Episode 95: Navigating Your Gray Divorce

Welcome to the Loving Truth podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now, your host, relationship expert, and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is the loving truth. Today I want to speak to you about your gray divorce. Now, for those of you who have yet to hear this term gray divorce, it essentially just refers to a divorce that takes place for a couple where they're over the age of 50.

Now, going through divorce is hard on anybody. I don't care who you are, there's no easy path to divorce. But having to go through a divorce when you're over 50 years old, it does come with some of its own unique challenges and opportunities, and that's really what I want to talk to you about today. But first, let's level set a bit on how big is this trend and what's really happening in terms of divorcing later in life.

So all the stats that I'm going to share with you are us based stats, but we're seeing many of the same trends in other developed countries as well. So first, let's just begin with an overarching picture which says that one third of divorces today are for couples over the age of 50. So it's a big deal, right? One generation ago, this was not the case. And by the way, most of those divorces, two thirds of the time, those are being initiated by the woman, not the man.

That's another huge distinction between the divorces that were taking place just one generation ago and the divorces taking place today. The rate of divorce for couples over the age of 50 has doubled since the 1990s, and it has tripled for couples that are over the age of 65. Now, obviously, that's because there were not a lot of couples that were divorcing back in the nineties that were over the age of 65.

So it was a low number, but still having that number triple, I think, is really telling, especially at the same time that we see younger people and their rate of divorce actually declining. So younger people are divorcing less frequently, where people who are 50 years old or older are divorcing at a much faster rate and more frequently. So Americans who divorced and they were over the age of 50.

In the 1970s, it was 8% of divorces. By 2019, it was 36% of those divorces. Now, likewise, 9%, which is one in ten people in 2019, were divorcing and they were over the age of 65 years old. 16 million people over the age of 65 are living alone. That's a new stat. And honestly, it does create housing issues inside of communities because that's three times what it was back in 1960.

We didn't live alone, you know, one or two generations ago. That just wasn't common. When it comes to re partnering, I will often tell my clients, men tend to move on more quickly in terms of post divorce. They get involved in a relationship more quickly than women. I think part of that is because women have become much more independent and they really value their happiness, but they also have community, right?

Most women, not all women, of course, but most women have deep friendships and community that they're involved with, where men don't always have the same level of depth in terms of community, they sort of. They have their work and they had their family, and if the family sort of breaks apart, they may not have as many friendships to be able to fall back on. So there's also been a lot of studies that say that men do much better in relationships, and so they're going to get out there and start looking for another relationship probably much quicker than a woman would.

So 22% of the time, a woman will re partner within ten years post divorce. However, for men, that number is 37%. So that stat really plays out. What I just shared with you, that men are going to couple up much more quickly than women generally will. And in terms of the gray divorces that we're seeing, 34% of the time those couples had been married 30 years or more.

12% of the time, the couple had been married 40 years or more. Okay, so that's a bunch of stats that just give you an idea of what's happening in this trend around divorcing later in life. So there's essentially two time frames as it relates to gray divorce, and the first is where we're staying together, but we're growing apart, right? It's that ten years, 20 years of this is what it is.

We just keep growing further and further apart. We're not making any real concerted effort to make it any different. And so let's talk about why so many people are divorcing later in life. The biggest thing, and I think it's pretty obvious, is they become empty nesters. So many people will stay together for the kids because they think that that is the right thing for the kids. And in many cases it is, although it's not in every case, but they have this in their minds that they are going to remain together until the kids are grown up.

Well, once the kids move out of the home and they're off building their lives. Like, sometimes that's, you know, just starting a job and starting a family, and sometimes it's going off to college, but they're off building their adult lives. Now it's just the two of you back at home, and you can't really throw yourself into your kids anymore because they don't need you and they probably don't want you.

In the intimate details of their everyday life, the kids acted as a source of connection for the couple for so long, but the couple lost sight of one another. And so that disconnection just grew and grew and grew slowly over time until the disconnect between the two people just became really wide. And now that the kids aren't there, now, this person that I've been married to for, call it 25, 30 years, feels sort of like a distant stranger, like we don't really know each other anymore because we didn't remain connected to each other.

