Belle Burden’s “Strangers”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems he was very contemptuous of her. I wonder if it's because she sat at home all those years despite having a law degree. But he does sound like a jerk regardless, especially considering the "brushes with the law" as a teen and the way she says he said he wanted to "protect" her in the early days of their relationship--that read as weird to me and would have caused me to question this person's integrity.

Doubtful. He could have been contemptuous of her for her privilege or for any other number of reasons, but that is a typical arrangement for high-earning males. More than one rainmaker male partner in my NY law firm has married a female lawyer who then leaves her practice and becomes a SAHM.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this differently than a lot of other commenters and don’t necessarily judge him leaving the kids.

I was married to someone with a personality disorder and one of his favorite threats was to threaten to take the kids from me. This was despite me being the primary caregiver.

Would it be better if she was forced to lose primary custody and not see her kids half the time? I believe a child needs both parents, but there is some nuance when one parent has been the primary parent all along.


While she comes from money, she was mostly illiquid, and he was working 24-7 to support that lifestyle. I am familiar with that NY finance lifestyle and you can’t have it both ways. If you want the country house, private school and nice apartment then your husband is mostly absent unless you have generational wealthy to use. It’s not surprising he was mostly absent. I highly doubt she ever offered to return to work so he could scale back and spend time with the kids. She instead probably wanted that Colony Club membership more. Then they get divorced and it makes sense she continued on as the primary and really only true parent.

IMHO the gentlemanly thing to do wasn’t for him to leave her AND take her kids half the time while he was at it. He probably thought he was choosing the lesser of two evils.

I’ve known plenty of these NY women and they are vapid, shallow and their main priority is the lifestyle and social life. I’d be shocked if she’s not similar.

Burden says she emptied her trusts to buy their residential properties which were jointly titled and she also contributed to their family expenses with her money. She also did pro bono work as a lawyer and has ramped it up since her divorce. All that the husband did was use her family name and connections to amass his own wealth which he protected with a prenup.

Pro bono work and paid for homes doesn’t fund a NYC socialite lifestyle. It requires significant generational wealth or a husband at a hedge fund/private equity.

I have NY friends living similar lifestyles who are spending a million dollars a year on Nannies, vacations, private clubs, private schools etc.

Private school for two kids and the obligatory two nannies is $400k a year after tax money.

She was not funding that lifestyle. His job was.

That's not true. She (her family) paid for the private schools and she contributed 50% of their expenses every month. He was meticulous about that.

Ouch does she say that in the book that she contributed 50%?

Yes joint bank account. Each month he would transfer a fixed amount and she'd transfer the same. 50-50. Even though she paid for the houses from her trust, her parents paid for the kids' tuition, and she put a lot of kid expenses on the credit card she paid herself out of her family's money. He didn't support her at all.

He sounds like a leech.

I hope she didn’t pay for the properties entirely out of her trust.

If she did pay for the properties he really had it both ways - got to keep all his earnings plus get the home equity plus get grandparents to pay for all the schooling.

I do think that the partner marrying a wealthier person needs to protect themselves with a prenup but this one was really aggressive! He got to keep all his money, have her contribute 50% of living expenses, no need to save for college or pay for private school, and then also got 50% of the real estate that he may not even have contributed to. all that AND he got her services as a SAHM and family connections.

I’m in a similar situation but with no prenup and I would have been just as bad off if I’d had that kind of prenup. My liquid assets also got tied up in real estate and we have a significant, massive income differential that came later in our marriage and our life was subsidized for a brief time before that by my family’s funds.

The only way to truly be protected in this situation is with a post up, but by then you are so legally and financially vulnerable that a cunning spouse is not going to sign one.

Rather than find 50 ways to parse how she could have known better, why are we not wondering about his morality? Really frustrating to read.

She was an adult and a lawyer, who came from a world of money and financial planning, at the time she signed the prenup. Sometimes we have to hold adults accountable for their bad decisions. To me this is one of the less sympathetic parts of the story. You signed a crummy prenup even though you had all resources on your side? And then you were held to the prenup? Oh, that’s what happens.

[Anonymous]

This is a chilling story, but it looks like Burden has a solid support system. She’s close to her mother and stepmother, and she has her kids. I don’t know how one copes mentally though. I’d be questioning the foundations of my existence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems he was very contemptuous of her. I wonder if it's because she sat at home all those years despite having a law degree. But he does sound like a jerk regardless, especially considering the "brushes with the law" as a teen and the way she says he said he wanted to "protect" her in the early days of their relationship--that read as weird to me and would have caused me to question this person's integrity.

Doubtful. He could have been contemptuous of her for her privilege or for any other number of reasons, but that is a typical arrangement for high-earning males. More than one rainmaker male partner in my NY law firm has married a female lawyer who then leaves her practice and becomes a SAHM.

