I Finally Read Strangers by Belle Burden—Here’s My Therapist Take.

Full acknowledgment up front: I know I am extremely late to the game on this one.

Belle Burden’s Strangers has been the book of spring 2026, and as a marriage and family therapist, it has been recommended to me many times by clients, friends, and family.

I work extensively with divorce and infidelity—both with couples and individually with betrayed partners as well as the people who committed the betrayal—so I have a fairly well-rounded perspective on how these situations can unfold. I was interested in reading about Belle’s experience through the lens of a memoir rather than yet another psychology book.

From the beginning, I really appreciated Belle’s writing style. She is an incredibly talented author, and she brought the uncertainty and stress of 2020 to life so vividly that I could practically feel it in my stomach. I think most of us are still carrying at least a little residual trauma from that period.

Despite the fact that Belle had a house on Martha’s Vineyard in which to quarantine—which, admittedly, was not exactly the universal COVID experience—the way she described the culture of that time was deeply relatable. It immediately brings you back to how strange and frightening everything felt. I also loved the ongoing theme of the osprey family and the way it mirrored what was happening in her own life.

All of this is to say: my jaw dropped when Belle’s husband simply walked out.

I have never encountered a divorce initiated that abruptly and with so little explanation. That would be shocking under any circumstances, but with children involved, it felt almost incomprehensible. I felt somewhat validated when Belle’s aunt Susan, who is also a marriage and family therapist, shared that in her 40 years in the field—far more than I have—she had also never seen anything quite so cruel.

I can understand why this book became so popular. It is a beautifully written story about a wealthy, generationally connected semi-socialite whose life takes a series of unbelievably painful turns. More importantly, it strikes at the heart of one of our deepest fears: betrayal.

Her husband’s infidelity is really only the tip of the iceberg. Belle experiences financial betrayal, institutional betrayal—which is particularly interesting because she comes from a social class that is often more insulated from it—and, what I imagine was the most devastating betrayal of all, watching her children be disappointed and abandoned by someone they trusted.

No matter how hard she tried to hold herself together, that part of the story was brutal. As a mother, imagining someone having to watch their children suffer in that way ripped my heart out right along with hers.

I will say here what I have said to most of my friends—and a few clients—who have talked about this book with me: this scenario is rare.

The abruptness of his departure, and especially the near-total abandonment of his children, is so uncharacteristic of how these situations usually unfold that I found myself repeatedly trying to understand what could possibly explain it psychologically.

To be clear, I am not going to diagnose a man I have never met based on his ex-wife’s memoir. But infidelity can create significant blind spots for the person engaging in it. The cognitive dissonance required to behave in ways that conflict with one’s values can lead people to construct self-serving narratives, minimize the impact of their choices, and make profoundly selfish decisions.

This, however, felt like something else entirely.

And I could not help but take at least a little satisfaction in the fact that this book has become a sensation and her ex-husband now has to live with the world knowing about his behavior in a way he likely never anticipated.

Kudos to Belle for having the courage to write about what happened. No two stories of betrayal are ever exactly the same, but she captured many of the emotions experienced by people whose lives have been abruptly split into a “before” and an “after.”

I happily join the chorus of readers who loved the book, and I wish her nothing but happiness—and considerably fewer plot twists—in her next chapter.