What Happened to Belle Burden in “Strangers” Has a Name

Psychology Today | 29.01.2026 20:32
As soon as Belle Burden’s memoir, Strangers, came out earlier this month, I started receiving urgent emails in my in-box. Women from my Runaway Husbands community had heard Burden interviewed or read the review in the New York Times and wanted to make sure that I knew about the book. They were excited; her story mirrored their own so closely that it was eerie. But what happened to Belle Burden is classic Wife Abandonment Syndrome, a series of events that takes place when a man suddenly leaves what his wife believed to be a happy and stable marriage.