Oprah with Belle Burden on the Collapse of Her 20 Year Marriage & Her Bestselling Memoir

It’s the new memoir that has captured the attention of women and as Oprah describes, “everyone is talking about it." From the outside, Belle Burden seemed to have the perfect life: three thriving kids, a happy marriage and a summer home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Then, one day, she gets a phone call that shatters everything she believed to be true about her marriage and her life. Oprah sits down with Belle to talk about the devastation that followed the shocking end of her marriage and how she slowly rebuilt her life into something better than she could have imagined. Drawing on revelations shared in her New York Times bestseller, Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage, Belle tells Oprah how her prestigious family pedigree couldn’t protect her from the pain of divorce. She also explains how sharing her story has empowered her to become the person she was meant to be. BUY THE BOOK! https://amzn.to/4h0FihH Vote now to support The Oprah Podcast for the Webby Awards https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/individual-episode/interview-or-talk-show 00:00:00 - Welcome Belle Burden, author of ‘Strangers’ 00:03:30 - Belle learning of her husband’s affair 00:12:10 - After learning of the affair 00:16:00 - Being told she was crazy 00:17:48 - Telling their kids 00:25:00 - The search for why 00:26:15 - Is divorce worse than death? 00:27:40 - The shame of being left 00:30:35 - Why she wrote the NYT essay 00:34:00 - Her path forward 00:35:35 - Why she wrote the book 00:36:30 - What she hopes her book gives other women 00:38:50 - Her prenup 00:42:36 - Belle’s mother Amanda joins 00:46:15 - He didn’t want joint custody 00:49:20 - What she had to do every day 00:53:30 - How she feels now 01:01:22 - Belle on her book Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh my goodness, Belle. We got some talking to do, girl.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I see that you've marked the book.

• 0:08Oprah Winfrey?

  I have marked the book. I wanted to do this book because there are so many friends that I've had who've gone through this. And I feel like I've gone through it with them.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:19Oprah Winfrey?

  You are every woman. You have written the manual for every woman. This is the, this is book is just, it's a memoir of marriage, but it's also a memoir of every woman who's gone through divorce. Suddenly, hearing from her husband, "I don't want to be married anymore. I'm unhappy." And you thought everything was okay. And he, yep. This is the book.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Everybody's talking about it. You're gonna get into it.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm ready. Ask me anything.

• 0:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 0:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the Oprah Podcast. It's good to be with you here. I'm really excited to talk about our subject today. Take a moment and try to imagine this happening to you. A lot of you don't even have to imagine it because it's already happened. Out of the blue, your spouse of 20 years and father to your three children says this, "I thought I was happy, but I'm not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don't. I feel like a switch has been flipped. I'm done. You can have custody of the kids. I don't want it. I don't want any of it." Imagine that after 20 years, when you're just thinking things are okay.

• 1:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, my guest heard just those words from her husband and has now written an evocative, may I say, book that has struck a chord with so many women and readers. Everybody I know is talking about this book. It's called Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. But if you've been through a divorce or suspect that you might be going through a divorce, it's also your story. From the outside, Belle Burden was living a life most people only dream of. She and her husband of 21 years were raising their three children in New York City. Summers were spent at their home on Martha's Vineyard, an idyllic island off the coast of Massachusetts. Belle, a Harvard-trained lawyer, hails from a prominent American family,

• 2:18Oprah Winfrey?

  filled with bold-faced names, including the Vanderbilts and John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. Her maternal grandmother was style icon and socialite Babe Paley. Her step-grandfather was Bill Paley, the founder of CBS. Belle grew up in a family where generations of women rarely ever discussed their husbands' transgressions. But when her own husband abruptly ended their marriage, Belle decided to break that chain. First with a modern love essay in The New York Times that went viral, and now with her new New York Times bestseller, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. Welcome, Belle Burton. Glad to be with you on my front porch.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  I'm so glad to be here.

• 3:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, Belle, the people are talking about this book.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  They really are. I'm hearing from so many women around the world, and it's really surprised me in the most wonderful way.

• 3:15Oprah Winfrey?

  OK, what did you think when you wrote it? I know it started as an article for The New York Times.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  It did, and I thought when I wrote it that it would be a quiet book, that it would sort of get known by word of mouth and women would talk about it a little bit. But I did not expect this kind of response. But it really is women reading it, seeing themselves.

• 3:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Passing on to other women and seeing themselves.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 3:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Some books explain things, I would say, and then there are books that name things that I think that we've been living with our whole lives but never had the language for. You all know what I'm talking about. And Strangers is actually one of those books. So you were married for 21 years to James. That's not his real name. You believed that it was a good marriage, a solid and happy marriage. And you and your husband had recently-- this is what struck me about the book-- you and your husband had recently purchased a brand-new, expensive Sleep Number mattress.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yes, very, very expensive bed in January.

• 4:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  And this happened in March, two months later. And he had picked out the mattress.

• 4:23Oprah Winfrey?

  OK, so you're thinking if you're getting this expensive mattress--

• 4:27Speaker 02

  That it's at least for, you know, 10 years, maybe.

• 4:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 4:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay. And so the sleep mattress allows you to adjust. You all may have one of these. It allows you to adjust your firmness and softness for each side.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. It's something about that mattress that stood out for me. Have other people mentioned that, too?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  A couple of people have mentioned it, and I think about it a lot because it was such an investment and it was so accommodating of both of our tastes. He likes a very soft mattress. I like a very hard mattress.

• 4:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Hard mattress.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  And it seemed like this great compromise. It also took a lot to get it into the frame. We had to have a lot of men come up and sort of adjust it and put it in. And it was, it was really a big ordeal.

• 5:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  And so it's one of those things I look at and think, he could not have been planning this.

• 5:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And I think what is so interesting about that is everybody that I know who's gone through it, particularly people who are betrayed and find out that their spouse has been cheating, they go back through everything and you think, where was the sign? When should I have known? What was the clue? And if you've bought that expensive mattress in January, that is a clue that we're moving in the right direction and that we're, you know.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Stable.

• 5:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Stable.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Happy, even.

• 5:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  And I have tried to look back and look for those red flags, either a red flag about him, his character, or a sign that he was really moving away and planning to leave. And it's hard to find those.

• 6:01Oprah Winfrey?

  And then you get the call on March 21st, 2020. So let me remind everybody, I don't have to tell you, March 21st, 2020, we were, we had just gotten the word, I think around March 16th, that we're going to be in lockdown. So that's a Saturday after our first full week in lockdown during COVID. Set the scene for us.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 6:25Oprah Winfrey?

  I appreciate the way you do it in the book. I can see your one daughter, she's upstairs playing Fortnite.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 6:32Oprah Winfrey?

  And then your other daughter is, had made dinner.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Making pasta.

• 6:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Had made pasta.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 6:38Oprah Winfrey?