We threw ourselves into our careers, our family, our kids, and those things thrived. But we as a couple didn't thrive because we put our marriage over here on a shelf and stopped paying attention to it and stopped investing in it. So that's the biggest piece. Now, there are some other pieces that you find in gray divorces, but also younger divorces, which is infidelity. Infidelity is one of those things that certainly can lead to divorce.

Now, the stats for men are that men have had affairs when they've been married 50% to 60% of the time. Now, I don't place a lot in these stats, by the way, because I don't think anyone is really truthful when it comes to having affairs in a survey. And we don't have a common definition of what constitutes an official affair. Like is an emotional betrayal. Is that an affair?

Is that a betrayal? Or is it only when sex is involved? You know, so just look at this as directional. But in general, men cheat 50% to 60% of the time. That number has not changed a lot over the last 25, 30 years. However, women are not that far behind. They're 40% to 50% of the time now having affairs, and that number has dramatically increased in the last generation.

So infidelity can certainly be a point of like, the reasoning why a couple might choose to end a relationship even after 30 or 40 years together. Another one that unfortunately we're seeing regularly is some form of abuse, certainly physical abuse. It's still around. Sadly, I would say that the more we run away from and numb our emotions, the more we suppress anger and then when anger comes up or pain comes up, it comes out as anger.

And if we don't have good tools to manage our anger, it can look abusive. So that, of course, can be physical abuse, but for sure it's verbal abuse and it's emotional abuse that's so common. It's disturbingly common. I think if people saw themselves through a lens of being an abuser, when they're calling their partner names, criticizing them, showing up with a lot of content or sorry, contempt and venom and just hatefulness with each other, I think they'd be horrified.

And then lastly, there's also financial abuse. I just had someone in my membership program share that she knew that her husband was not great with money, and so she had taken over the money. And there have been red flags before where he has gone out and made large purchases without ever talking to her. But she just had gotten some information last week that said it is so much worse than she ever had any idea about because he had credit cards that were in his name, and now he's taken out loans, and his credit cards are many, many, many thousands of dollars.

She didn't get into a lot of specifics, but there's a lot going on there that she had no idea about, and that is financial abuse. So another interesting thing is serious or chronic health conditions that is causing some divorces later in life. And here's what's interesting. Hmm. I say interesting. It's also a little bit infuriating. But I want you to hear me, ladies. The stats say that if it is the woman who has the chronic condition, the man will is more likely to leave the marriage, to end the marriage than if the man had the condition.

Right. Because as women, we are natural caretakers and nurturers. So if our partner is hurting and suffering, we're gonna stick around. I just want you to know you're not necessarily stuck. But certainly chronic health conditions where you are put in the role of a caretaker for your spouse, that may not be what you had on your bingo card. And in that way, that may be the thing that leads to divorce after many years together, certainly growing apart, that happens for couples all the time, day in and day out, we're getting more satisfaction by the things that we're doing on our own, our work that we do in the world, our hobbies and our passions, and the things that we sort of pour ourselves into.

We get a lot of fulfillment from those things. And so in some ways, we're relying less and less on our partner and our marriage for that fulfillment. But also as we grow and change, our interests change, our passions change, our expectations of the marriage change, and our priorities change in the marriage. And so this is when we start to just generally grow apart. We don't see the world in the same way.

We stop spending time together, and then that disconnection just gets wider and wider. So I mentioned that the expectations might be changing in the marriage. That can be a reason for the marriage ending. I think that certainly a lack of intimacy in the marriage. When one or both of you just says, I don't want to have sex anymore, or I'm just not interested in it, or. Or I can't anymore, and I'm not willing to seek any help or new resources to help us be able to connect physically in that way.

A lack of intimacy can certainly lead to divorce. I sometimes will ask my clients, so let's say you haven't had sex in six years or something like that. I mean, are you just prepared to go to your grave without ever having sex again? And when you put it in those terms, people are usually very clear about what they're willing to do and what they're not willing to do.