This isn’t applicable to this couple. Lawyers aren’t considered that high earning of jobs in NY, especially in finance circles.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why did she even marry him? I have a friend an immigrant from Eastern Europe. She married a trust funder and they have the opposite arrangement: her earnings are only hers and he pays rent/mortgage. She only marginally contributes to living expenses.
She’s a lawyer and already amassed a fortune, saving every year almost $200k and dumping it in stocks

Good arrangement, seems fair. Since Belle was the trustfund baby in this situation, that explains the pre-nup. Not going to cry for a woman who didn't work for years and has millions in real estate.

She had no idea when she signed the prenup that he would go on to make that much money. Always risks in that respect.

It’s unclear to me how big her trusts and inheritance actually are though …

At least $10m if she was able to buy him out of both houses.

What’s maddening is not him retaining his earnings it’s him pocketing the appreciation on houses and emptying her trusts (which are HIS kids trusts in the end). Where her lawyers were looking ? It’s a predatory prenup and they should have advised better to state that appreciation on whatever is funded with trust remains in trust

Who knows how it was reviewed? Belle has a BA from Harvard and a law degree from NYU, but she says she was "in love" and nothing else mattered at that point. Plus, if you've never had to worry about money in your life, it probably didn't register to her that one day she may need to worry when her husband fleeces her for all her assets.

They were engaged in 3 months and married soon after. Definitely a rush job

The way he seduced her when she was living with her boyfriend. He is all red flags.

I ak guessing she figured she would be the wealthier one and figured he could keep what he earned since he grew up poorer. I dont think the prenup specified that she pay half of expenses, I think he just enforced it as “fair” and she went along with it thinking why would it matter, they were in it together.

He hid all his hedge fund earnings in a separate account and bought himself Rolexes and fancy wine, while constantly questioning all of her spending to the point where she would buy Christmas gifts and clothes for the kids using her money and hide it from him. Then, after he walks out, he tries to enforce the prenup, taking half the values of the homes she paid for and not sharing any of his hedge fund money. He would have left her and the kids without enough money to stay in either of the homes that she originally purchased. Fortunately, he backed down at the last minute.

This is hardly unusual at all - just on a different scale given their money.

Plenty of SAHMs across American have to limit their spending while their husband buys toys like a new iPhone, golf clubs etc. Except in their world this is a Rolex and she unlike most women, has family women to use to purchase children’s clothing.

It stinks but there are financial limitations when you don’t have a job unless you have your own money or family money. This isn’t something unique to Belle

[Anonymous]

I don’t feel bad for her. I’ve known so many women in these circles and they are incredibly focused on their lifestyle and social life. Very little attention is paid to their husband and they don’t live what most people would consider a normal life.

From knowing some of the husbands, it’s also obvious they aren’t that happy. It’s as if they are just pawns in life and their wives run around frantically from one social event to another. It’s all about the next luxury vacation, dressing kids in expensive British looking clothing, attending parties that are photographed and private school admissions. From the outside it looks fabulous but I can tell some of the husbands would prefer a nice girlfriend who gives them attention and wants to have sex instead of take photos on a boat off Nantucket.

I do sympathize with her since this is the only world she knows and she likely has no idea why he left her. It’s very obvious to me!

I don’t judge him for marrying money. Any man who is ambitious enough to work in finance in NY and command those earnings is going to want the finer things in life and try to capitalize on marriage. This goes with the territory. You can’t have it both ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did she even marry him? I have a friend an immigrant from Eastern Europe. She married a trust funder and they have the opposite arrangement: her earnings are only hers and he pays rent/mortgage. She only marginally contributes to living expenses.
She’s a lawyer and already amassed a fortune, saving every year almost $200k and dumping it in stocks

Good arrangement, seems fair. Since Belle was the trustfund baby in this situation, that explains the pre-nup. Not going to cry for a woman who didn't work for years and has millions in real estate.

She had no idea when she signed the prenup that he would go on to make that much money. Always risks in that respect.

It’s unclear to me how big her trusts and inheritance actually are though …

At least $10m if she was able to buy him out of both houses.

What’s maddening is not him retaining his earnings it’s him pocketing the appreciation on houses and emptying her trusts (which are HIS kids trusts in the end). Where her lawyers were looking ? It’s a predatory prenup and they should have advised better to state that appreciation on whatever is funded with trust remains in trust

Who knows how it was reviewed? Belle has a BA from Harvard and a law degree from NYU, but she says she was "in love" and nothing else mattered at that point. Plus, if you've never had to worry about money in your life, it probably didn't register to her that one day she may need to worry when her husband fleeces her for all her assets.