  And you're in the kitchen. And what happens?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  So we had just finished dinner. I was cleaning up. I was actually mopping the floor. And I get a call on my cellphone. I don't recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail. And then I play the message, and it's a man's voice. He sounds nervous, and he says, "I'm trying to reach Belle. I'm sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife." And my first-

• 7:02Oprah Winfrey?

  This is a voice message?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  This is a voice message. And my first thought is, this can't be true. This must be a mistake. It's a wrong number.

• 7:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, it's the wrong bell.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  The wrong bell. Realized he said my name.

• 7:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  And I think, he must, my husband's going to explain this. We're very happily married. We love each other. I've never seen any sign of this. How can this be true? And we'd had this week that was, we were all scared about the pandemic, but it was very cozy. He was chopping wood and making fires and bringing me cocktails. And it was all very cozy. And that night, he admitted to the affair, but he told me that it didn't mean anything. It had only been going on for a couple of weeks and that he loved me and only me and loved our family. And I thought, okay, I'm stuck in this house. We are going to have to do therapy on Zoom. I'm going to have to figure out if I can work through this.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  It's going to be a nightmare, but this is what we're going to have to do.

• 8:01Oprah Winfrey?

  So your immediate response after your husband says to you, "Listen, it's only been going on for..."

• 8:06Speaker 02

  For two weeks, he said.

• 8:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And you think, okay, we're going to work through it.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  We're going to work through it. I asked some questions. I asked for her name. I asked if she had kids. He gave me those details. And then my younger daughter called for me, and we had to end that conversation. And I went to my shower and closed the door, the glass door to my shower, and just started wailing and did it in a place where my girls could not hear me. And I texted the man who had called me. I wasn't quite ready to talk to him on the phone. And I said, can you tell me how long this has been going on? And he said, I think, about a month, so a little bit different.

• 8:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  And then he said, but I can't talk now because my wife is in an ambulance. And she has tried to kill herself.

• 8:51Oprah Winfrey?

  This is the girlfriend?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  The girlfriend.

• 8:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, his wife, my husband's mistress.

• 8:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  And I felt such worry then for this woman I'd never met. And I went to find my husband and he was-

• 9:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you're a different kind of woman. You're not going to worry about the other woman.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  I just thought, you know, she's in distress.

• 9:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Is she all right?

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Is she, is she OK?

• 9:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  And I went to find my husband. He was in our guest room and he was on the phone with her. And he was almost hunched over the phone in this very caretaking pose. And I remember thinking, he, he's caretaking of her and not of me. And he's just, I've just learned that our marriage is in crisis and he's had an affair.

• 9:32Oprah Winfrey?

  So you realize he's on the phone with her?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And that he looks concerned and caretaking.

• 9:41Oprah Winfrey?

  About her?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  About her. And it's, it was such a cold feeling, thinking that he was worried about her.

• 9:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  And he told me, she's going to be fine. She took some sleeping pills. She's going to be OK.

• 9:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  And then a few hours passed. He went to sleep. I stayed in my room in, in torment.

• 10:02Oprah Winfrey?

  OK, well, let me just read this part. I love, I love this part where you say, you write that she had taken the pills.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:08Oprah Winfrey?

  The moment I, James' wife, first heard about her.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Right?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Wasn't I the one, is what you say, wasn't I the one who was supposed to be falling apart? Wasn't he supposed to be worried about me?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 10:19Oprah Winfrey?

  She captured my husband's attention at a time when I needed it most.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:23Oprah Winfrey?

  What did you realize about your marriage in that moment?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  I, I wasn't quite able to put my head around it.

• 10:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Of course you couldn't.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  I just knew that everything had changed, even in that moment. And then it changed a lot more later. But I just thought, wait, something is really wrong with this picture. And something is really wrong with both of them, actually, because I'm the one who's gotten this devastating news.

• 10:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yet no one is concerned about me.

• 10:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, that is the moment, when reading strangers, that I realize, oh, this is going to relate to so many women. Because I lived through this with Gail. You know, you all know Gail's been my best friend for 50 years now. And I can share this because she's talked about it herself, but- On the night that she discovered her husband with another woman in her house, in her bed, which is about the worst thing. I think that's one of the worst.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:15Oprah Winfrey?

  The night that she discovered that, I said to her, you gotta pick your head up off the floor.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:22Oprah Winfrey?

  And the moment that you talk about him being on the phone with the woman

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:27Oprah Winfrey?

  who's in the, with his mistress, I remember Gail called me and she said, I just found him with this woman. And I said, well, where is he now? And she said, he's gone to take her to the train station.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Yep. There you go.

• 11:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And I said, girl.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  This is very telling.

• 11:46Oprah Winfrey?

  You don't even know how bad this is. This is, this is really bad.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  It's a very bad sign.

• 11:51Oprah Winfrey?

  That's that moment where he is supporting her.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yep. You are.

• 11:54Oprah Winfrey?

  You walk in on him, you find them naked, and he then leaves to take her instead of consoling you.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Yep. You're already out of the picture. They're already a mile ahead of you. That's how it felt.

• 12:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  And I should have known that night that this was not going to get better. And in fact, it did get a lot worse.

• 12:12Oprah Winfrey?

  I thank you for listening to the Oprah Podcast. When we come back, Bell shares how things became even more difficult for her and her children after finding out about her husband's affair.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, HBO Max presents Rooster. Starring Steve Carell, this new comedy series focuses on the complicated relationship between a successful author and his daughter. Don't miss the series IGN called Hilarious and Brilliant. Rooster is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now.

• 12:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Hello and welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm talking with Bell Burton about her New York Times bestseller, Strangers, A Memoir of a Marriage. I think it's a must read, especially if you're married, ever been married, thinking about marrying. Let's get back to our conversation. Okay, so that first night, lying in bed, after you find him on the phone with her, you feel a little different. Your concern changes. You're not like, oh, I'm so worried about her. You're like, what's wrong?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  No, I'm actually a little bit just shocked that she wasn't, she wasn't worried about me either. She kind of stole the attention.

• 13:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  In a way, when I really deserved that attention.

• 13:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Yeah. In that moment.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, and that was.

• 13:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, obviously, she turned out to be OK.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  She was fine. Like, once I knew she was fine, that's when it shifted to just astonishment.

• 13:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that she stole the attention.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, that's how it felt. And then I didn't sleep that night. He did. But at 6:00 in the morning, he came into my room, fully dressed, with a tote bag packed. And his whole affect had changed. It was very cold. His eyes were very icy. And he said to me, I've decided I want a divorce. I thought I was happy, but I'm not. And I'm going to leave right now. And he did. He walked out of our house. He got in his Jeep. He got on a ferry and he left the island.

• 14:11Oprah Winfrey?

  And you were on Martha's Vineyard?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Yes, on Martha's Vineyard, exactly. And he went to New York, I believe, to see her. And it was that moment that he became someone I really did not recognize.

