I took his words to heart, silently vowing to support Nancy and Terry, to remind Nancy of Terry’s strengths some day when she might vent to me after a marital spat. Despite their vows and my support, despite 10 years and two sons, their marriage couldn’t be held together. And now, despite 11 years and two daughters, neither could mine.

The women I grew up with, like most women today, have tangible, marketable skills. One is an electrician, another a graphic artist, a third a nurse. Inside or outside a marriage, they can support themselves. I, too, am a well-educated woman with a decent work history who actually made more money than my husband when we married. I prided myself on being self-sufficient. But we both wanted someone to be home with the kids and we decided it would be me, so I stopped working and let him support us. And now I’ve ended up in the same vulnerable position I once thought was the fate only of women who married straight out of high school, with no job experience beyond summer gigs at the Dairy Queen.

Not that I would have done it differently. I have valued my time with our daughters more than any other experience I’ve had. But for a stay-at-home mom like me, divorce isn’t just divorce. It’s more like divorce plus being fired from a job, because you can no longer afford to keep your job at home, the one you gave up your career for.

When I worked as an English professor at the community college, we called people like me displaced homemakers. I can now imagine legions of gingham-aproned Betty Crockers spinning perpetually, forever tracing their feather dusters across imaginary furniture, never ceasing to “make” the “home” that is no longer there.

Now that my income has dwindled to child support and a meager “maintenance” check, I must leave this job and get a “real” one. I add up our expenses for a month and then subtract his contribution. The remaining total indicates that to keep the girls and myself out of debt, I will need to net a third more than the most I’ve ever made.

And divorce is its own job, with its course of study, its manuals. One of the many divorce books heaped on the floor beside my bed urges me to develop two stories about the breakup: a private one and a public one. I’m told that I should practice a few sentences that I can recite (in the grocery store, on the playground) without excessive emotion, a sort of campaign slogan for my divorce. And it does seem as if much of my daily work involves negotiating the snowy pass between my private and public self.