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Following a tumultuous divorce that cost her almost everything, Belle Burden found the most profound anguish in the suffering her children endured.
Burden, an heiress who chronicled her separation from hedge fund executive Henry Davis in her book, “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” recently appeared on Molly Sims’ “Lipstick on the Rim” podcast. There, she detailed the extent to which her three children were impacted by her former husband’s actions.
While two of their children weren’t immediately affected by the divorce’s fallout—their eldest was staying with friends, and their middle child was at boarding school—their youngest, Burden noted, “really wanted a bedroom” at her father’s new apartment.
NEW YORK HEIRESS BELLE BURDEN’S HUSBAND CONVINCED HER TO ALTER PRENUP BEFORE AFFAIR SHATTERED MARRIAGE: MEMOIR
Belle Burden and Henry Davis tied the knot in 1999. In March 2020, while quarantining with their children on Martha’s Vineyard, she discovered his affair, prompting his demand for a divorce. (Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
“She was sending him links on Pottery Barn for her room,” Burden recounted about their then-12-year-old daughter. “And he just really held firm about he was done with that stage of his life where he would parent a child in that way, with homework and dinners and all that kind of stuff.”
As she detailed in her memoir, Davis announced his desire for a divorce after she uncovered his infidelity. They had been married for two decades. He subsequently relocated to a two-bedroom apartment, later converting his spare room into a home office.
“That’s been the hardest part of this, and the most lasting part,” Burden confessed.
When Sims and her co-host, Emese Gormley, voiced their astonishment at Davis’s decision, Burden clarified, “I should be clear that it’s not a circumstance where he moved across the country and had a whole new family. He lives blocks away from us. He keeps in touch with the kids. He’s very kind and sweet with them. But he was very clear that he was not going to do the day-to-day, apply to college, all that kind of thing. And that really was like a switch going off.”
In her book, Burden explained that during their children’s younger years, she dedicated all her time and energy to their upbringing, while Davis focused on his career, often quipping, “I don’t do bath, bed or homework.” Though he didn’t handle the daily tasks of parenting, she wrote that he did engage with them, regularly taking them on special outings and trips.
Burden released her book, “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” in January 2026. (Belle Burden/Instagram)
However, in one of their discussions shortly after he departed, Burden wrote that he had declared, “You can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.”
Burden then had her lawyer prepare a custody agreement for Davis, proposing a 50/50 arrangement, assuming he “would have realized his mistake” in not wanting more time with their children by that point. Instead, she wrote, he “returned the document stripped of all his time, including vacations, holidays, weeks during the summer. He included only dinner on Thursday nights.”
She confessed her belief that he genuinely thought he was being “selfless” by not formalizing the agreement, arguing that their children were old enough to decide when they wished to see him. For significant events, such as their son’s surgery, she noted he was present, but “for everyday issues, he responded with irritation.”
Sims asked Burden during her podcast if Davis had ever discussed with her what happened and why he so resolutely distanced himself from her and their children.
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Burden, pictured with one of her daughters, stated that the most challenging aspect of her divorce has been her ex-husband’s unwillingness to parent. (Belle Burden/Instagram)
“The only things he’s ever said were right at the beginning,” she replied. “He said, ‘I felt like a switch went off. I feel like a switch has gone off.'”
Roughly a year after the separation, she recounted texting him late one evening, seeking clarity. “And he said, ‘I wish I had an answer for you. It’s not your fault. Something broke in me.’ And that’s the most I’ve gotten. And that’s where my head has to rest.”
NEW YORK HEIRESS BELLE BURDEN’S EX-HUSBAND GAVE UP CUSTODY OF CHILDREN AFTER AFFAIR TORE FAMILY APART: MEMOIR
She explained that when contemplating it, she pictures the switch flipping, “but also like he was playing this role of husband and father, and he wanted to play it, and he was all in. And then, like an actor on a stage, he just was like, ‘I’m done with this role,’ takes off the costume, leaves the stage and can’t do it gracefully.”
Belle Burden is the daughter of Carter Burden, a Vanderbilt family descendant and successful businessman, and Amanda Burden, a prominent urban planner. (Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images)
Sims inquired about how the children were coping with Davis’s absence as an active father figure. Burden responded, “They are amazing because they love him, and they’re protective of him, and they’re actually very good now at reaching out to him to do things that are comfortable for him, like going to a hockey game or something like that.”
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She mentioned their “wonderful” ability to navigate the situation, adding, “For me as a mother, I think the biggest challenge for me is to acknowledge their reality, to say ‘this is what’s happening, this is unusual, that you do not live with your dad’ … So I would say to my 12-year-old, ‘Your dad, I don’t know why, but he can’t create a home for you right now. And that has to do with him, and that’s not you.'”
Burden, shown with her stepmother, Susan Burden, and ex-husband Henry Davis, confessed that Davis has not addressed the publication of her book with her. (Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Regarding Davis’s reaction to the book’s publication, Burden acknowledged hearing that he’s “not happy.”
She initially published an excerpt of her narrative in a column for The New York Times, which required his approval. She believed then that “he didn’t really see anything wrong with the narrative, like, you’re a man, you’re allowed to leave in this way.” But now that, as Sims phrased it, “the whole world, every woman in America hates you,” he’s “surprised.”
“He said, ‘I don’t think I come off well in this,'” Burden recounted.
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