• 14:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Therefore, the book, Strangers, strangers.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  He became a stranger, literally.

• 14:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Because the man you had known would never have done that to you.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  The man that I thought I knew would never have done that to me. I really, I thought he was a very devoted, mild, kind person. And he had never told me once that he was unhappy.

• 14:46Oprah Winfrey?

  OK, a lot of times, people don't say they're unhappy, but you sense the unhappiness. You had never sensed the unhappiness or disconnection. Because when I first started reading this book, I thought it was going to be about, oh, you thought you were connected, but you recognized all the signs of being disconnected. And you were strange, you had always been strangers all along.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:10Oprah Winfrey?

  But it isn't, it wasn't that at all.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  It didn't feel that way. I felt a real intimacy with him.

• 15:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  And I did accept a little bit of remove. He was a little bit removed, a little bit distant. And I, but I felt like that was a quirk in his personality.

• 15:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  And I guess there was more bubbling beneath the surface, maybe.

• 15:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  But it was not a situation of realizing, oh, my gosh, he's been leading this double life all along.

• 15:37Oprah Winfrey?

  And I know those of you who are listening, who have been through this, and I know that's, this is a big club, a lot of members in this club, women who've been betrayed. You're going over in your head, all the things, all the signs. You could have, where could I have seen the sign? What did I miss? What did I miss? And one night, you became convinced that James had fathered the other woman's toddlers because he told you that she had toddlers, right?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yes, toddlers, about three and one-year-old.

• 16:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And when you confronted him, he said what?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Well, at that point, he had stopped answering my phone calls and told me that I was too upset for him to speak to. But I caught him in the middle of the night. He picked up the phone at about 1:00 a.m. because I was spiraling, thinking that he had actually fathered them. And he said, "Stop, you have lost your mind." And he hung up the phone. But that seemed, in this world where everything that I thought was impossible was now possible, I thought even that could be possible.

• 16:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. It hasn't been two weeks or a month that you're now the father of the toddlers. Kind of logical thought for somebody who...

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Yes, it happens.

• 16:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, it happens all the time. And you write, "I felt like I had lost my mind, like his exit had transformed me suddenly from an intelligent, stable wife and mother to an unhinged lunatic, a mad woman. Somehow, I had become the dangerous person in this story, the volatile character, rather than he, the man who had left his family." Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  It's amazing to me, and I think this happens to a lot of women, overnight, somehow we're transformed into the hysterics.

• 17:18Oprah Winfrey?

  But I do think that, based on all the people I know who've gone through this, that that's a tactic.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Yes, I think it is.

• 17:27Oprah Winfrey?

  It's a tactic that the men use.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 17:30Oprah Winfrey?

  In many instances, I realize...

• 17:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Where I'm laughing because I remember a girl goes, I am not crazy.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 17:38Oprah Winfrey?

  And many instances where the man, the husband, the spouse is saying, you're crazy.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:45Oprah Winfrey?

  You're hysterical. And I think there was a wonderful line that you wrote where you said, once a woman is painted as a hysterical.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  The rest of the story is washed away.

• 17:54Oprah Winfrey?

  She's dismissed.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yes, she's absolutely dismissed.

• 17:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  And it happens very quickly, even though he did something that was fairly unhinged, to walk out on your family during a pandemic.

• 18:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Within 12 hours, I was too upset, I was too angry.

• 18:09Oprah Winfrey?

  You're overreacting.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Overreacting.

• 18:11Oprah Winfrey?

  You're hysterical.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  When everything, actually, everything is fine. He kept saying, everything's fine. This is fine.

• 18:17Oprah Winfrey?

  So let's go to the, everything is fine.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:19Oprah Winfrey?

  So how long before you all told the girls? Because this is what is so unbelievable. I'm always amazed at working mothers, working parents who have a whole life outside and then have to come home and be present for their children and not be hysterical for their children. So you didn't tell the girls at first?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I didn't. A therapist advised that I wait because the pandemic was so scary.

• 18:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  And so that we should wait till the pandemic was less scary. And of course, that never happened.

• 18:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  And I thought I was hiding it from them. I did not do a good job. I was crying all the time. I had trouble getting out of bed for a very long time.

• 18:57Oprah Winfrey?

  And what are you telling them is the reason for that?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  I just pretended like I was okay, even though my eyes were swollen. My older daughter actually knew. She read a text on my iPad almost immediately, which happens a lot, I think. So she knew and she had to pretend that she didn't know. And then my younger daughter didn't know, but then I think after.

• 19:17Oprah Winfrey?

  How old was your older daughter at the time?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  15.

• 19:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  And then my younger one was 12. And I also have a 17-year-old boy who was with his friends. And the younger one did not know, but then when she found out afterwards, she felt betrayed that I hadn't told her. So I think that was a mistake. I wish I had told them. I said their dad had gone back to New York to go to work, even though New York was shut down. And I wish I had just said. This is happening and told it in a factual way so that we could all go through it together.

• 19:46Oprah Winfrey?

  I think you needed to give yourself a day, though.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  It's true. You have to collect yourself.

• 19:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, as I say, many years ago, in the 70s, I interviewed Betty Rollins. She wrote a book called First You Cry. It was one of the first books about breast cancer. First You Cry. And I remember saying to Gail that somebody should write a book for women going through divorce that says, first you pick your head up off the floor.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Because you're so, literally, every person that I know who's been through it, who finds himself in the midst of betrayal for the first time, it's like you're a chicken with your head caught off. And I, it's disconcerting, really, to...

• 20:28Speaker 02

  To your whole being. And I spend a lot of time on the bathroom floor, which you think is a cliche, but it's actually not. I think we spend a lot of time there because no one will come in the room.

• 20:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  And also, it's like this cold floor that it made me feel like I wasn't going to fall through the earth.

• 20:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Right. It holds you up.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  It holds you up, yeah.

• 20:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  And a lot of tears.

• 20:47Oprah Winfrey?

  So how long before he comes back to tell the children?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  It was a month. I thought, we've got to tell them. This is crazy. We've got to tell them. And initially, he didn't want to come. He wanted me to tell them.

• 20:59Oprah Winfrey?

  And then didn't he want to Zoom?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Then we were going to Zoom.

• 21:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, crazy.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  And I felt mixed about him coming because he was in New York. I was worried he would bring COVID. I didn't know what kind of person was going to show up because we had not been, we had not been communicating. But finally decided he should be there in person to tell the girls. And we called my son beforehand. And then he arrived. And my first thought when I saw him coming up our walkway was that he seemed really happy. He seemed elated.

• 21:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Which was so incongruous to the wreckage that he had left with me.

• 21:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  And he came in and we sat in our living room. I had my arms around both girls. And he told them that we were divorcing, that he hadn't been happy. And it's just that terrible moment. It's terrible for any family when this news is delivered to kids.

