Emily Ratajkowski’s wild post-divorce dating era wasn’t quite what it seemed.
Ratajkowski is getting some backlash after she reflected on the months following the collapse of her marriage in a candid essay, admitting she threw herself into dating while struggling to reconcile her new identity as a single mother. Ratajkowski filed for divorce in September 2022 after four years of marriage amid widespread reports of husband Sebastian Bear-McClard’s alleged infidelity.
Ratajkowski described the birth of the couple’s son, Sylvester, as a “violent transition” into a “new reality of screaming baby on my aching t– and ring on my swollen finger.”
“And then, in a time period that felt both instant and excruciatingly slow, my marriage collapsed,” she recalled in an essay for The Cut. “Six months after my son was born, my husband and I stopped having sex. Less than a year later, we separated.”
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Ratajkowski admitted that after her marriage collapsed, dating wasn’t necessarily about finding a new relationship. Instead, she said she was seeking something much more immediate: reassurance that she was still desirable as a single mother.
“What I wanted was his attention: I wanted to feel a man’s desire and to be reminded that I was a sexual being, not just a mother of a toddler,” Ratajkowski wrote.
Ratajkowski acknowledged that her search for reassurance soon spiraled into what she described as a period of compulsive dating.
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“I wish I could say I’d started to date slowly — that there was some period of grief or reflection as a newly single person, a healthy pause before my mania — but the truth is just a week after my split, I found myself in Brooklyn, a shell-shocked and sleepless version of myself, wearing what seemed to me like the kind of outfit a girl who goes on dates wears, a crop top and black pants that all of my friends had approved via a mirror selfie, sitting across from a DJ,” she noted. “Of course a DJ. Always a DJ.”
Ratajkowski noted that before she split from her husband, “I’d never had a one-night stand. I’d never slept with someone the same day I met them. In fact, I’d only slept with eight people: four of whom had been live-in boyfriends, and one of whom was my male best friend in high school.”
She went on to talk about the men she dated in New York, describing them as “uniquely disturbed characters from man hell.”
“There was Vegan Graffiti Artist with impeccable posture, Chef who thought he might have chlamydia, Spanish Gen-Zer who couldn’t stop sending me nudes, heavily self-medicated Son of a Billionaire with questionable politics, several Italians, and, of course, another DJ.”
She added that, “the list goes on but, for legal reasons,” she will not.
Ratajkowski’s fear of being a single mother began early in her life.
“Even as a kid, I reasoned that of all the things I could grow up to be, it was crucial to avoid becoming a single mom,” Ratajkowski said. “The term itself could be lodged as an insult. Having a child with the wrong man was the fastest way to ruin your life as a woman — it meant having no freedom, no choices, no emergency exit. All baggage and no security.”
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Rather than dwell on her insecurity, the model said she crafted an entirely new persona.
“The character I’d learned to embody after my divorce, in my period of compulsively dating, was a villain: Poison Ivy. Catwoman. Sexual but scary. And she drank gin martinis. Many, many gin martinis,” Ratajkowski explained. “She was not tragic. Nothing close to a victim. No one needed to feel sorry for her. In fact, they should all be jealous.”
“‘Divorced single mom?’ What about, instead, ‘a woman who needs nothing from men?’ I already had the kid and the motherhood experience so many of my friends secretly coveted while pretending to date casually,” she said. “I had no illusions about the romance of marriage or a shared life together. I’d learned the hard way that being alone was better than most partnerships. I’d seen too much, discovered what many women do only when they get divorced in their mid-40s. I’d lived through the failure of a unit, yet I was barely into my 30s. This was my villain origin story.”
However, Ratajkowski’s candid reflections sparked backlash on social media, with some critics taking issue with her comments about dating and single motherhood.
“So out of touch and insulting to single mothers who are truly struggling every day just to survive,” one user commented on The Cut’s Instagram post of Ratajkowski.
“Cue all of us single mothers (young and old) rolling our eyes…,” another wrote.
“Is this a joke or something? A supermodel single mom in her tough struggles lol… I’m sure every man and woman was reaching out to help her everyday,” another user wrote. “And she could easily afford the best care whenever she want it and the best foods and the best everything spare me. Let’s hear the story from a single mom who’s financially barely making ends meet. Post a story with some real depth and grit.”
“Rich people trying to extrapolate something about their outlandish experiences as ‘truth’ for the rest of us,” another wrote. “Read the room, lady.”
Some took issue with the photo of Ratajkowski breastfeeding a baby doll in the article.
“This cover is sick, and not in the good way sick,” one commenter wrote.
But others appreciated and praised her honesty.
“Love that she’s honest & real abt this part of her life. Most wouldn’t admit it,” one user wrote.
“But to the haters- just STOP! She is brave, a woman, on her own, as a single mom- we ALL have our own story! And go single moms everywhere but especially in NYC,” another user wrote in part.
“God I love @emrata,” another wrote. “Oh I am so here for this,” said another.
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Ultimately, Ratajkowski said the biggest lesson from her divorce had little to do with dating at all. She recalled visiting her attorney’s office, where he told her: “You should be proud of yourself. Most women don’t leave.”
“I left his office that day with an unexpected gift: a new kind of understanding of myself. Leaving my marriage wasn’t about seeking anyone’s attention or approval,” she said. “It was the opposite.”
“A hard choice that came with a lot of pain and at a great cost,” Ratajkowski added. “Becoming a single mother changed the way people looked at me, exactly as I’d feared it would. But it also allowed me to finally see myself. I wasn’t left; I left. I knew then that being able to leave, to say ‘no,’ was the only real superpower I’d gained through divorce. I was brave. Really, actually brave.”
