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Busy Philipps has been married to screenwriter Marc Silverstein since 2007 and they have two children together, Birdie, 11, and Cricket, six. I’ve often wondered about their relationship, because Busy is so demonstrative on social media and she doesn’t post much with or about Marc. Plus I feel like she’s a friend, since she shares so much of her personal life online and she once retweeted me. (That’s all it takes really. Also there’s something about Twitter and Instagram that makes you feel like you’re friends with everybody.) In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Busy opened up about her relationship issues with Marc and said that she considered divorcing him because she was doing so much of the work at home. She also gave some insightful comments about how everyone’s marriage is struggling, and how admitting that can separate you from your friend group. Busy was interviewed by author Eve Rodsky, who is promoting her book Fair Play, which focuses on negotiating responsibilities in a partnership/marriage. The article is worth reading as it’s well written and gives more context. Rodsy opens with the fact that Busy has previously admitted to considering divorce, but this is news to me. I need to read her memoir.
On how married women are supposed to act like everything is fine
“You know what they say about divorce, right? In friend groups, divorce is a house of cards. In friend groups, if you’re all married, you have a silent agreement to be miserable together. And a lot of times the person who decides to leave is vilified in the group because you’ve upset the status quo. Like, ‘How dare you? We had a f-king agreement to be miserable.’“But here was the thing I kept saying to myself, I am not certain that I will ever be happy, but I know for certain I do not have to feel miserable all the time.”
“Many women wait until it’s too late. At that point their resentment is too high and their communication patterns are set.”
Her husband agreed to take over mornings and bedtimes after she threatened divorce
“My thinking was that if I leave, at least then maybe I’d get two days off a week. I understand that I’m in a place of privilege, and even if I left Marc and I’d been super down on my luck, there was a version of life that I could have made work for me and my daughters. This is not the reality for many women.”“Marc was like, ‘I’ll do anything.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, then do everything. Because I have done it all, all by myself, and I’m done, dude.’”
“I was fully out the door. I wasn’t expecting anything from him, but what we ended up doing was creating our own system.”
“He now loves his mornings with the girls. He’ll make my Bulletproof coffee and bring it into the bedroom while I’m still sleeping, and then leave to take the kids to school. He has conversations with them that I’m jealous of. The closeness he now has with these girls, it’s really special.”
Marc on why he was absent and how he changed
“I like being good at stuff. And I didn’t feel like I was good [in the home], so I stayed away. I realized that deep happiness comes from my family. And once I figured out what I could bring to the table, things changed. I wanted to do more.”“Once Busy said, ‘I need you to put Birdie to bed every night,’ I owned it. And I was good at that. I started with one thing and it grew from there.”
Among my friends who are still married, it takes more for them to open up about their relationship issues than it does for my single friends (and me) to bitch about the guys we’re dating. So that part of Busy’s interview really resonated with me. I’m a divorced single mom and while my son’s dad is still very present and visits often, he lives overseas. I now do everything on my own and I prefer it that way, although I’m trying to teach and convince my teenager to help pick up the slack. (He really tries.) My ex was quite good about doing laundry and cleaning though, we had a great system worked out and that wasn’t our main issue. Relationships are complicated and there are so many moving parts when you’re raising children with someone. Marc impressed me here.
She looks pretty in that picture where she is holding the cake. And I like her dress there.
I appreciate what her husband said about his fear of being bad at something being the reason why he didn’t do much with the kids. Sounds like they have a great system now!
She does look great there. That cake is kinda scary though!
I looked at the picture quickly and thought her kid was sticking out of the cake. LOL. I need coffee.
indeed, loved the insight he shares…the only thing i am wondering about is…wtf is up with her doiley dresses?
Can celebs just shut up? I wish they would go old school and be mysterious. Think Myrna Loy…Deborah Kerr. I don’t care about their political leanings, their medical advice or their bowel movements.
I write as I read Celebitchy. Nothing like a cup of coffee with a dash of hypocrisy.