• 21:54Oprah Winfrey?

  But here's the thing, that you're leaving out, the hell this is the good part.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 21:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Leaving out, this is the good part. He's telling the girls, and in the midst of telling girls, he says, can you get me a sandwich?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  He did. He looked at me and he said, I'm starving. Yeah. Can you make me a sandwich? And part of my brain thought.

• 22:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Even the cameraman goes, oh, yes.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Part of my brain thought, you used to live here. Go make your own sandwich. I'm not going to make you a sandwich. And then I had my younger daughter had run down the stairs. She was very upset. And my older daughter is sitting there with her arms crossed, looking at her father. And I'm having a dialogue with myself that I think a lot of mothers have, which is, I should model that we are going to be kind to each other, that we're going to work together, that we're not going to be nasty ever, that there will be love and caring here, even if we're divorcing.

• 22:47Oprah Winfrey?

  So you made the sandwich.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  And that side won out. And I went into the kitchen and I made the sandwich. And as I'm making it, I think, I am going to make the best sandwich ever. I will not make a terrible sandwich. I want him to leave thinking, how could I leave this woman who makes such a great sandwich? And of course, the sandwich represented so much else. It represented home and the warmth of this life.

• 23:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And my caring for you and what you've received here.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Exactly. But I don't think he saw it that way at all. I think he ate it and didn't think about it again.

• 23:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. One of the things you write in Strangers is that some people say the end of a marriage is 50/50, always 50/50. But you ask, is it 50/50 when the unhappy person doesn't say that they are unhappy? Is it 50/50 when you didn't know that there was this disruption going on? And I'm wondering, does it matter in the end? Does it, whether it was 50/50 or 20/80?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  I think it's one of those things that if it happens like this to you, it's frustrating when people say, oh, well, it takes two to tango. Two people have to end a marriage. And I don't think that's fair because I think that you need at least a beat to be able to work on it.

• 24:05Oprah Winfrey?

  That's not somebody who's been through it.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  No, that's definitely not. And in some cases it is because there's conflict and there are a lot of issues. But you have to communicate that you're unhappy. You have to give someone a chance to go to therapy or discuss or something like that. So I resisted, and I still resist, that idea that it was 50/50.

• 24:26Oprah Winfrey?

  After a quick break, Bell Burton talks about the shame she carried after her divorce and that one nagging whisper during her 21-year marriage that she wished she had paid attention to.

• 24:39Speaker 04

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• 25:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi there, and welcome back to my conversation with Belle Burton, whose New York Times bestseller "Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage" is resonating with so many women, especially anyone who has experienced divorce. Did you go through the five stages of grief, or the stages of grief, you know, shock, denial, anger, bargaining, just, yeah, all of that?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  I think I did. I would say that definitely shock, disbelief. Anger was never the dominant emotion, and I certainly felt it at times. I think I was so overwhelmed by sadness and shock that anger came in spurts, but it was not the dominant thing.

• 25:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  And I wrestled with it later again. And then I think there was, bargaining probably was there, and then acceptance definitely was.

• 26:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  I ended there.

• 26:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I have learned through all of my conversations over all these years that acceptance is the key to everything. I mean, whether it's a diagnosis for disease, whether it's a breakup of a relationship, if it's a job, getting to acceptance as soon as you can is what changes the trajectory for everything.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  I really agree. I really agree. And I had to get there on my own because I thought I could land on an answer.

• 26:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And that that was key to being able to accept this. And I never got that answer. I didn't get it from him. I didn't get it from my detective work. I just never got it.

• 26:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  And what shifted it for me...

• 26:44Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why this book is, you all are gonna love this book if you haven't read it already, is it's so important, is because every woman wants the answer to why.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Why? Why did this happen? Why did I do something? Why?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  I went through all of those whys.

• 27:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and you couldn't get to the why?

• 27:03Speaker 02

  I couldn't get to it. And I worried, actually, that readers would be frustrated that I never get to it. But I think what happened for me is I finally...

• 27:11Oprah Winfrey?

  I think it's done the opposite. The reason why the book is so popular is that you didn't get to it, and so many women haven't gotten to it.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. I think that's right.

• 27:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  And what changed it for me is shifting the focus. Because I wasn't gonna... It was like trying to get blood from a stone. I wasn't gonna get it from him. So I had to shift the focus to myself. My stepmother's a family therapist, and she uses this trick where you picture him and myself on a stage, and the spotlight's on him. And I have to move it in my brain from him to me.

• 27:39Oprah Winfrey?

  OK, that's really important. And I just wanted to say, as I was reading it, I was thinking, you did this as a memoir, originally as an article, and then now a book. But you did it as a memoir about your life and, you know, going through analyzing what had happened in your marriage.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:56Oprah Winfrey?

  But it becomes sort of a manual, I think, for other women who are going through it. First of all, you mentioned your stepmom. In the book, I remember when she tells you that divorce is worse than death. And at first, you didn't seem to agree. Did you come to realize differently or think differently about that? Divorce is worse than death. I know a lot of you who are going through it, have been through it, feel that way.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yes, I think it's hard for me to say that because I watched her lose my father and how horrible that was to be a widow. And...

• 28:29Oprah Winfrey?

  But she's a therapist.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:31Oprah Winfrey?

  And she told you.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  She told me. And she believes that it's worse because he is out there living a different life. And I had to really look back at our love story and reevaluate it and feel that rejection, which is so painful.

• 28:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  But my, my children still have a father. And a lot of, you know, when, when there's death, there, people lose important people to them.

• 28:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I understand that, and I know a lot of people are gonna challenge it. But what, what, what, what I think she meant, and I have said that to my friends too.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:03Oprah Winfrey?

  This is worse than death because if your husband had died, you come to accept that he is dead and nothing's gonna change, and you couldn't have changed that.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yes, and your narrative can stay the same.

• 29:14Oprah Winfrey?

  And your narrative can stay the same. If your husband betrays you, suddenly leaves you, you're still left with all the whys and the whys and the whys.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  And a lot of shame, too.

• 29:25Oprah Winfrey?

  And a lot, and a lot of shame.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, a lot of shame.

• 29:27Oprah Winfrey?

  So tell us why you were feeling shame when you're not the one who walked out on your family.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  I felt it so intensely. I really felt so much shame as I re-entered the community that I'm a part of there. I felt like I was, I had failed in keeping my husband interested in me, loving me. I had failed in keeping my family intact. I felt like I was less than all these other women who had stayed married. And I think for me, there are so many people who have been through this, but when you're going through it, you, you're not aware of that. You feel like you're the only person this has happened to, and you feel so isolated in that.

• 30:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Page 145, you write, "I felt a deep sense of embarrassment about it."

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:12Oprah Winfrey?

