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Hello Crush,
Thank you to all the CRUSH Readers who reached out after reading my year end CRUSH Letter. The one where I told you why I had been away for a spell. That my beloved father had died.
I am still feeling some pretty heavy weight in my chest over it. My own metaphysical form of that nasty flu that everybody is getting. A resilient bug that has nestled into my heart, found a crevice it likes. “I’ll just hang out here for a bit, thanks. You’ll barely even know I’m around!” Except I do. Especially with all the intense geopolitics happening right now. (Long time readers know that I spent many hours over the last decade discussing geopolitics with my late father, who taught a geopolitics class at a local college. I wrote a story for you about this a couple years ago, but I took it down to work on it more, now that he’s gone.)
But I’m fine. Usually I’m fine. He was 89 after all.
I am going to continue (on my own) to engage deeply in understanding the world through a geopolitical lens. Inspired by @HarryBakerPoet, I wrote a list of “Achievable New Year’s Resolutions.” One of them is to read geopolitical histories in 2026 (that one is listed after adding pink ostrich feathers to a decades-old red dress in my closet).
Oh, and I hungrily gulped up Belle Burden’s just-released memoir that’s getting so much media spin. I was floored. My reaction is below.
Happy New Year, CRUSHEs!
I appreciate your patience while I’ve been dealing with my family’s loss, and I appreciate you being here.
In This Letter.
+To Add Pink Ostrich Feathers to My Red Dress. Achievable New Year’s Resolutions.
+Some Initial, Unfiltered Thoughts on Belle Burden’s Divorce Memoir.
+A Selection of Excellent Short Novels for Your Long Weekend.
+dishing.
+Social Media I Loved This Week.
+Our Song of the Week
To Add Ostrich Feathers to My Red Dress: Achievable New Year’s Resolutions by Dish Stanley
Inspired by @harrybakerpoet’s list.
Resolutions I‘m pretty sure I can achieve this year:
To add pink ostrich feathers to the red dress I just rediscovered in my ridiculously, haphazardly organized storage unit.
To read a book about the history of each of Iran, Russia, India and China.
To say “I’m listening” a lot.
To be more patient with my mother.
To be open to finding a new close friend, or letting one find me.
To master sheet pan pizza topped with mushrooms and pepperoni. One like my sister’s, where the crust is crusty and done, but not too done.
To teach Koko how to tell me when she needs to go outside before she starts circling for a spot inside.
To organize either my inbox or my storage unit (but not both, which would be beyond the scope of “achievable” in the sense in which I mean it here, which is that I will actually do it at some point this year).
To generously interpret other people’s otherwise ambiguous actions in. Especially my brother’s.
To finish creating my list of favorite shops in Paris.
To approach every date with optimism, an open heart and curiosity.
Related (or not): to continue my search for exceptional sex toys.
I’m curious to hear about your “Achievable 2026 Resolutions.” Want to share?
Unfiltered Thoughts About Strangers, Belle Burden’s Divorce Memoir. By Dish Stanley
Strangers is a memoir about how the author’s husband of 20 years shot out of their marriage like a bullet out of one of his hunting rifles without so much as a polite warning to signal he was moving off.
I should warn you, CRUSHes, that I just finished Strangers an hour ago, having started it yesterday. I’m close to deadline for getting this CRUSH Letter out, so these represent my immediate, unfiltered thoughts. There are no spoilers here that aren’t already out there in the media kerfuffle over their high-profile divorce and her memoir. - Dish
“I don’t know why he left. I don’t think I ever will.” Belle Burden
In its own very civilized way, Strangers is unnerving as hell to read.
I had pre-ordered Burden’s memoir when it was featured in the BBC’s list of the “40 Most Exciting Books to Look Forward to in 2026.” It “charts the collapse of a 20-year marriage … and is based on the author’s viral New York Times Modern Love essay.“ I hadn’t yet read the viral essay, but I did then because, as CRUSH Readers know, I am obsessed with the mysterious ways of love, how it ebbs and flows, soothes in one moment and crashes in the next.
Strangers arrived two days ago. I finished it in twenty-four hours.
In it, Burden wonders how a marriage that began with such evident alignment could crash abruptly, without warning, two decades later. She tells us she had no idea that her long-term husband and father of their three children was dissatisfied in their marriage. He had never voiced even the smallest reservation about his family life. He walked out of their Martha’s Vineyard estate one morning, texted her later to say “I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t.” And later: “I feel like a switch has flipped. I’m done.”
With that, he swiftly gave up her, their life together, custody of their kids, both their homes. He never told her why. In response to her many attempts to get an explanation why, he offered nothing.
The night before she had received a startling message from an unknown caller that said “I am sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife.”
