In Dire Need of Design, For Recently Divorced Men, a New Breed of Decorator
As the national unemployment rate starts to fall, signaling a strengthening economy, some bullish Americans may buy something especially sweet for their sweethearts this Valentine’s Day. Others who are feeling the economic thaw may spend money on something notoriously expensive, if less romantic, which they have been putting off: a divorce.
Among the battalion of specialists who will meet them on the other side of their split — real estate agents, mortgage brokers, financial planners — is a relatively new member of the ranks, one Susan Manrao.
Charming and funny, with an infectious laugh, Ms. Manrao, a 35-year-old interior designer in Los Angeles, found her niche after realizing there was one kind of client she preferred over all others: the divorced man. Her “aha” moment came about two years ago, she said, when she was doing a walk-through of a house that belonged to one such client in his 40s whose children often came to stay. It was basically empty.
“I realized my role in this project wasn’t simply to design a space,” she said, “but to help rebuild a home.”
In Ms. Manrao’s experience, working with men alone is easier than working with couples or women, because they tend to be more hands-off, affording her greater creative freedom.
Divorced fathers, especially, often want their homes done quickly, to make the transition as smooth as possible for their children, which means they are apt to agree with her design decisions.
And though there have been couples she enjoyed working with, there were many more, she said, whose “relationship literally goes into turmoil because of silly things like choosing wall covering.”
But what truly distinguishes her divorced male clients, she said, is how appreciative they are.
“It’s a much more rewarding experience,” Ms. Manrao said. “They are thrilled to have a new home that actually feels like a home.”
Like other designers with numerous divorced clients, Ms. Manrao has honed insights into what the newly divorced (particularly newly divorced heterosexual men) want and need as they create a new home for themselves.
And that knowledge may be increasingly in demand, as there are likely to be more of them soon, said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University who has written extensively about American marriage.
Since 2008, he said, divorce rates in the United States have dropped, as they did during the Great Depression. Once the economy began improving back then, however, divorce rates rose significantly, something that is bound to happen again, Dr. Cherlin predicted, when the current economic recovery becomes more dramatic.
“Without a doubt, there are unhappy couples out there looking for the resources to separate,” he said.
And when they do, at least half of the newly divorced will need a new place to live, a new sofa and rug, new towels and coffee cups and prints to hang on the walls, and all the other trappings that make an apartment or a house into a home. If they have children, they may need it urgently. And if they were in a marriage in which their spouse did the decorating, they will need help.
Men coming from heterosexual marriages are more likely to move out of the family home than women are, said Steven Mintz, a historian at Columbia University who studies families and children. They are also, generally speaking, ill prepared for divorce, he added. “They are wedded to marriage as an institution,” he said. “It provided structure in their lives.”
The instability of divorce, and the difficulty of making that transition, Dr. Mintz said, help account for the relative speed with which many men remarry.
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