  James was the one who had an affair who walked out, but the shame had become mine. I had made it mine. I was an abandoned wife, a woman rejected by her husband, a woman who had failed to keep her family together. I would be the outsider. I think a lot of women, particularly in your social circles, think this. I would be the outsider among all the married people, all the intact families, all the women, oh, all the women who were wanted by their husbands.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Yes, and it was, it was, that was so deeply hard for me. And I happened to be in a community where everyone was married. I was, I felt like the only person who was not married. And so I, and you, you kind of cross over from one day to the next from being a part of something. To being different, to not being a part of that thing.

• 30:59Oprah Winfrey?

  And your ex-husband wanted you to tell everyone that the separation was mutual. But what stands out for me, and I think is going to be so helpful to so many of you hearing this story, is that you didn't hide. You were embarrassed in all the things that we just said, but you didn't hide. You would go up to people in your social circle and say out loud.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I would say, "My husband left me.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  I don't know why, and I am in agony." And the moment that he asked me for it to be, to say it was amicable, he tried to tell me it would be better for me. I felt this full-bodied certainty that I could not do that, that I could not lie about it, that I would not survive this if I tried to lie about it. So when I ran into people, I just said it. And I never stopped saying it. And some people could handle it, and some people could not.

• 31:50Oprah Winfrey?

  When did you make the decision to do that? The moment he said, "I want you to..."

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Yes, and that was only a week in. And I just knew I couldn't do it, which is contrary to my personality. I'm shy, I'm very private. But I just knew I could not spin a false narrative about this. This was what was happening to me, what was happening to my kids.

• 32:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so you were, everyone has their own social circles. And, you know, whether it's your school, or your church, or your community, or your girls' club, your book club, yours happens to be in Martha's Vineyard. And nearly two years after your divorce, The New York Times published an essay, "Was I Married to a Stranger?" Why did you want to write that article? It was in their Modern Love column.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  It was.

• 32:41Oprah Winfrey?

  I always love the Modern Love column.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Me too. About a year after he left, when we were moving towards divorce, I felt like there were so many different narratives about what had happened, including from him.

• 32:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, go, okay, let's stop this for a second. I just want to ask you. So when you go up to someone and you say, when you make the decision, you're going to say... James has left me and I don't know why and I'm in agony. I'm sure people didn't know what the hell to do with that.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  A lot of people did not.

• 33:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  And I understand, I'm not sure I would have known what to do with it. I'm not sure I would have.

• 33:15Oprah Winfrey?

  But the word had spread, right?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Oh, everyone was talking about it.

• 33:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  This was hot gossip.

• 33:19Oprah Winfrey?

  You walk into a room and everybody is talking about it and you know.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  And people, some people are uncomfortable with it. I had a couple of men that I knew well turn away from me and walk away from me without saying hello. And on the other hand, some people really moved towards me and it's taught me a lot about how to respond to people, someone who's going through anything, anything that's a sudden change or a difficult thing. I had people stop me on the street and say, I'm so sorry you're going through this. Or another woman who grabbed me by the shoulders and said, I'm going to take care of you. And it was such a beautiful thing. It really lifted me up. But there were harder reactions too. And I think for all those people, people bring their own family histories to these things.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  And their reaction is definitely influenced by that.

• 34:08Oprah Winfrey?

  When the article first came out, tell us about the reaction. You, I can't remember where you were and one of your friends.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  I was on Martha's Vineyard. It came out on June 30th.

• 34:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  2023. And I was so excited because I had wanted to be a writer when I was a teenager. And I, when I started trying to write down exactly what happened, I got very interested in the art of it again. And when it was picked, I just thought, oh my God, this is incredible. So I felt this pride and excitement. And it really, some people were incredibly congratulatory and supportive. And for other people, it made them very uncomfortable that I was speaking about this and writing about it. And for some, I think it made them, they were more critical of me writing about it than of him leaving.

• 34:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Which really surprised me.

• 35:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Even accusing you of being a bad mother.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which was really painful for me because I had put myself through that same question. Am I doing something harmful to my kids?

• 35:12Oprah Winfrey?

  By telling the truth.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  By telling the truth.

• 35:14Oprah Winfrey?

  By telling the story, by exposing the story.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  By exposing the story about their father. They knew everything in the story. They had lived the story. But there was this idea that you should never, ever speak these stories out loud.

• 35:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Because?

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Because it harms your children by harming their father. And that it's just not something we talk about. We keep private things private. And I, from the beginning, from the moment he asked me to say that it was amicable.

• 35:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  I have always felt like being open and honest about this was my path forward. There was just going to be no other path than open honesty and doing it in a way that was not vindictive.

• 36:05Oprah Winfrey?

  So that's one of the things I really appreciate about the story. Because so many women who have been betrayed by their husbands live in the space of being vindictive and they are so filled with so much anger. That's why I thought it was interesting that you said when you were going through the stages, anger wasn't one of the places that you landed.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:28Oprah Winfrey?

  But so many women speak from a space of anger and revenge and being vindictive. But you never blame. You're just always trying to analyze, trying to figure out what's happening.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yes, I hope so. Some people may not buy this because I wrote a book. But I had seen friends who'd been through divorce and could not get themselves out of that place, even long after the divorce was over. And it just infused their whole being.

• 36:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  And I just did not want the rest of my life.

• 36:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Being the angry divorcee became their thing, yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Yes, which may not be fair, but I just didn't want to be consumed with it. I didn't want to be consumed with what I got and didn't get. And I didn't want to be consumed with the betrayal. So I decided that when we signed our divorce agreement, that would be the marker, that I would not live in that place anymore. And in the book, I really tried to, and in Modern Love too, not speak from that kind of place, to really speak factually about it.

• 37:31Oprah Winfrey?

  So you started writing Strangers because you were trying to figure out yourself. How did this happen to me?

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yes, like all writers, I think I was writing to figure it out.

• 37:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  And to really put things in place. And part of that actually was reconstructing our love story, our life as a family, my own family of origin. And try to really look, since I wasn't getting any answers from him, look at myself and look at the decisions I made over 20 years that kind of put me in the place that I was. Not in a place of blame, but just like, okay, so I made these decisions about finances. I made these decisions about career, and here I am. And now what do I want it to look like going forward?

• 38:14Oprah Winfrey?

  So you just brought up finances. I wanted to say this, I hear a lot of women, a lot of women have made a similar mistake as you did, allowing your spouses to handle all the finances. And you write on page 95 about, "I lost touch with both the big picture and the details of our financial life, depending on James to tell me what to do. I felt some shame about it, about not being involved, about not asking questions. But I was afraid I wouldn't understand it, that it was too complicated for me, even though I was a former corporate lawyer.

• 38:54Oprah Winfrey?