But if you're not paying attention to it, you're like, oh, it's just another week. It's just another month. It's just another year. It's just another ten years where we haven't had sex. And I'm telling you, weeks turn into months, and months turn into years, and years turn into decades, and decades turn into forever. So you got to pay attention to it. You've got to make some conscious choices about that.

A lack of spontaneity will also kill a marriage. And what I mean by that is we get bored. We get bored very easily. We get into a routine, and then we just stop really showing up with the unexpected. We stop surprising our partner. We stop making big plans together or setting new goals together. And familiarity will always suppress desire. And so that boredom can lead to where, especially if one person really wants to be out there and enjoying life, and the other partner is like, hey, I want to put my feet up, kick back, and lay in a hammock all day.

Now things start to get much more difficult in the relationship. And the way that you want to live your next 20, 30, 50 years of your life starts to look very, very different, and your priorities start to change. A lack of spontaneity can lead to growing apart and then ending the marriage, ultimately. Now, I think it's worth noting that we're also living much longer than we used to.

Okay. Especially when the marriage vows of until death do us part. I think the average time span for life for men was, like, late thirties. And I feel like for women, it might have been 40 or early forties, but it was dramatically different than what it is today, in our seventies and even early eighties. And then some people are living much, much longer. And so this. We're gonna stay together till death.

Maybe that was okay when it was 20 years together, but now it's like 60, 70, 80 years together. So the last big one, the big trend that is impacting gray divorce is that women have more independence. They have more financial independence, specifically, and they value freedom. They have more freedom than they did my mother one generation ago. Even if she wanted to end her relationship with my father, which I don't know that she ever did, that really wasn't an option, right?

Like, technically, could she have gotten a divorce? Yes. But that was still a time when women had a really hard time even being able to open a checking account for themselves, much less getting a loan for a car. And they were still not paid the same as men. So, you know, that was the case then. They weren't able to get the same kind of jobs as men. They had to work twice as hard, and they were responsible for the children, and there very often was children involved.

So this newfound freedom and independence that women have is completely changing the dynamic and the expectations inside of our marriage, and I think for the better. But it is disruptive, right? We, as human beings, we only grow through pain. It doesn't mean you can't grow through joy. You can just grow because you love personal growth. You can do that. But most of us, we wait until we're in a really painful situation, and that's when we start looking for a different way of doing things.

And that's when we grow beyond our current habits and our current toolkit of relationship tools. So those are the things that lead to a couple growing apart over a long period of time, when they're consciously sort of staying together and knowing that the marriage isn't awesome. But then the second phase is really when something comes to a head, and they're like, now I'm done. So what that can look like is where infidelity becomes public, because now there's a level of embarrassment associated with it, right?

Like, let's say that your partner had cheated on you once, twice, three times over the course of 30 or 40 years together. But now, let's say later in life, when we get a little bit more bold and our partner. It hasn't been a deal breaker for our partner yet. Well, now we're just going to bring it out in the open. Like maybe your partner is out and about in your town with their new affair partner, and that is embarrassing for you.

So that can become something where it's like, okay, now I have to deal with this. I have to end the marriage. Another one might be some sort of amplified dishonesty, sort of like what I shared with you about the member in my community, right? When you think he's got $10,000 in credit card debt, and what you discover is, it's more like $80,000. Well, now things just got real, right?

So there's some, like, big dishonest thing that shows up in the marriage that becomes the thing that blows it up. And maybe the last thing would be an extreme instance of some form of abuse, some kind of emotional abuse, financial abuse or verbal abuse. And one or both of you just says, enough. Enough. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not doing it ever again. You're not ever going to change.

Someone needs to call it. I'm going to be the one to do it. Okay, so there's usually this very long, drawn out period of time where we're unhappily staying together and slowly growing further and further apart and not really addressing it. And then there's some big occasion that says, okay, now I have to deal with this thing that I should have dealt with 20 years ago, but the kids, but the finances, but the family, whatever, right?

We had lots of reasons, and now here we are. And so at some point, we do have to deal with it. But this is what happens when you don't deal with it, when you're ahead, when you're struggling, when you're starting to struggle, or you're starting to grow apart, and we just continue to not deal with it. Over time, it doesn't magically get better, it gets worse, because anything you're not paying attention to is slowly dying.

