At just 24, Michel Janse’s divorce came like a bolt from the blue. Janse, a content creator from Texas, discovered her husband had been cheating on her — a betrayal that explained the growing distance she’d felt in the final year of their three-year union. While processing the divorce, Janse began sharing confessional YouTube videos about the experience, describing herself as being in a “narcissistic and emotionally abusive marriage” and offering small refrains of hope, like “the future is brighter” and “I found love after divorce.”
In the corners of the internet where young divorcees congregate, Janse began to notice a language of empowerment surrounding the ending of a marriage. It gave her a sense of safety. “I saw a TikTok of a young couple high-fiving each other after getting a divorce,” Janse tells me, now 28 and living in San Diego with her new husband, Jordy. “I think our generation sees divorce as a celebration that we didn’t waste time in something that wasn’t serving us,” she says. “We figured out it wasn’t right. We don’t want to make ourselves miserable for another decade because of pride.”