  I settled into the vagueness, the luxury and privilege of not knowing." What do you want to say to all the women doing that right now?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  If my book does one thing, if it makes women pay more attention to their finances and what's going on in their relationship or their marriage financially, I will be so happy because I think I'm not alone in what I did. I handed it over to him in this very trusting, loving way. My father had died two years before, and I was looking for a safe harbor. He said to me, "I'm going to take care of you." And honestly, it felt romantic to me to hand it over to him. He was this man in a gray flannel suit going off to work, and this was how he was going to take care of our family. And as you lose touch with it,

• 39:45Speaker 02

  For me, I convinced myself that he was better able to handle it. That, oh, gosh, it actually was very complicated. He made it seem very complicated. It actually isn't. It's not hard to learn this stuff.

• 39:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  And what I would want, what I'd ask friends to do is to read your tax returns, understand where your assets are, who, whose name is on each thing, and have the conversation or have some understanding about what will happen if the relationship ends. Even if you're the most happily married person on earth, you should know what, what will happen to you if it ends.

• 40:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay. I often say that y'all who have watched me over the years have heard me say this, that life speaks to us in whispers.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:29Oprah Winfrey?

  And you don't pay attention to the whispers. You get a little bump upside the head.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:32Oprah Winfrey?

  You don't pay attention to that. You get a brick, and then you get a brick, brick wall. That prenup was whispering to you for months, was it not? Can you tell us about that?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  It was. The prenup was a big whisper that I carried with me for the 20 years. It was still whispering to me. It was a very standard prenup that my family wanted me to sign because I had some inherited money.

• 40:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, because you come from generations of women who knew.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Yes. And, and my money was in trust. It was, it was protected. And we had a standard prenup that said, whatever you come into the marriage with remains yours, but whatever is earned during the marriage is split, or anything you put in joint name is split. This is what the prenup that my brother signed. It's very standard. But my then fiance said, first he was very offended by the prenup, and then he asked, two weeks before our wedding, that the prenup be changed, to say that anything earned during the marriage would not be split unless we affirmatively chose to put it in joint name. And I trusted his logic. I wanted to please him.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  My lawyer, who was a great lawyer at a big New York firm, said, do not do this. This is not good for you. You want to be home with kids. He's going into finance. This is not smart. And I convinced him using the arguments that my fiance was giving to me, and we changed it. And I knew as he became wealthier and I depleted my assets and put them into joint name in the form of our house and our apartment. Lord. That this was not going to be good for me, but yet I did not act on it. I just kept trusting. You felt it, though. I felt it. I knew it was there. I knew it was there, and I felt it. That's what I'm saying. It was whispering to you. Yeah, it was whispering. And there were other things that were whispering in

• 42:26Speaker 02

  that financial story that I should have paid attention to. There was, you know, he really wanted me to document all of my spending. He would not openly share how he was doing financially. So you didn't know what he was doing, but he knew what you were doing? No, exactly. He always knew what I was doing, and I did not ask enough questions. And I think that it felt like protection, but it also, I say this in the book, the flip side of protection is control. Yeah. Right? Where you're just not, you do not have agency. And one of the great parts of my life now is having that financial agency and not having anyone have any control over me in that way.

• 43:06Oprah Winfrey?

  When we return, what does Bell's ex-husband say about her version of their marriage? We're coming right back. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  And for a limited time, college students get The best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox Wireless Controller. Learn more at windows.com/studentoffer. While supplies last, ends June 30. Terms at aka.ms/collegepc.

• 43:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Thanks for joining me on the Oprah Podcast. I'm talking with Bell Burden about her powerful memoir, Strangers. If you know someone who's experienced a painful separation or divorce, share the link to this episode. Here's more of our conversation. Well, you come from generations of women who had experienced infidelity and divorce, including your mother.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Amanda Burden. Grandmother, Babe Paley. Those of you may know who Babe Paley was. You write, "I thought I had ended this legacy," by marrying someone so steady, so unassuming, someone who didn't have a public presence.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Someone who didn't flirt with other women, at least not in front of me. Because he never showed you any signs.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  None. I really thought, and I thought about it. I thought, "I'm picking someone so different."

• 44:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  This is...

• 44:36Oprah Winfrey?

  "I'm not going to make the mistakes my grandmother made and my mother made."

• 44:40Speaker 02

  "I'm going to learn from it." And I repeated it in a much more spectacular fashion because their mates actually wanted forgiveness and wanted to come back. Mine did not. Mine was just gone. And I really wondered, are we doing something to attract this? Are we looking for this? Why have I ended up in the same place as my mother and my grandmother? And my grandmother had died when I was nine, but she really was very present during this time that was so dark for me. She was like, it was like she was all around me, trying to like, help me through it.

• 45:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Comfort you.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Yes, and comfort me.

• 45:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Her spirit comforted you.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yes, it felt, it felt that way.

• 45:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Your mother is joining us. Welcome, Amanda. Welcome. Hi.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Well, I'm so glad to be here with you two.

• 45:23Oprah Winfrey?

  We're having such a good conversation.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  It's great to see both of you on that beautiful balcony.

• 45:28Oprah Winfrey?

  So what was your, what was your reaction when Belle told you she was going to write her story, Amanda?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Well, and when she, when she decided to write the book, I was a little nervous because we are a family that is very quiet about private issues and private affairs. But I could see that Belle was in a lot of pain and that she saw a way forward by writing a book that would both help her and give her a way to deal with her very difficult situation.

• 46:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Amanda, was there anything in the book that... Surprised you or that you didn't know about your daughter? Or the fact that she actually wrote the book, I'm sure, was a surprise.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it was not quite a surprise because Belle had been a great writer. Yeah. And she gave it up. So this was a way for her to kind of reclaim an essential part of herself. And the surprises in the book were, one, that she was so courageous and brave and took on a very formidable subject, which is really about male entitlement.

• 46:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. As I was saying to her here, it feels like it's a manual for women getting through it, even though she was just writing about herself. Because it is so pure, so honest, so piercing, it connects on a really deep level. So you must be very proud at this point.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  I'm very proud. And I think, you know, I've heard many people come up to me to talk about the book. And I really believe Belle has helped many, many women.

• 47:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Because they can identify this and because they feel less alone. And that is really, really important. And she's also given women a pathway to, one, self-examine and look at their situation without bitterness.

• 47:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And move forward by focusing on their future one step at a time.

• 47:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I think she actually did so accurately for herself, take the spotlight off of him and put the spotlight on herself and her well-being. And that's why I think the book is going to be so helpful to so many people. I would agree with you on that. How did you feel when she was sharing with you about your mother, Bay Paley, who died when she was nine, being such a presence with her throughout this? What do you think your mom would have thought of Belle's decision to speak out in this moment?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  My mother was very attached to Belle when she was a little girl. And it was very painful that she died when Belle was so young. But my mother would have been completely over the moon about this book.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  She would have been so proud of Belle and doing something that neither her mother or her grandmother could do.

• 48:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. Well, thank you, Amanda, for joining us.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Thank you. It was great to spend time with you both.