And so sometimes you can't resuscitate it. Sometimes it's just gotten too far gone that you can't pull it back together, because by the time you're ready to do something about it, it's just the disconnection is just too wide. So let's talk about the unique challenges and the unique opportunities associated with going through a gray divorce yourself. Now, I mentioned at the top of this call that divorce is difficult for anyone involved.

But there are some unique challenges and things to consider before you just walk through your divorce, when you are 50 years old or older. And the biggest one is the financial piece, okay? Because when you've been together for, call it 30 or 40 years, you have, most people have accumulated some assets, so dividing up the assets is more complicated. You have retirement savings, most likely. And so now that has to be divided.

And what is that going to look like? Healthcare becomes a much bigger concern. Maybe one spouse was carrying the healthcare insurance for the whole family. Well, now if you get divorced now, you each have to have your own healthcare. What if one of you has a pre existing condition? What if one of you hasn't worked in 20 years? What if? What if? What if? Right? So healthcare and the costs of healthcare become a very real issue.

And of course, as we age, the likelihood of us becoming more sick becomes more prevalent. Our Social Security benefits. If we break up now, I only have my Social Security benefits to live off of. This is really important. If at some point in your life, you chose to stay home with the kids, as that was your role and your contribution inside the family, because you weren't contributing to Social Security, you also may not have been contributing to retirement.

So that has to be a part of the equation, because now you're not going to have your combined Social Security to be able to live off of. You only have your Social Security unless something is negotiated in the divorce. And then, as we talked about, housing is a real issue because now we have a lot more people that are wanting to live by themselves, which means we need a lot more housing and housing prices, rent prices, and to buy a home and all that kind of stuff continues to go up.

So it's a challenge. There's also this sense of comfort or emotional security. I mean, if you've been in a marriage for 30 or 40 years, you are used to living with someone. You are used to someone being there all the time, for better or for worse, right? Like, that's not always a joy, that someone is up in your space all day, every day, but it's a real adjustment.

I mean, it's just different once you've been together for decades and now all of a sudden, you find yourself in an apartment all by yourself. That is a huge adjustment. There will be grief with a divorce no matter what. And there's even something that they're calling ambiguous grief or ambiguous loss, because you're not. The person is still there, they're still alive. You're not widowed, but you're not together either, and you're not seeing them.

But you will grieve this if you go through a divorce, that is a loss. At minimum, it's a loss of a dream that you once had. And so you're going to navigate all the five stages of grief, just as you would if it was a death, because there is loss. They're involved. Now, speaking of loss, there can also be a loss of identity. Again, 30 or 40 years together, you had a certain idea of who you were.

And I promise you, a part of that identity was being a wife or being a husband. And so now that peace would no longer be there, at least for some period of time, until you chose to partner again or even marry again. So that can be something to contend with. It's not insurmountable, but it's something to contend with. That if you decide to divorce and you've only been together five years, there's probably not a loss of identity.

There's loss, of course, but it's not a loss of an identity. And then the last one is loneliness and isolation. Now, this can happen with anyone going through a divorce, but I think that it's more challenging for couples that are more than 50 years old going through a divorce, because it can become really easy to isolate yourself. But isolation and loneliness has been shown to link directly to very real health challenges, like having a stroke, like dementia, like coronary artery disease, like loneliness.

I've heard something, and I can't even cite the source. I heard it recently. I think it was on the news or something. And they said that loneliness has the same physical and mental and emotional impacts to the body as smoking does, which is crazy, right? So, again, it's not that it's insurmountable. You can establish community. You can make sure that you get out and you spend time with friends and with other people.

It's not insurmountable, but it's something that you definitely want to pay attention to. So those are the challenges associated with going through a great divorce. Let's talk about the opportunities. So life is precious, right? None of us are promised tomorrow. It's pretty arrogant that we wake up every day and just assume that we are going to wake up every single day. And yet we all have experienced those occasions where we lose someone close to us, and it sort of snaps us back into place, realizing how precious and how short life actually is.