What she says here is actually a very interesting story and comment on our society , even if it had been said by any non famous person
Absolutely. This story really resonated with me. I would say that I’ve had some level of resentment towards my partner ever since our son was born 5 years ago. In fact, there have been times where I felt I’d be less resentful as a single parent because at least then I wouldn’t have to watch him sittinf around not pitching in.
My OH has never been what I’d call a “hands on” dad. He’s never gotten up to him at night or in the morning. He’s never offered to take over the reigns so I can have “me” time. He’s never offered to be the first to get up to him in the morning, or rocked him to sleep as a baby, or just run a bath at the end of the day for him. I’ve always had to ask for his help (or get so frustrated at his lack of help that he finally steps in).
Even at family functions, there was never any “let me take our son, so you can eat and relax for a while”. I always. Had. To tell him to take him. His own sisters once asked me how I keep my cool about it (I don’t. I just get passive aggressive to avoid saying something I’d regret).
There have been some mornings where he’s slept in when he could have taken our son to day care (I work full-time btw).
He’s had many late nights in front of Netflix, slept in, gone on skiiing holidays with his mates, yada, yada, yada.
Even remembering to pay bills, do the laundry, and make shopping lists falls on to me. I’m sick of thinking all the time!!
And now, my son is extremely attached to me and my partner complains about it all the time. It ain’t friggin’ rocket science buddy! Sheesh!
I’am with the Band. Oy. Maybe because I was working and my husband was in grad school when our first was born, but this approach is so alien to me… We have always split child duties. At one point he transitioned to a stay at home dad for a while when I had a job where I traveled a lot and our oldest was a teenager who needed someone to sit on him (so SOMEONE had to be home). If your husband is making a lot more money than you then hire help to make up for his failure to pitch in… if he is not.. then I would be pretty damn resentful.
Lol I was going to say that like going to a theater and being upset about the fact that there are movies playing all day and can’t they shut them off already, it’s loud??
You get it though, you seem self aware. We all have our things!
Lol I agree. She’s like a low-key Chrissy Teigen. Annoying AF.
Good for her. My husband helps with the kids does more around the house than your average husband, but it still wasn’t enough. Doing dishes EVERY night, and just picking up after the kids AND HIMSELF routinely, was falling on me. I just don’t think it bothered him, but a house of 4 needs constant routine maintenance to keep it all from falling apart. I finally exploded. It’s been much better since then. I even asked him to stop having a daily drink because it was making him so tired toward bedtime that I couldn’t rely on him to prioritize the whole routine. I don’t want to divorce him, but if that had continued…or becomes an issue again, well, I’ll just say love is not all it takes to keep a family together.
I think you and I might be the same person. 🤭 My husband and I both work full time, and he does do a lot around the house, but somehow all those little day-to-day chores fell on me. And like your husband mine was drinking nightly, which I finally had to put a stop to. On the one hand, he’s a grown-ass man and I can’t really tell him what to do; on the other hand, our son is 6 and it’s important that we try to get these early years right. I had one foot out the door, but this was an effective wake-up call. Things have been good, but relationships require constant tending, that’s for sure!
I actually think this was such an important interview, and I think it should be required reading for people in long term relationships – specifically if they are thinking about kids.
I 100% get what Busy is saying – and I think I would probably feel similarly in that circumstance. But I ALSO do get what Marc’s logic was – about not feeling like you’re good at something and kind of slipping away from things that you don’t automatically feel successful with. I see myself in both of them. But the fact that he DID get his shit together and step up is SO important, and I think sadly a lot of relationships would have survived if they had a Marc eventually stepping up to the plate because better late than never.
My relationship certainly isn’t perfect. We’ve been together since we were kids. I’ve spent more than half of my life with the guy. And we definitely do fall into certain patterns that aren’t productive. And it’s so hard to see where the other person is coming from sometimes when you let things build up, or because your communication style doesn’t always line up. And when it comes to arguing… we both admittedly fall into some bad behaviors that mimic our parents. And sometimes I can see myself doing it, and not be able to put the brakes on until I sound like a weird combination of both my mother and father… and my husband does the same. And it’s truly the lazy thing to do, but also somewhat human nature to just do the lazy thing. But recently I’ve been REALLY making an effort to just stop. I’m still working on it. I’m still messing up, he’s still messing up, but there’s been a noticeably difference lately. To the point where after a (relatively minor) argument had started to cool off my husband looked at me and said “I’m really impressed that you handled that the way you did”. And I know for myself, I can get extra defensive when I’m EXPECTING someone to be pissed off at me, which isn’t productive, and he is the same way.