• 48:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Bye, darling.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 48:54Oprah Winfrey?

  One of the things I like about the book is its restraint. As I was saying, you don't write from a place of blame. But from the very beginning, you were shocked that your husband didn't want to, you know, that he seemed to want to give up his role as being an immediate father. Not that he didn't continue to have a relationship with his children, but when he said what he said to you, were you surprised?

• 49:23Speaker 02

  I was really surprised. He said it the first day when he was leaving, when he was walking out the door, that he did not want custody. He said, "I could have full custody." And I thought he would change his mind.

• 49:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  And I'm a child of divorce, and I really believe in joint custody. It's what I would have wanted. So I served up a joint custody agreement 50/50. And it came back blacklined with all of his time taken out.

• 49:46Oprah Winfrey?

  And his reason was that the children were older?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  He said they were fully formed human beings.

• 49:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  And that he was a great dad, but he was not. This was not going to be the next part of his life. He also thought it was better for them not to go back and forth.

• 50:01Oprah Winfrey?

  He didn't want them going back from household to household?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Household to household. But my youngest was 12. She really wanted a bedroom in his apartment, and that was really painful.

• 50:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Did he continue to engage with the children?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  He's always been very kind and sweet with them. He keeps in touch with them by text. They see each other for a dinner, for a hockey game. But he does not do the day-to-day parenting, the emotional stuff, the college applications, the Spanish test. That is not what he has done. He's stuck to that commitment to not being that kind of parent.

• 50:31Oprah Winfrey?

  As I was saying earlier, the thing that's hardest to reconcile for so many people is that the thing that I thought you were, you weren't.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:43Oprah Winfrey?

  And I remember when you all went back to New York.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 50:47Oprah Winfrey?

  And you're going back to the apartment.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 50:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And he met the girls there.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:51Oprah Winfrey?

  And he sees you on the street and he says, everything was great.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Yes, so this is in May.

• 50:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  We hadn't seen him since the sandwich.

• 50:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  And I thought, I run, he walks by me on the street. I think we're gonna have a conversation, something.

• 51:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Because he's just seen the girls.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  He's just seen the girls and the girls have had a really hard time. And he looks at me and he says, everything is fine. They're fine. Everything is fine. And again, I did not say anything back because I thought, he's not gonna give me anything. But I did wanna say, what are you talking about? Nothing about this is fine. This has been an emotional trauma for our family.

• 51:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, do you think perhaps maybe the girls tried to let him think everything was fine?

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Maybe. They may have tried to to act that way. But I think he really believed that if he said it enough times, that everything was fine, that it would be.

• 51:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. As I said, I know you didn't set out to write a guidebook. But it turns out through your own emotional devastation, you show a way forward. One of the things that impressed me is that even though you felt on some days like you couldn't get out of bed.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 52:03Oprah Winfrey?

  You forced yourself to do the walk.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Let's talk about that.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  A friend asked me just to walk like down the driveway. This is when I felt like I couldn't get out of bed, like a weighted blanket was on top of me. And I finally did it. I walked down the driveway and I thought, okay, I can do this. The fresh air feels good. The trees feel good to be in nature. And I went a little bit farther every day. It eventually became an eight mile walk every day. This was COVID, so we had more time.

• 52:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  And I would go one direction one day in a circle and the other direction the next day. And as I walked, I would rarely run into anybody or see anybody. And I would weep as I walked. And looking back on it, I think that I was literally walking through the pain. I was feeling every part of it. And that was really good for me. And I think moving my body, that sort of meditation of your feet on the pavement, was was helpful in kind of getting me just a little bit more alive, like a little bit better.

• 53:03Oprah Winfrey?

  So, you know, one of the reasons why we were comparing it to death, because there is a grieving that takes place.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:09Oprah Winfrey?

  You're grieving the life you had.

• 53:13Oprah Winfrey?

  And if you've been betrayed, you're grieving, how did this happen? And what did I miss?

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:17Oprah Winfrey?

  You're grieving the life you had, and you're also grieving the life you don't think you now will have.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Exactly, it's both.

• 53:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  It's both. And you're grieving the actual person who you miss.

• 53:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  And you're grieving the narrative that you've been telling yourself for years, that this person loved you.

• 53:34Oprah Winfrey?

  You don't fall out of love immediately, even though this is happening.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  And people assume you do. But I never had a chance to fall out of love with him. I had to do that on my own after he was gone. And that was very painful, because I saw him.

• 53:49Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that's a really important thing to say.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Because a lot of women, the moment you tell your friends.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Right, they think you're done.

• 53:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, then it's done, it's over.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and the friends are like, like, forget him, it's over.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 54:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Get him out now, yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Exactly, and I really was in love with this man. And it took a while. I kept, when I would see him at a graduation, it was like my hand wanted to hold his hand. And it took a while for my body to catch up to that.

• 54:16Oprah Winfrey?

  And how long before you were able to be able to release that?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  I think it took, it definitely took longer than a year. I would say maybe a year and a half.

• 54:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I think that's really important.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yep, it really did. And I think I kept having fantasies that this was some great mistake, and that he really regretted it, and he was really sad, and I had to.

• 54:38Oprah Winfrey?

  How long did you think that he was gonna call you and say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. I'm coming back?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  For a long time, I think, also almost a year. And I just kept thinking that he must be in pain and sad, too, and I don't think he was.

• 54:53Oprah Winfrey?

  No, he was bouncing up the steps when he came to tell the girls.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:57Oprah Winfrey?

  The thing that you saw in his countenance, his presence, you looked out the window and said, gosh, he looks really happy.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  He was elated.

• 55:04Oprah Winfrey?

  He was.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  He was.

• 55:05Oprah Winfrey?

  He was.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:06Oprah Winfrey?

  That's what's really hard to accept.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  It's so hard, so hard, because you are the opposite. You are on the bathroom floor.

• 55:12Oprah Winfrey?

  On the bathroom floor. You write on page 207, slowly over many months, as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in, joy born of replacing the not knowing with knowing, the nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control, all made easier, of course, by the fact that I had enough to feel secure to make my children secure. And I love this moment when you say. This is better than everything I lost. This is better than the life I thought I wanted. So what had transpired in all this?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  A number of things had transpired. I was then divorced. I was, I had returned to my maiden name. I was fully in charge of my own finances. I was now starting this life as a writer. And I never would have left my marriage. I never would have thought there was reason to leave my marriage. And I don't think I was self-actualized in my marriage. So it was almost like the universe delivered this to me so that I could end up in this new state, which it's a totally different kind of happiness, a totally different kind of joy. But I would choose this joy again and again.

• 56:24Oprah Winfrey?

  And you started to feel it in little increments, taking small steps.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:30Oprah Winfrey?

  When you, I think it was several months after he left, was it the summer when you started letting the kids come over?

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Something you wouldn't have done before?

