. Getting to the point where you’re singing “You Don’t Own Me” in the street in a white suit, as in the divorcée sacred text The First Wives Club, isn’t always paved in gold.

I can speak to this firsthand. After only a year and a half, my marriage imploded when I was 25. I felt like a failure, having insisted I was grown enough to marry a soccer hooligan I met on study abroad in England. In the lead-up to divorce, I was so starved for affection that making out with a fuckboy drummer with a girlfriend at a house party seemed like a promising move toward a happier ending. While I understood this might be classified as a bad decision, I couldn’t force myself to care. I was angry — at my ex and at myself — and desperate to feel wanted again. It was as if social rules I normally observed without thinking had been whisked out of my mind.

The divorce Rumspringa’s allure is in its unpredictability, which, done right, feels just as much like possibility. Erin Chack’s divorce Rumspringa was relatively tame but all new to her at 36 years old. “I’d never even kissed another man, so I was in this unique position of making up for 20 years,” says Chack, who is based in L.A. and started dating her ex-husband at 15. He abruptly ended their seven-year marriage by ghosting her last September. “I was so upset, I couldn’t eat. I lost 12 pounds in a week,” Chack told me. “I was so scared.”

After mourning for four months and a cathartic confrontation with her ex outside of a bar, Chack “went on a crazy dating bender” in her desire to move on. “It wasn’t even a conscious choice. My body was like, That’s what we want. We want to kiss as many men as possible,” she says. One month, she made out with 11 guys. When the mood was right, she slept with some. “It was anthropological. I had never even been in a man’s bedroom,” she says, laughing. “I’m like, What are you keeping in your drawers?There were a lot of forest-green sheets.”

Even in their dissolution, marriages can have stressful ramifications for young women’s careers, financial stability, and overall happiness. Isn’t it reasonable they’d want to finally let loose and enjoy their 20s and 30s? Absolutely, within reason. Sublimating pain into dubious choices is classic freshly divorced-person behavior. It can take interesting shapes, like getting a giant back tattoo, Ben Affleck style; spending money you don’t have on an experimental new style; or, in my case, frenching a dirtbag drummer in a bathroom. During her divorce, my straitlaced sister strongly considered a tongue ring, nonsensically inspired by the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie, who’s not even pierced in that area.

All pretty harmless. But someone on divorce Rumspringa might sometimes be too myopic to recognize when certain extremely divorced behaviors will hurt others. Take Amanda Batula, Ciara Miller, and West Wilson from the reality series Summer House. Many fans were shocked when Batula, after separating from her husband, announced that she was dating her friend Miller’s ex. But to me, this move was exactly what someone on divorce Rumspringa might pull.

During part one of the show’s reunion, Batula was combative, acknowledging she lied about the relationship while in the same breath downplaying the severity of her and Wilson’s actions. “So I’m not allowed to pursue something that I feel strongly about,” she pushed back. “So no one in this world has ever been in a situation like this before? This is not the craziest thing to happen in the whole entire world. You guys are acting like I had an affair.” She can’t see past her own needs and desires. Castmate Lindsay Hubbard rebutted that Batula’s behavior was something people do “in high school — we’re in our 30s,” but people can make selfish choices at any age. It can seem easier to move on from a bad situation when there’s someone new to distract you. (Even if, as Batula’s castmate Mia Calabrese put it at the reunion, it relegates you to being a side bitch and betraying a close friend who has offered never-ending support.)

Magda, a 43-year-old actress, told me, “Being excited about someone else who was excited about me made it a lot easier to leave my husband.” When her volatile marriage became unbearable, she started a relationship with another man at 34, before her divorce. As Magda saw it, she’d spent a lifetime saying “no” to herself. She decided cheating existed in a gray area and chose to deal with the consequences. “When you feel miserable about your life, and then you find something that makes you feel really good about yourself, I don’t know … fuck ’em,” Magda says — a strong contender for the official motto of the divorce Rumspringa.

When Madga’s affair came to light, she lost friends. Her ex angrily threw out irreplaceable family photos. She struggled financially. She never saw her cat again. She still doesn’t regret saying “fuck ’em.” Nine years later, she and the guy she cheated with are together and happy.

Chasing sex on divorce Rumspringa isn’t always about validation or orgasms. It can also be fueled by spite, says Diana, a 36-year-old Canadian in the bar industry. She married a guy in a popular band when she was 23. The relationship was difficult from the start, even before her ex slept with a co-worker. When they divorced, Diana vowed to get back at him. “I’ve never hated anyone as much,” she explains. “You give this person access to your deepest vulnerabilities, only to watch them weaponize it. I didn’t yet have the emotional maturity, or enough therapy, to know when to let it go.” When one of her ex’s favorite bands came to town, she took the night off and went to their show, hoping to get them back to her apartment. Instead, she accidentally took what she thinks was meth and couldn’t sleep for 24 hours. Two Ativan didn’t help. She had plans the next day, with no way to reschedule: Diana’s quest for vengeance ended with her stuck walking for eight miles in the Women’s March with her bosses.

The post-divorce Rumspringa provides many lessons. Yes, letting loose and sometimes messing up can come with fallout. It might make people mad or lead to demonstrating political solidarity with colleagues while zonked. But you can come back stronger and happier, even if you have to climb out of a dirtbag’s frameless bed to get there. Maria, a 40-year-old graphic designer in New York, says she was “basically roommates” with her now-ex-husband in her late 20s. Feeling stuck, she cheated. When her fling became a “full-blown affair,” Maria ended both relationships. (Maria’s ex-husband then dated her co-worker. Two can play at the divorce Rumspringa.)

Despite the “drama,” Maria spent the first half of her 30s happily single, freedom she still sees as a gift. “I learned a lot about what I wanted. They were the best five years of my life,” Maria told me. Now, she’s glad to be married with a daughter. Eleven years out from her divorce Rumspringa, Maria says, “I wouldn’t be able to be in a relationship now if I hadn’t had that experience.”

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