Momfluencer Allie Casazza announced she's 'unmarried.' Here's why she and her 'was-band' are trying to put divorce in a more positive light
“Unmarried.” That’s the term momfluencer and Declutter Like a Mother author Allie Casazza recently used when announcing her pending separation from longtime husband Brian Casazza to her followers. On Dec. 30, Casazza posted an emotional YouTube video sharing that she and her husband had decided to part ways.
“Brian and I separated, and stopped being a typical traditional married couple after Christmas last year (2021),” she says in the video. “It has been wholesome. It has been respectful. Calm. It has nothing to do with resentment or hating him.”
The announcement sparked a flurry of feedback from followers on all of her platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and her podcast. Most notably, followers posted about their confusion about the terminology Casazza was using, and the happiness she seemed to be exuding in an otherwise commonly devastating situation: divorce.
In a new interview with Yahoo Life, Casazza opens up about rejecting the notion of a messy, dramatic divorce, with lawyers and fighting. Instead, here's what a calm uncoupling, or the process of becoming “unmarried," looks like for her family.
You get to define your own breakup
Post-uncoupling, Brian comes over for dinners with the family, the mom of four says. The co-parents text each other frequently, and had gotten together for drinks the night before our interview. He stayed in her guest room for two weeks during some home renovations. The former couple even still slept in the same bed for a while post-breakup, though Casazza says there was no romance, just laughing together watching Seinfeld.
But Casazza says followers are confused by her unconventional setup.
“It’s all programming and stereotypes and preconceived everything. When you get divorced, you hate each other. So why would you invite him over for dinner in your house?” she says. “They don’t understand. They really don’t understand.”
But she’s coming to terms with the fact that they don’t have to, sorting through comments with the help of assistants who shield her from the exceptionally mean ones, so she can learn about what followers still need to learn more about from her in upcoming content.
Building a terminology that works for you
In conversation, Casazza calls Brian her “was-band,” an innovative, past-tense variation of the traditional term “ex-husband” that feels more fitting to her. Similarly, her decision to refer to the divorce as an “uncoupling” and becoming “unmarried” was an intentional act of parental protection for their daughter, Bella, 14.
In a family meeting, the Casazzas sat holding hands with their kids, explaining that they were planning to become unmarried. “When we told them, she literally right away was like ‘Wait, is this a divorce?’” Both parents noted the panic on their daughter’s face, as she conjured up memories of a friend’s parents' traumatic divorce, which had deeply affected her.
“We didn’t know how to answer in the moment, and fumbled with our words," Casazza admits. They realized they needed another term to help Bella realize how it wasn’t the same type of breakup as what she’d witnessed. “Let’s be annoying celebrities and call it uncoupling," Brian joked, a nod to the term used by former spouses Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin.
Earlier this month an Instagram post about the split saw followers push back on what they have deemed flippancy over a difficult stage of life. “What you’re sharing makes divorce seem so easy and pain-free,” read one comment. Another commenter wrote, “Please don’t make light of divorce. It does affect your children.”
But Casazza is quick to dispel myths that using a different term might mean she and her ex aren’t taking the separation any less seriously when it comes to their kids. She notes her “open and authentic” approach is coming off the opposite to some people.
“I feel like what I want people to understand is we stopped our lives for them. I took four months off of work to process [it] … sitting with my kids and showed them we are a family. The family is not broken, it’s shifted. If anything, down the line, it might get bigger. This is a good thing,” she says.
Not the heartbreak everyone expects
Casazza is the first to express that she still loves Brian, but not romantically. She has been dating other people since their separation. Since the former couple met in seventh grade, she's also enjoyed her first nightclub experience. The Casazzas struggled financially earlier in their marriage, resulting in both having a PTSD diagnoses. Allie says she’d considered separating for years, and that it was a slow process to actually do so.
“We’ve been through so much together," she says. "We have a trauma bond, not actually, like, a romantic love. I choose you, oh my gosh I’m just so attracted, I have to do my life with you — we don’t have that anymore. Brian says it got beat out of us.” The couple also spent time unpacking “religious trauma” and reconsidering their views on marriage.
The first nights alone without Brian sleeping next to her were sad, and mundane moments of every day, such as when she can’t reach something up high, remind her that there is still sadness in the process. But otherwise the split has been a happy decision, she explains. She hopes her decisions and sharing them help validate other couples who might be feeling the same thing, but only see two options — to stay together, or engage in a messy “divorce.”
“I think what everybody expects is that there’s heartbreak — we are so broken up and that this decision was just riddled with the breaking up of a family, with sadness, with depression, and it just has not been that way,” she says.
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