Now mind you, I don’t have a toxic marriage or anything with TRULY bad behaviors, or trust issues, or anything like that. Just two overtired people getting mad at each other over dumb things that aren’t necessarily THE reason for the argument so much as a final straw on a bad day. It would be a completely different case if one of us was cheating, or abusive, or anything like that – that needs a whole different approach or in some cases a full severing of ties, so I’m definitely not saying horrible situations can be solved just by one person making effort to be more mature haha. This is just my own recent experience.
SImilar here. I have been with my husband for 20 years since just after college. We have 2 small kids and demanding full time jobs. I found myself exploding on him all the time. I finally realized that (for us at least) it wasn’t uneven parenting so much as there was just too damn much to do to be handled by just us. It really made me wonder whether modern society has got it right versus the days when grandparents and extended family lived in the same neighborhoods. Anyway things are a lot better now because I appreciate my husband so much more even when he falls short and we have made more effort to get a babysitter and go on date night once a month.
Maybe it’s a common thing once your children are out of the baby stage and you look around and think I’m doing this all by myself anyway, I’d rather be straight up alone than lonely and doing it all by myself.
@Ali, you make a really profound statement here. “…I’d rather be straight up alone than lonely…” Thank you for adding this to the conversation; it really resonated with me.
@Ali
I often find myself saying to my husband, “If I’m going to be a single parent, I’d rather actually be…a single parent.” It’s so true…
Honestly, I have so many friends that I want to ask, why do you stay with him? What exactly is he giving you?
This really resonated with me, too. I was married to my son’s father for 5.5 years, but honestly I wanted to get divorced after 4 months (I found out he was lying about money & wasn’t even capable of paying his cell phone bill). I stayed married as long as I did because I was ashamed of failure. But, if we broke up after dating (or living together) for 5yrs I don’t think people would have judged me nearly as harshly. I finally divorced him because I was his mommy–I did all the cleaning, paid all the bills, gave him an allowance, etc. Once we had our own child I realized I just couldn’t parent a grown man anymore. He’s now 41 & still lives with his mother.
I totally feel her pain about being the person in the family who has the lion share of domestic work put on them. Do you know what I do now? I make to do lists for everyone in my house with chores for them to take care of. I used to say to myself, “ oh I don’t want to be THAT woman who nags everyone.” But I got over that because I am not the hired help.
The only way to be really free when you assign something completely . For example -my DH owns paying bills, grocery shopping, cooking, summer camps and math homework. I own buying clothes , financial planning, vacations, play dates, and sometimes kitchen cleanup. He checks in with me on this stuff as I do with him but we don’t have to do anything but offer an opinion. We have been married over 20 years and this schedule evolved over the years. It would be hard to just dump this concept on your husband but making lists is really still owning the tasks and I imagine that is awful.
Almost every married/co-habitating woman I know feels this way. My parents have been married 40 years and my mom still complains DAILY about my dad not helping around the house. I even see it at work, the extra tasks the women here do vs. the men.
Happily living single, y’all.
I see it at work too. Male cowokers with the same job title I have expected me to be their assistants at work resend them documents or lookup phone numbers we were all given and when I asked if he’d looked in his training binder first, he just started at me. Dude you’re not a child and I’m not your mother. Multiple times hed walk up to my desk saying he forgot my name what was it again? Then expect me to look something up for him. He couldn’t even bother to remember my name. The 2nd or 3rd time he did it he said,. ‘whats your name? Michelle or something like that?’ I said ‘ something like that’ and he just stared at me and walked away.
We had to put signs up in the break room explaining it is is no one’s job description to make coffee . When you see it’s low or take the last cup make another pot for your coworkes
Oh that would be so annoying! Glad you got him to go away.