• 56:39Speaker 02

  No, I would not have. I would have thought, oh, God, they're going to make a mess and it's too loud. And, and I just was a little more brittle. And they just started coming over in droves. I think kids can be sometimes more comfortable when it's just one parent.

• 56:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  And they were happy and they were loud and they were toasting things in the kitchen. And it was just so happy and joyful. And I found I was just so much more relaxed in it. I think because all these things that I had depended on, like these structures, had fallen away, I could be more relaxed. I didn't have like this tight grip on everything anymore. And I thought, okay, this is a silver lining, that I can be like this. And friends noticed too. They noticed that I was just a little easier, a little like I let things go more easily.

• 57:28Oprah Winfrey?

  You softened around the edges.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  I softened around the edges. I really did. And that felt much more like the true me.

• 57:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And so in the end, you learned about the stranger he was, but you had been also a stranger to yourself.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  I think that's exactly right. I think that the title really works in that way too, because I had really lost that self-knowledge, I think, in, in a marriage that I thought was very happy. But I had moved over those 20 years farther and farther away from. What I believe were my passions and talents and a true knowing of myself.

• 58:09Oprah Winfrey?

  And why had you done that, do you think?

• 58:12Speaker 02

  I think a couple of reasons. I think with three kids and the chaos of family that can happen. But I think in our situation, his career became so dominant. It was like the family enterprise and everything moved towards that. And that was why he missed parent teacher conferences and couldn't go to the birthday party on the weekend. And I think when that happens, it is very easy for the other parent to really lose sight of that.

• 58:39Oprah Winfrey?

  This passage felt so visceral to me. After you signed the divorce settlement, you write, "I thought I will let this go now. I will not live in this conflict anymore. I was successful for the most part in letting it go. I don't think about the details of our divorce. I don't focus on what was lost, what remains, what still brings a lump to my throat, a chill to my bones, is not about money. It's a possibility that there was a timetable, a clock, that I didn't hear ticking. It is his willingness to make me afraid when I was already devastated, already on the floor. It is what he made clear within weeks of leaving, that he believed my contributions to his career, to our family over 20 years amounted to nothing."

• 59:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. What do you now know were your contributions?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  I believe, I think women who are not working, taking care of kids, you know, have meaningful work in other ways. But when there is this family enterprise that you're supporting, I do think that's a huge contribution and that it should have been acknowledged in the divorce.

• 59:44Oprah Winfrey?

  I want to talk about this idea that runs through the book, that healing doesn't always come with reconciliation.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yes.

• 59:52Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, that's one of the things that comes clear here. How did you come to accept that you can heal even when the apology?

• 1:00:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Or the explanation, or the why did this happen to me never comes.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  It's it's very hard. It's very hard to to move beyond it when you don't have that kind of neat wrapping up. And an apology would have done it too, or an acknowledgement would have done it too. But I didn't get the explanation. I did not get the acknowledgement either of the pain that he had caused. So I think the only thing that worked was really just moving it to the side and really focusing on the type of work I wanted to do, the things like my my legal cases. And having sort of that existential peace with

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  a vacuum of knowing, you know, just sort of like parking it somewhere in my head. And the way I park it with him is what he said the first day, which is that a switch went off. And that's what I believe. I think a switch went off. There were the whispers over the years on the financial story. But I that's I think I just had to park it somewhere and then move on from it.

• 1:01:13Oprah Winfrey?

  And accept that that's it.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  I really just had to accept I wasn't going to get anything else.

• 1:01:17Oprah Winfrey?

  That you're never going to get the answer.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:01:19Oprah Winfrey?

  OK. So the New York Times recently published an interview with you. And when they reached out to your ex husband, he provided this statement. He said, while I disagree with many of her recollections, as well as her overall mischaracterization of my relationship with my children, I do not wish to comment in more detail in order to protect them from further violations of their privacy, other than to say that I continue to lovingly support and be lovingly supported by my children. What do you think of that response?

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  I was actually happy that he responded. There's been so much silence that I was glad that he spoke up. Said something. And I don't disagree with some of it. I I I think that he has been always loving with them and they've been loving and supportive of him. And I'm glad for that. I'm really grateful for that, that they have that kind of rapport. But I don't think I mischaracterized him in the book either during the marriage or after the marriage. I was very, very careful with my words because I knew my children would be reading this.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  And what I hope-

• 1:02:20Oprah Winfrey?

  What do your children think of the book?

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  They're funny. I printed it and put it on my desk and I said, "Come read it whenever you want to." And it sat there for three weeks. And then I found my girls reading it in bed and then it was on the floor. I think kids just don't take it as seriously as we all do.

• 1:02:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  I think they're very proud of me. And they're also very loving and supportive of their dad. So it's like, they have both things.

• 1:02:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  But I think that what I hope I've done, which felt really important to me, is to recreate what he was as a father during all those years and all the wonderful things that he did with them. Because when it ends the way mine did, all of that kind of gets erased for me and for kids and for him. And I wanted that-

• 1:03:08Oprah Winfrey?

  But he was there chopping the wood that night.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  He was. He was doing all of that. And he was clamming and he was-

• 1:03:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Doing all the things.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  -taking them to musicals. And I didn't want that to be lost. And I hope that some part of him is glad that there's a record of that.

• 1:03:22Oprah Winfrey?

  What is your relationship with your husband, ex-husband?

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  It is cordial. We will communicate with, he sent me the flood insurance bill that he received for the house, or we will communicate about my youngest's graduation, which is in May.

• 1:03:40Oprah Winfrey?

  And you will both go to the graduation?

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  We will both go to the graduation. Very important to her that he be there. So there's no anger and it's cordial, but it is not close. And I don't think it will ever be close.

• 1:03:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Are you, I was saying to your mother, I know she's proud of you, are you proud of yourself for writing this book?

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  I am. I am. I'm really, I can't quite believe it, actually. I can't quite believe that I have- I announced now to the entire world that my husband left me, that this is now in print everywhere. It's kind of an embarrassing story, but I have always seen the purpose in it. I've always imagined that one reader who's going through it, who feels very alone, and that this might reach them. And I just am so excited and proud that I took each step and that I was able to write this and get it published and that it's now out there in the world. Yes.

• 1:04:39Oprah Winfrey?

  It's out there in the world. Bestseller, bestseller. Thank you, Bell Burden. Thank you for joining me on my porch. And thank you to you, Amanda, for being a part of our conversation. I know that by sharing your story, I mean, because so many women have already talked about it, that you have validated the experience of countless, countless women who've been betrayed, who have felt abandoned, who were lied to, who didn't understand, who were told they were crazy. You're giving hope, and that is such a beautiful thing.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:05:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Strangers. It's a memoir of marriage, available wherever books are sold. But you're going to see your story in here if you've been through any kind of betrayal, any kind of divorce. Thank you.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:05:26Oprah Winfrey?

  You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.