Celebrity4 min(s) read
Published 13:53 17 Jun 2026 GMT
Emily Ratajkowski has opened up about life after divorce, revealing the strict rules she set for herself while navigating dating as a single mother.
The model and author, 35, shared the details in a new essay for The Cut, where she reflected on raising her son while rediscovering dating following her split from Sebastian Bear-McClard.
The ex-couple share their son, Sylvester, also known as "Sly", who was born in 2021.
They separated less than a year after welcoming him and later finalized their divorce.
Looking back on her dating life as a single mom, Ratajkowski revealed she established two non-negotiable rules.
"I had rules: Never miss bedtime and basically no sleepovers. These were natural and easy to abide by," she wrote.
The model explained that no matter how late her evenings ran, she always made sure she was home for her son.
"After any one of our evenings spent together, feeling the beat of an encroaching hangover-induced migraine and knowing that my son would be awake early, hungry, and with a diaper to change, I would silently dress and slither out of Elder Millennial's front door," she wrote, referring to an unnamed person she had been dating.
"There was nowhere I’d rather be than when I woke up with my toddler, so no matter the number of martinis, I’d be fully dressed and out the door to relieve the sitter and be ready for my son’s 6AM "Maamaaaa!'" she continued.
She added that the man she was seeing often praised her commitment to motherhood: "Witnessing this, he'd tell me he thought I was a good mother. 'Single moms, man! Y'all are ah-mazing. Women are ah-mazing.'"
In the same essay, Ratajkowski spoke about the collapse of her marriage and the challenges that followed the birth of her son.
After becoming a mother, she described entering what she called "a violent transition into a new reality of screaming baby on my aching t*t and ring on my swollen finger".
According to the model, the relationship began to unravel during a period that "felt both instant and excruciatingly slow".
"Six months after my son was born, my husband and I stopped having sex," she wrote. "Less than a year later, we separated."
The couple officially split in 2022 after four-and-a-half years of marriage.
At the time, reports surfaced alleging that Bear-McClard had been unfaithful.
The following year, the actor was accused of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior involving teenage girls in a Variety investigation. He has not publicly responded to those allegations.
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The supermodel admitted that one of the hardest parts of the divorce was how she believed others viewed her.
"Their furrowed brows, the pity in their faces as they delivered an 'I'm so sorry, Emily,'" she recalled. "I couldn't stand my pathetic reflection in their eyes. They saw me as someone who was unwanted, who had been left."
She also reflected on her childhood belief that becoming a single mother was something to avoid at all costs.
As a child, she believed it was "crucial" not to end up in that position because she viewed the label as "an insult".
Over time, however, her perspective changed. "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," she wrote.
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