Jenny Erikson is trapped! No, not in an unhappy marriage. That is stage 4 in having it all. Please try to keep up. Jenny is currently in stage 5, moving quickly to stage 6:
5: Is forced to divorce the bad man who made her unhaaapy by doing everything she demanded he do.
6: Basks in the drama of a newly divorced woman, wronged by her ex husband and the society which forced her to marry the wrong man.
Steps 7 & 8 are just around the corner, although she has a great deal of discretion on how long she chooses to spend in step 7 and of course a great deal of uncertainty about step 8.
7: Has sex with the most attractive men who are (still) willing to have sex with her. Since this misguided attempt at reliving the glory of her twenties is generally an immense disappointment, she then wants to quickly move on to:
8: Finds her secret multimilionaire hunky handyman who insists that she marry him, thus returning her to the higher social status of wife.
Jenny has made it her life’s work to be a living breathing manosphere cliché. First she married her beta orbiter. Then she had her two children in wedlock while writing about how she loved her husband for his foot rubs. Then 9 months after writing Happy 10th Anniversary to My Darling Husband Leif she suddenly discovered that she had been trapped in an unhaaapy marriage for years. You can’t make this stuff up.
The real problem for Jenny is the profound contradiction between her trademark claim of placing God first while setting out to be the lowest form of mommyblogger, the professional divorcée. Her signature twist as a professional divorcée is that she does this from the conservative, pro God, pro stay married perspective.
This is a trap of her own creation. If she wants to continue to receive the attention fix of her chosen profession, she will be faced with the unrelenting demand to write posts about how her divorce has harmed her children, how her household experiences chaos without a father/husband, how much she likes being divorced, and the ups and downs of her quest for more men (see her head start on this essential topic here). This is just the baseline publish or perish requirement for a professional divorcée mommy blogger though. To keep her signature twist, she will also have to write posts moralizing about marriage and the importance of staying married even if you aren’t happy.
Identity crisis
As an entertainment site for mothers, The Stir has two fundamental demographics: I Love My Husband and Proud Single Moms. Moving from the former category to the latter (and back) isn’t a problem for a mommyblogger, but Jenny can’t claim the former as a professional divorcée, and can’t claim the latter while claiming to place God first, moralizing about marriage, etc.
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