At mine it’s just all the little office tasks that the men seem to avoid having to deal with, and the women pick up the slack, in addition to their actual work. And if one of them does get stuck doing something, they don’t know how and end up asking anyway.
And just from listening to them, their wives definitely handle far more of the load at home too.
This is such an important thing to bring attention to. Parents have got to be on the same page with parenting or else some resentment is going to build. Really, you need to be on the same page about everything. If you don’t know what your potential mate’s ideas are about domestic duties and raising kids, you might wanna find out before it’s too late. My first marriage ended because I ended up doing EVERYTHING. He lives with his mom now.
Oh man, I could write a LOT about this. Married to an amazing man and father who does far more than other fathers we know and it is still not even. Why? Because most men are a little oblivious (because society enables it) and think being a hands-on father is enough (because society applauds a male’s bare minimum) and don’t appreciate the mental workload of parenting (because society devalues it) and so it’s the mother’s default responsibility to be responsible for everything her partner doesn’t take interest in. The struggle is real, but mostly invisible, especially to men who think they are doing a good job. But better isn’t best, and we still have a long way to go. Kudos to Busy and Marc for being open about their struggle and their progress.
(Also, women tend to be nurturing so they like being captain of the early years. But as kids age and it’s more menial labor than molding personalities and snuggling babies, we’re like, “Surprise! Now we want to be co-captains.” And it’s a LOT to spring on some guys who are used to the status quo. But give them time, patience and very clear expectations and instructions, and they usually rise to the task.)
What I love about this conversation and the points being made is that we are almost ALL in the same place. We all struggle with this in one form or another, and yet we don’t talk about it much with others in our lives. It’s really comforting to know it’s not just me, and this forum allows us to be anonymous, finding comfort in the shared experience. Thank you, all – I appreciate not feeling so alone.
My husband might even do more housework than I do, and sometimes gets grumpy about it. I’m like “Quick! What size shoes do the kids wear? When’s the next dentist appointment? What time does the day camp start?” Yup, I definitely carry the greater mental load.
Yep, this sounds like my life. I work longer hours than my husband. He does more daily household chores than I do: laundry and dishes and sweeping etc. He’s also as involved if not more with bedtimes and homework, partly bc I work longer hours.
But I do everything else. All the mental labor: teacher conferences, appointments, permission slips, extra curriculars, clothes shopping, birthday planning, playdate planning, family visits etc.
I guess it mostly evens out? We’re both pretty shattered with exhaustion most weeks. I agree that the modem family in capitalism is so freaking hard.
My husband is a good dad…if being “fun dad” who occasionally takes them to the park qualifies.
When I occasionally travel for business, even when I’m gone he doesn’t buy groceries, it’s all take-out or he takes them to his parents’ so that they handle feeding the kids. He doesn’t open mail or do laundry. The same food that was expiring in the fridge when I left is still there (rotting) when I get back.
It’s universal and I applaud Busy for starting the conversation, but she’s right – she is privileged. I only stay in my marriage because I can’t afford to leave. But I checked out a long time ago, and we merely co-exist and co-parent (him to a minimal extent).
I don’t even feel shame about leaving, I don’t care if it’s a “failure” – I simply can’t afford to leave. And @Ali above is right – it’s better to be straight up alone, if you can make it work. I wish I could…
Good for her for setting her hard line. And good for him for being man enough to step up to the plate and admit his own faults and mistakes – and be willing to do the work to be a better partner and father. And good for BOTH of them for having the courage to talk about it.
I honestly believe its because men get married and have kids and still see themselves as a lone wolf in the world. The family is that thing they have in their back pocket. Women will see themselves as a part of a unit. They will redefine themselves as a part of a bigger whole. The level of mental commitment on that personal, defined area of self just doesn’t change for a man. Tell him what to do, give him a list, sure… he’ll get it done. He might even learn something new and like it. But it’s all dependent on that list. Nothing says love and purpose and dreams like a list of chores. Blah.
Before we got married, my husband of ten years and I had a LONG talk about household equity that was spawned out of our hellish first year of cohabitation.
