I once lamented to my friends in a group chat that I missed dating someone because I missed having someone who was forced to try new restaurants with me, or a standing lunch date to keep me, an extroverted writer, from losing my mind when I’ve been working alone too long. My friend pointed out that I didn’t have that when I was married and that I could just ask friends to fulfill this role for me. What you are looking for is companionship, she told me; you can get that from a good friend.

Rebuilding the ties of community is essential for combating loneliness and not just for divorced women, but for everyone. Author and academic Anne Helen Petersen has written extensively about the need for community and how building it requires humility. “It requires bravery, and vulnerability, and intermittent tolerance for people being annoying, and practice. Like, you just have to keep doing it, and doing it, and eventually it just feels like the thing you do, the people you’re near, the community you’re a part of. So many people have lost this skill or never had it modeled for them in the first place—and, depending on your identity, you may occupy spaces that are actively hostile to its development. (White bourgeois America is one of those spaces!)”

Community is a practice. And you have to ask for what you need. And keep asking. And if people do not give it to you, you have to find a way to take it. You do not have to settle for the life you were told you should want. You do not have to settle for good enough if good enough requires you to sacrifice your hopes and dreams. You do not have to be a martyr. You can fight for your happiness through whatever means necessary. It will not always involve breaking your life apart. But if it does, you do not have to be afraid. You can Thelma and Louise yourself right off that cliff.