They were engaged in 3 months and married soon after. Definitely a rush job

The way he seduced her when she was living with her boyfriend. He is all red flags.

I ak guessing she figured she would be the wealthier one and figured he could keep what he earned since he grew up poorer. I dont think the prenup specified that she pay half of expenses, I think he just enforced it as “fair” and she went along with it thinking why would it matter, they were in it together.

When they met, she was making more than him in terms of paycheck as a more senior law firm associate (plus she had family money).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a chilling story, but it looks like Burden has a solid support system. She’s close to her mother and stepmother, and she has her kids. I don’t know how one copes mentally though. I’d be questioning the foundations of my existence.

Her life has hardly changed. She just can’t say she is married and take photos with him at parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t feel bad for her. I’ve known so many women in these circles and they are incredibly focused on their lifestyle and social life. Very little attention is paid to their husband and they don’t live what most people would consider a normal life.

From knowing some of the husbands, it’s also obvious they aren’t that happy. It’s as if they are just pawns in life and their wives run around frantically from one social event to another. It’s all about the next luxury vacation, dressing kids in expensive British looking clothing, attending parties that are photographed and private school admissions. From the outside it looks fabulous but I can tell some of the husbands would prefer a nice girlfriend who gives them attention and wants to have sex instead of take photos on a boat off Nantucket.

I do sympathize with her since this is the only world she knows and she likely has no idea why he left her. It’s very obvious to me!

I don’t judge him for marrying money. Any man who is ambitious enough to work in finance in NY and command those earnings is going to want the finer things in life and try to capitalize on marriage. This goes with the territory. You can’t have it both ways.

I also know men like this who resent their wives because no matter how much inherited wealth or assets they have, the husband usually still feels social pressure to have a serious job while the wife doesn’t work at all. That’s not to say they want a wife with a big job, but there’s definitely some resentment.

[Anonymous]

Covid seems to have triggered a lot of abrupt marriage breakdowns. The British cookbook author Bee Wilson also wrote about how her husband abruptly walked out one day during the beginning of the pandemic, after bringing her her usual tea in bed and sending her his daily I love you text with 5 heart emojis. She says that he later left her a letter admitting there was another woman, and then she learned that he had used one of her recipes to make dinner to impress the OW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t feel bad for her. I’ve known so many women in these circles and they are incredibly focused on their lifestyle and social life. Very little attention is paid to their husband and they don’t live what most people would consider a normal life.

From knowing some of the husbands, it’s also obvious they aren’t that happy. It’s as if they are just pawns in life and their wives run around frantically from one social event to another. It’s all about the next luxury vacation, dressing kids in expensive British looking clothing, attending parties that are photographed and private school admissions. From the outside it looks fabulous but I can tell some of the husbands would prefer a nice girlfriend who gives them attention and wants to have sex instead of take photos on a boat off Nantucket.

I do sympathize with her since this is the only world she knows and she likely has no idea why he left her. It’s very obvious to me!

I don’t judge him for marrying money. Any man who is ambitious enough to work in finance in NY and command those earnings is going to want the finer things in life and try to capitalize on marriage. This goes with the territory. You can’t have it both ways.

No one's asking you to feel bad for her, but you have no idea what their sex life was like. WTF. Also, was he preemptively screwing her on the pre-nup in anticipation that he was going to be in an unhappy marriage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who is the affair partner and her husband? Someone must have the tea.

Reddit suggests it is someone at Arden with the initials TS (the post was taken down, I think she must have a team trying to scrub things)

[Anonymous]

Many of these posts strike me as deeply sad. Infidelity constitutes a form of trauma, and trauma is processed physiologically and psychologically in largely the same way regardless of socioeconomic status. The body experiences shock, grief, loss, and disbelief independent of financial security. Wealth does not buffer the nervous system from those responses. The fact that some cannot relate is evident—and, frankly, that distance is something I envy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who found out about a long term affair just a few weeks into COVID, I so related when I read her piece in NYT.

Also- was totally blindsided with kids the same age as hers.

The entire world was shutting down and in flux and to have this happen right then….it was something. So much further isolating since nobody was meeting in person at that time and you were isolated at home.

Sorry hope you were able to divorce and receive a decent settlement!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Covid seems to have triggered a lot of abrupt marriage breakdowns. The British cookbook author Bee Wilson also wrote about how her husband abruptly walked out one day during the beginning of the pandemic, after bringing her her usual tea in bed and sending her his daily I love you text with 5 heart emojis. She says that he later left her a letter admitting there was another woman, and then she learned that he had used one of her recipes to make dinner to impress the OW.

Oh, wow! That’s so wrong! Off to go down another rabbit hole.

For those that have read Burden’s book, does it seem like she’s in a good place mentally now? Hope she feels some relief that this user is no longer part of her life.