Bless him for listening, because the thing I’ve learned about marriage and equity is that it’s never, ever 50-50. There’s an ebb and a flow based on work, kids’ activities and even depression/anxiety. We’ve found a good vibe splitting up parenting and household responsibilities, and he’s super present in both. But it’s taken a LOT of work, and a lot of ongoing discourse (“Hey, is what we’re doing right now working for both of us?”).
I don’t pretend to know how to have a successful marriage, but I do know that no one should settle – whether you’ve got a cervix or not – for someone who isn’t all in on constantly striving for partnership and equity.
My hubs and I almost split up WITHOUT the issue of children, because we have none. I think knowing that every marriage struggles is a meaningful component of calibrating one’s expectations of marriage. The time we were seriously struggling and nearly divorced is so painful, and that pain can be enormously alienating; the fact that people with a platform can be open and honest about their own painful bits of life is–is this the right word?–comforting. It provides a sense of empathy that we all need to pad those difficult times, and the mere fact of hearing difficulty and pain acknowledged is validating to the human experience. There is no perfect. There isn’t THE fairytale, although we are capable of writing our own versions of one, though it is dappled with struggle. I think of Tom Robbins’s Still Life With Woodpecker, which deals with love and how to make love stay, in which the omniscient narrator posits many variations on how to make love stay, but the bottom line is: one must work at it, cultivate it, confront it all the time. It’s serious business. I love you all.
I’m glad you posted this, because I also don’t have children to add to my own struggles. And there was a rough patch where I truly expected us to break up. And oh my god is it alienating. I don’t have a ton of women in my life that I can vent to in a comfortable way. I work in a very male dominated field. And we share a lot of couple friends. I didn’t really want to vent too much to my female friends because I didn’t want to spoil their opinion of him, because I know some of my issues were just stupid things – or at least they seemed that way to me. And I also adore him – it’s not like even at our roughest patch he was a bad person or anything – we just weren’t communicating the way we should and letting things pile up before dealing with them at bad moments.
And then there’s the friends that truly seem to have everything in order in their lives. You don’t really want to admit to them that you’re struggling to them sometimes because you don’t think they’ll get it – but in reality they probably will because their life ISN’T perfect.
I think what her husband said is really at the heart of it for a lot (or most) men. Certainly for my husband. He prioritizes what he’s good at and feels comfortable with (his work) and shies away from what he doesn’t feel confident doing (child rearing). Then it becomes a self enabling cycle where I just handle it because I am more confident because I am doing it more and he waits to be asked and never really builds his confidence.
What has helped us the most recently is actually spending time with my husband’s friends who are present dads. It’s like positive peer pressure and he sees ways his friends interact with their kids and he mimics what he likes and (for lack of a better word) shows off things he knows how to do. I think a lot of men have to figure out how to be good dads if they didn’t have very good role models. Granted so do many moms, but at least we have more societal examples.
It is SO important for dads today to have role models. Let’s face it, almost none of us had dads that are expected to be as involved as dads are today – my husband and i certainly did not. His dad worked shift work and mine worked 6 days a week and referred to the very few nights my mom went out as “babysitting.” This is all pretty new for all of us. I like Busy’s comments because this is an area where we (women) need to be willing to have the hard conversations about the support we need, because it’s NOT instinctual, it’s not something our partners have seen modeled, and many of them truly want to help.
It’s SO hard, whenever we have one of these fights, I feel like the bad guy and he gets defensive. But lo and behold, after our last argument about it a month ago, it turned out he actually looked at our calendar and made arrangements to take a kid to a 4 hour doctor appointment yesterday afternoon. Ladies, it was amazing. I have been so busy at work – to not have to take that time off was such a gift. Plus he really nailed it – did all the paperwork, packed the diaper bag, asked the doctor the right questions – everything.
I guess I’m going to be the wet blanket in the peanut gallery and say I was kind of annoyed by her. I don’t understand why it has to be all or nothing with the “parenting” tasks. Why can’t parents share responsibilities? She acts all sad that she isn’t as close to her girls….well stop sleeping in every day and take them to school sometimes. It just came off annoying to me. I’m a single mom, that has an ex that is a terrible dad. I would love to have a husband that wanted to participate, but I would want to have responsibilities too. Geez, those kids are going to be grown before you know it. It goes so fast!!
