On a Sunday night, a week before our one-year anniversary, my husband came home and handed me his wedding ring. He’d cheated, he told me, and “didn’t deserve it anymore.” He wanted to break up.
I felt betrayed, of course. And terrified to tell my friends and family that my relationship had fallen apart. I was 25; he was 24. In the early months of our marriage, we were giddy. Everything felt new. We’d invite people over for dinner and get ready together in the mornings. We established a happy routine. But then…I started working late. He started staying out late on the weekends. I was spending most of my time alone.
Just that past weekend, we’d gotten into a series of arguments before a day trip with his family. He got upset and yelled at me in front of everyone, then I got upset and shut down for the rest of the day. On our drive home, as he drunkenly dozed in the passenger seat, I steered the car down a country road and wondered, When did things get so hard? Still, everyone had told me that the first year of marriage is the most difficult, so I assumed that my experience was common. A part of me thought, Maybe this is just how marriage will be for me.
I spent the morning after my husband’s confession sobbing between work calls, and that afternoon, I packed a duffle and went to my parents’. After sleeping in my childhood bedroom for a few weeks and making dozens of pros-and-cons lists, I had to face reality. He and I had very different expectations for our relationship. And although the mere idea of him left me enraged and disgusted, at least on one point, he was right. It was time for a divorce.
“Can I get an annulment if I’ve been married less than a year?” I googled late one night. This turned up some confusing results, so I streamlined the query: “How to get a divorce.”
The search results were surprisingly grim. Even though we had only been married for a short time, had no children, and didn’t own any property together, in our home state of North Carolina, we couldn’t quickly part ways. It had taken just an hour and $60 to get our marriage license, now, according to state law and a mandatory separation period, we were doomed to stay married for another entire year.
And so what should have been a cut-and-dried breakup would become a drawn out, emotionally complicated mess that left my ex and me unwillingly enmeshed in each other’s lives. (Don’t get me started on when he got engaged to someone else…while we were still forcibly married.)
According to the law, married people in North Carolina who want a no-fault divorce–meaning neither partner is to blame for the breakup–have to live in separate households for one year and a day. If they spend even one night in the same place, the clock starts over. In that time, they can work out the terms of their separation—negotiate custody or divide up property if they own any—but mostly, they just wait. Then the couple is free to file a complaint with the court, pay the fee, and…wait another 30 days. Yes, North Carolina also has a “cooling off period” between when divorce papers are filed with the court and the legal separation can be finalized. The last step is a hearing in front of a judge.
Only seven other states have these lengthy separation periods, and only South Carolina’s is longer than ours (though many states do require a cooling off period of a month or two). Our rule is nearly 100 years old, and while the reasoning behind it isn’t well known, the impact is clear: make it harder for people to get divorced.
Plenty of people—including some North Carolina lawmakers—can see that no one benefits from an entire year spent in relationship limbo. In 2023, legislators proposed a bill that would cut the separation period in half. But so far, the law hasn’t changed. Instead, while I endured the separation period, bold names in this election cycle were arguing that getting rid of my cheating husband and getting on with my life should be even harder. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson called no-fault divorce a “scheme” Americans have been convinced to accept and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has said it’s an “assault on the institution of marriage.” An Oklahoma republican introduced a bill that would eliminate no-fault divorce in the state and the Texas and Nebraska Republican Parties have also proposed restrictions.
As I waited for my relationship to officially end, I felt stuck and frustrated, constantly reminded of my ex and our breakup. At medical appointments, I had to use his last name. When I did my taxes, I had to identify as “married.” Around town, people would ask, “How’s your husband?” and I’d do mental gymnastics. Should I pretend we were still together-together to avoid more questions, or should I answer truthfully and risk oversharing and a long explanation?
Still, I feel lucky. The hardest parts of my lengthy separation period were emotional. This same law can trap women in abusive marriages while they fight to prove they actually, really, truly need a divorce. This could mean they stay isolated from friends and family, struggle to become financially independent, and endure threats to their mental health and physical safety for much longer than they otherwise would have.
On February 1, 2023, I woke up to a text from a friend that read, “HAPPY DIVORCE MONTH!!!!” My year of separation was almost over…or so I’d thought. I hadn’t realized it takes 30 days for the filed papers to be finalized. And that more delays would pile up: The post office had trouble serving me divorce papers. It then took another 20 days to get that hearing with a judge scheduled.
When the day—May 15—finally came, my actual divorce took 15 minutes, via an email from my attorney’s assistant. The subject line read, “You are divorced.”
Overjoyed at my newfound freedom, I decided to have a party. Two of my friends hosted a “funeral” for my marriage at their house. They hung gold mylar balloons that read “BOY BYE” and bought me a sash that read “Just Divorced.” We wore black dresses, pillbox hats, veils, and gloves, and we toasted—to divorce, to my attorney, to cheating ex-husbands. One group we did not cheer for? The reactionary politicians fighting against my right to quickly leave an unhappy marriage. Before I tried to split from my husband, I never imagined that my right to a frictionless, speedy divorce would influence the candidates I support. Now, there’s yet another issue driving me to the polls.
I can’t say whether I would’ve felt so hurt by my now-ex husband’s actions if we’d been able to split up sooner, but I do know that much of the stress and pain I experienced happened in the more than a year I spent waiting to cut him loose. Now, if I ever do get married again, I won’t just be celebrating the beginning of a new partnership, I’ll also be cheering the fact that—after too many months of sadness, frustration, and effort—I was able to get a divorce at all.
Cheyenne is an Indigenous storyteller from North Carolina based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s a member of the Coharie Tribe. She is interested in sharing stories from rural communities and Indigenous people, mainly in the American South.
