October 02, 2024

By Emily Shugerman

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty

Joshua Divens describes the end of his marriage as the “largest failure of my life.” A law-enforcement officer from a small town in Ohio, Divens married his first wife at age 19; they stayed together through more than 20 years and four attempts at marriage counseling. In 2018, Divens told his wife he wanted a divorce and filed for a dissolution — a process by which spouses come to an agreement on ending the relationship without getting the court involved. He says she responded by filing papers herself. “I got served at work, which was embarrassing,” he tells me. “It was just downhill from there.”

The divorce process may have driven him away from his community, but it also drove him closer to one person: Donald Trump. “It was kind of like a microcosm of what I felt like was being done to Trump” at the time. “I was accused of having multiple affairs. None of it happened.” He compares the rumors he says his social circle spread about him with accusations that the former reality-TV star colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, or that he bragged about sexual assault in the Access Hollywood tape. (Trump wasn’t saying he forcibly grabbed women’s genitals, Divens insists. He was saying they let you do it.) When guys like Divens and Trump stand up for themselves, he argues, outsiders will “totally flip your world and demonize you.”

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Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images

By Madame Clairevoyant

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The massive dock workers’ strike currently underway, explained. Meet Choi Soon-hwa, who at 81 years old vied to be the oldest-ever Miss Universe contestant. Has getting high gotten too chic? Daniel Day Lewis is coming out of retirement to act in a movie directed by his 26-year-old son. Tech was supposed to make our lives easier, but for women, who tend to do more of the day-to-day online work for the family, there's an extra digital burden. The U.S. is facing “a baffling scenario in which those who are responsible for cleaning its water are considered to be the biggest obstacle to safe water.” And a long read worth making time for: What happened when two teens, one dealing and one using, got caught up in a system unprepared to handle kids on either side of the drug trade.

A biweekly newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.