I’ll admit I was suspicious of her contention — that she didn’t know anything was wrong in her decades-long marriage. How could a woman be so out of touch? If she didn’t know, I thought, it’s because she didn’t want to know. The signs are always there, I believed, if you’re paying attention. I have always been that woman who scoffs at divorced male friends who say that they “had no idea“ that their ex-wife was unhappy. And until Strangers, it had always only been men who‘ve said that. Men who were too ultra-focused on their careers, their competitive extra-curriculars to pay attention when their wives told them they were unhappy, that they wanted things to change.
I read Strangers as a mystery, bordering on feverishly, as if I were a sleuth spotting clues the author had missed in her own long marriage. Burden, despite her obvious desperation, presents the facts fairly, often even generously toward her ex-husband even, and in detail.
And if I’m being as honest as Burden herself is, I read it as if I had something at stake. If I were able to see what she wasn’t then I, it followed (as a widow actively out dating), would be safe from her fate. I read it feverishly, as if reading it could somehow keep me safe from the dangers of loving somebody who turned out to be a stranger. Safe from future abandonment.
Any married woman reading Strangers might feel the same gnawing fear in her gut, I imagine: “Could this happen to me?”
Continue reading here
A Selection of Excellent Short Novels for Your Long Weekend. By Dish Stanley
A horror story, erotica and a lesser known Jane Austen are among the titles in this wide-ranging list of novellas (and one memoir) that you can dig into over a long week end. Maybe even this week end.
After trashing my knee on a ski trip to Kitzbuhel in Austria a decade ago, I gave up downhill skiing. It was bad timing, since I had just started dating Frank, who had a ski house in Sugarbush, VT. I got in the habit of keeping a stack of short paperback novels on my bookshelf so I wouldn’t have to drag whatever new release hardcover I was already reading all the way to and from from the Green State. When I got there, I contentedly burrowed under a blanket in front of a fire with my book, whatever hearty stew I was making us for dinner cranking away on the burners behind me. Whenever I came across a recommendation for something around 200 pages, I’d throw it onto the pile.
I grew to love the rhythm of short books with an arc that matched the length of a long week end away. It provided a comprehensive “stepping away” into another world, while also leaving me fully ready to step back into whatever book awaited me back home.
Frank and I parted years ago, but this trick has stuck. On my recent trip to Paris, I threw the slim Scottish novel Clean into my carry-on.
For a lyrical, historical read.
Clear by Carys Davies. A pastor is dispatched to a remote Scottish island to evict its lone resident.
Another lyrical.
Foster by Claire Keegan. A young girl is sent to live with foster parents in rural Ireland.
A classic phone sex novel.
Vox by Nicholas Baker. Two strangers discover each other on a 1-900 party line, then explore their sexual fantasies. We published a full review of it here.
An under-appreciated Austen classic.
Lady Susan by Jane Austen. An early epistolary novella featuring one of Austen’s most scheming and amoral characters.
Continue reading here
dishing.
a few more things that are getting me off these days.
This article from The Telegraph on the ten best live albums of all time is fab. Not only because pulling together such a list is an accomplishment and a gift and the list is spot on, but also because the descriptions of the albums are apt. About the Grateful Dead’s he writes “They didn’t invent the term cosmic American music, but no artists embodied it like the Grateful Dead in 1972, their sound split between freeform exploration, earthy blues and country-rock. Stuffed with incredible, hitherto unleased songs – He’s Gone, Brown-Eyed Women, Ramble on Rose – the triple Europe ’72 might be their greatest album full stop.” Alexis Petridis knows his stuff.
I finally watched the documentary Very Ralph on Netflix. It’s been out since 2019. I found his personal history intriguing and was as inspired by his devotion to his family as much as I was by his fashions. What really struck me — in contrast with the images from so many of the fashion designers this season — was how much he loves women, as women. “I don’t think women should look like costumes,” he says, “ They shouldn’t look like fashion victims.” Also - he doesn’t glamorize youth, turn women into girls. Consistently, throughout his long career, Ralph created designs that intended to make women feel and look sophisticated and beautiful. I have enjoyed seeing and wearing his styles throughout the years, but I expressly appreciated the love and respect he has for women after watching the documentary.
I was vaguely familiar with The Cult of Karl Ove Knausgaard because I have a few male friends I’d count among its members. This piece from Air Mail helps demystify the Norwegian writer, his work and followers.
Here’s a practical list on How to delete 99% of your digital footprint from the internet. I thought about adding these steps to my Achievable New Year’s Resolutions, but just couldn’t commit.
And finally — highly recommended - Balthazar, 1997. From The Paris Review, an honest account of what it was like to be an inexperienced waitress at Balthazar back in the 90’s, when it desperately wanted stars in a New York Times critics review.
Social Media I Loved This Week
Song of the Week
Truckin' by Grateful Dead
R.I.P. Bob.
Live at Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY, October 1980
Here’s to a safe, loving, joyful and productive 2026, CRUSHes.
Don’t forget to share your “Achievable 2026 Resolutions,” no matter how ridiculous or quirky they are. In fact, bring on the ridiculous! The quirkier, the better.
XO,
Dish
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The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