Having said all of that, If it works for them, power to them.
That’s exactly what she was asking him to do – share the responsibilities, because she was doing it all herself.
I’ve been a married and a SAHM for nearly 13 years. I homeschool and basically do everything for our family (except bring home an income). I’ve worked maybe a total of 1.5-2 years of total part-time. This set up works for our family. My husband is a really hard worker and a good provider. I am a really good SAHM. If I had to work and we had to split duties, unfortunately, I don’t think my husband would be very good at that kind of stuff. So the household, child-caring duties ect would mostly fall on me and I would become really angry and resentful. I know he would try his best and probably do way more than the “average guy” but it just wouldn’t be enough for our family life to run smoothly and thrive. He wouldn’t be very hands one with the kids and their activities, he just doesn’t have the same mind frame of raising our kids. A lot of women today are probably in a very similar situation. Sadly. So I’m making the best of our situation. I’d love to work but it’s just really not possible at this point.
Domestic equality is an important discussion but Busy can do one. She has had a nanny from the beginning. She once complained in her stories about having to travel solo with her 2 kids from NYC and not having her nanny or Marc with her. They weren’t babies or toddlers, they were 2 well behaved girls and she acted like she ran a creche by herself.
I’m not saying she’s not a hands on mother but she hasn’t a clue what 100% childcare even means so I wish she would be more transparent and acknowledge that she has full time childcare.
yes to all of this. YOu haven’t lived until you have taken 3 kids( including toddler) to one kids skating lesson. And omg i did it with no Nanny ha ha.
#notallheroeswearcapes!!
I guess I don’t know why men STILL get a cookie for helping around the house or raising their children.
And they have to be threatened with divorce to do their share. smh.
(This from a single lady that helped raise several man children and sent them out into the wild, where they continue to flounder.)
This whole thread has me shocked. I’m 45, never married, and I guess I never asked my married friends who was keeping their house together. What is the deal here? Is 50% of the population inept? Is it really because guys think they can’t “succeed” in household chores or kid stuff? I can feel that as a reality, but what is really going on? I’m so surprised, and want to try and understand a little bit!
ya. I agree. it sounds like now he does everything and she does nothing? Thats weird too. My husband works a lot. I work part time. I do more with the kids.Just makes sense. But my name is on all the bank accounts so I am ok with it.
I grew up in a household where from my POV my parents shared equal duties. My mom always made more money than my dad and had longer hours so she could not afford to be a SAHM, even though she often expresses to me she wish she could have been one. So my mom was with us in the mornings but my dad left work early (he would get up early at 5 am to get to work at 6) and to leave by 2 PM to pick us up from school and ferry me and my sister to our after-school activities and help us with our homework. So he had to know our schedules to drive us around. He also did all the cooking, did the dishwasher, took out the trash/recycling, and what not. My mom did laundry and paid bills. They had a cleaning lady when I was growing up to handle cleaning the house so housecleaning was never an issue.
They argued like any couple and I’m sure they had rough patches, especially when my sister and I were young. But as a child I never felt like they were about to split up and for that I’m grateful.
They still together?
His movies are awful.
It irritates me that he’s getting so much credit for finally chipping in once Busy was out the door. And the “I don’t know how to do it” thing is the most common excuse that men use. Guess what, it’s not like every woman knows how to do everything, but someone has to do it, and women know that they’re just expected to be the ones to step up.
It’s so infuriating to me that this is still the way that it is in most homes.
She mentions in her book that she had an emotional affair and this was also partly the impetus for change in the marriage, so this isn’t really news but it’s good they are being open about stuff I guess. She basically has a whole chapter saying he was emotionally unavailable on every level and she was done, so he must have done a lot of work to win her back. This feels like they are re-packaging it a bit now Idk.
I think this is such an important conversation to have. I’m divorced and on the brink of moving in with my new partner and have been thinking that I need to have a conversation with him about just this! Who’s going to cook, clean, grocery shop etc. I was young when I got married and I just ended up doing everything in the home, and felt like it was something I should grin and bear instead of speaking up. Thank God for second chances and maturing!