After peaking during the 1970s and 1980s, much has been made of the fact that divorce rates are now on the decline—especially among millennials. Still, if you’re thinking about splitting with your spouse, or you have already, sunny statistics aren’t exactly useful. Throughout this weeklong series, Glamour.com explores what it means to uncouple in a modern world.
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The first step is to just lie down. You can deal with the rest of it—the moving, the lawyers, the "what do I do with these old letters?"—later, but for now you should just lie down.
Then put one of these over your eyes. That’s better, isn’t it? You don’t have to see or think, just lie down somewhere with a blue gel pack on your eyes and see how that feels. Dig into it: Consider an acupressure mat—one of those “maybe wellness, maybe nothing” purchases that works for me, for some reason, and that I now love. Look, now you can lie down on the little spike bed and cool your eyes off. This is where your post-divorce skin-care journey begins.
After you’ve been on the ground for 7 to 12 days, it is time to focus your attention on looking and feeling better. Start by sinking deeper into your post-breakup depression. (Life hack: The fast track to a glow up is looking very bad for a few weeks prior.) Throw your mascara in the garbage, it is months if not years past its expiration date, and besides, you can’t bat your lashes at Nick Kroll through your laptop, much though you wish it were so. Rustle up some breakouts with a few Night Burgers (regular burgers, ordered at 4:00 A.M.). Nurture dark circles by lurking on Instagram in the wee hours. Stop drinking water for four days or so.
Then run into an acquaintance at the store and tell them you’re “having a hard time, but I know I’m going to figure it out…. I’m reading a lot of books.” Recommend The Four Agreements, buy some coconut oil, whimper the word “self-care,” and get the hell out of there.
When you get home, look in the mirror. You might feel a deep melancholy. You might feel you’ve lost years of your life. “If only I had access to some kind of time machine, or whatever potion was responsible for Benjamin Button,” you might say. Well: Benjamin Button actually had a rare disease; educate yourself. And if you got a time machine we all know you’d have to mostly use it to hunt down Hitler as an infant, so turning back the clock is not an option.
What you can do: adopt a 10-step Korean skin-care routine. Learn what an essence is (this is a nice one), experiment with emulsions (this, here), and buy a few ampoules, because why not? Put a sheet mask on and get in the bath, a variant on “just lying down” that makes you seem like a much more together woman. Remember that coconut oil that seemed like a good idea at the time? It was. Throw some of that in there, plus a few drops of whatever essential oils you have lying around. The time-consuming nature of this routine will take up all that extra time you have after making dinner now that you’re cooking for one.
Over the next few months, your skin will appear plumper and more luminous, and your psychic and emotional wounds will begin to heal. You might even consider applying highlighter again. You will do a few adult education classes and probably get a bit into horoscopes. You will go for long walks with your mom and let your friends cook for you. You will start to sleep better, and you will drop a few steps of your 10-step skin-care routine. (Ampoules tend to be the first to go.) You will know you’re ready to download Tinder when you have winnowed the process down to a single cleanse, tone, serum, and moisturizer.
At this point, you should feel free to supplement with some nontraditional skin-care solutions: Not many dermatologists will tell you this, but serums actually absorb better if you’re listening to the finale from The Last Five Years on repeat for the 12th time. Space out your product applications by consuming one to three glasses of red wine between each step. Steam your face over a pot of hot spaghetti. Have a small relapse into sadness and scream into the rain. It can be very hydrating!
Of course you’re going to relapse, I’m sorry. You’ll probably even start double-cleansing again, and that’s OK. If you get the urge to call your ex, or worse, run to them, consider these hand and foot masks, which should keep you immobile until the urge passes. Once your hands and feet are silky smooth and you’ve deleted that intense email you’ve been not-quite-sending but drunkenly editing for many months, it’s time to add a new product: sunscreen. It was previously irrelevant, as it was impossible to leave the house during daylight hours (hard and risky; he could be anywhere), but you’re a free woman now. You deserve to walk in the light without fear of free radicals, sun spots, or the chance of bumping into someone from your past at the café.
One day you’ll have such a good date you’ll forget to wash your face after. Or you’ll be out with friends and things will feel so good and so normal and so easy, you’ll get a bit wild on martinis and pass out in your makeup. Or you’ll wake up in a new person’s bed for the third time in a week and think “I really have to start stockpiling Sephora samples to keep in my purse.” You’ll splash yourself with cold water and brush your teeth with your index finger. Next week, when you get pimples all over your chin from making out too much, that someone will think it’s charming, and you’ll decide you agree. Anyway, when you get home, just wash your face and use Good Genes when the mood strikes. That’s basically all that works, anyway.
Monica Heisey is a Toronto-based screenwriter best known for her work on Schitt's Creek, Baroness Von Sketch Show, and Gary and His Demons.