So if you are in a really toxic or unhealthy marriage, you might be willing to walk through those challenges. Right? There's certainly a sense of freedom that comes with divorce and that can bring people alive in a whole new way. It's sort of like a rebirth. Like, who am I going to be now? If this is who I've been for the last 30 or 40 years of my life, who am I becoming?

And that can feel exciting now, if the relationship has been toxic or just really unhealthy in a myriad of ways, like maybe it's starting to take its toll on your health, actually ending their relationship and walking through all of those challenges that I just mentioned, well, that can actually be a benefit to your health to end that relationship, because now you're no longer confronted with those toxic behaviors day in and day out.

If there's something that you have always wanted to do in your life, but you sort of put it off or used your spouse as an excuse as to why you couldn't do that thing, now's the time that you have all the permission slips in the world to be able to go do whatever it is that you have always wanted to do. And certainly you will establish new friendships and new connections, and that can feel interesting and exciting later in life because the kind of connections that you had when you were in your twenties, they're just going to look and feel different, like even with the same person.

I promise you, the things you're going to be talking about in your fifties, it's just different than the kind of things that you shared with one another in your twenties and thirties, it's just different. So here's what I want you to know. Are there challenges? Yes, of course there are. Are those challenges real? Yes, they are real, especially the financial ones. But does that mean that you have to remain in a toxic or unhealthy marriage forever?

Does that mean that you're stuck in the status quo and that you just have to live out the rest of your days miserable? Of course not. But if you say, I am not willing to walk through those challenges, I am not willing to adjust my lifestyle, then what I would tell you is, okay, great. You're very clear about what your choice is and why you're making that choice.

I think that's a good thing. However, do not sign yourself up for living in a miserable marriage for the rest of your life. Instead, evolve the relationship. If you're going to stay, evolve the relationship to a place that feels really good, invest in getting equipped with the tools that you should have got equipped with 20 or 30 years ago that would have made all the difference in your marriage.

Get equipped with them now. Even if you move it a little bit towards health and something that feels good that is going to benefit you in a really big way. Okay. And if you say, you know what, yep, I'm going to face some. Some challenges. I'm going to have to walk through some really difficult things in order to end my 30 or 40 year marriage. I always say there's a price to freedom, right?

It's not free. Freedom's not free. So there's a price to it. And so you have to just be willing to pay that price. Make peace with the price that you're going to pay to. I will often reference a good friend of mine, because over the course of, I don't know, it was probably ten years that they had. That she had alimony and child support that she had to pay her ex, and she paid him more than a million dollars over the course of ten years, something like that.

And she could have been salty about it. She could have been upset every single time she saw her paycheck and that money going out to her ex husband, and she didn't. She made peace with it. She's like, that's the price of freedom, right? And it. And that was worth it to her. So you just have to get clear about whether or not it's worth it for you. And if you find that the marriage cannot change, then what I would tell you is, yeah, your happiness matters, too.

It really does. So if you cannot be happy and remain in that relationship, then you will have to walk through some challenges. But if you stay stuck in this place of I'm just going to sit here and wait for the easy button to show up where I don't have to navigate any challenges, and I'm going to have all the freedom of being able to end my marriage. That doesn't feel good to me.

That place doesn't exist, so it's one or the other. And I just wanted to be able to lay it out for you so you know what you're getting into. And also, if you're considering this, I want you to know that you're not alone. Like, there the. The rise of divorces after the age of 50, there's a reason why we have a whole mantra for it now called the gray divorce.

So I hope that that is helpful for you. I hope that at least gives you some information so that you're walking into it, not blindly, but really with your eyes wide open about how did we get here? What are the challenges that I'm going to face so that I can make a choice for myself and really consider the opportunities that I might have available to me either inside the marriage.

If I choose to remain in it or outside the marriage, should I choose to end it? All right, I hope that that was helpful for you. I love talking about what is happening in our relationships later in life because I think it's so important, and I don't think it gets enough conversation. So I hope that that was helpful for you. Until next time, please take really good care.

If you're listening to this podcast, because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth and clarity session with a member of my team. On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage.

Go to clarityformymarriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriage.com.