Conventional wisdom holds that the longer people are married, the less likely they are to ever divorce — hence the national shock over Al and Tipper Gore’s separation after 40 years of marriage.
Recent stats, however, indicate that late-in-life divorce, or “gray divorce,” as it’s been dubbed, is newly common: 1.1 million men aged 60-64 are divorced, as are 1.5 million women in the same age group. The trend is so emergent that the US Census Bureau may undertake its own study.
In the meantime, it’s up to the sociologists and the shrinks to parse what’s happening, and several theories have emerged: People are living longer, and may not be meant to be with one person over a lifetime. After decades of raising kids and tending careers, spouses re-meet each other in their 50s and 60s and may find they have little in common, or don’t actually like each other. Someone who is 60 today is both grappling with mortality yet can conceivably live to be at least 90; why spend one’s last 30 years miserable?
Dr. Sylvia Welsh, a New York City-based psychoanalyst who has treated many gray divorcees, says she has yet to see a late-in-life split that did not involve a third party. These divorces, she says, are often initiated by the unfaithful husband, who usually, a few years later, comes to regret it; they’ve not just left a spouse, but a life built over decades. “It’s a lot easier in your late 30s or early 40s,” she says.
She does not, however, see the trend receding. Just as the Baby Boomers redefined marriage and the family in the 1970s, they are currently redefining divorce. And she has surprising insight for anyone going through it: “The person who leaves usually winds up feeling bereft, because they have to deny, in the beginning, that they’ve done a bad thing,” Welsh says. “It’s the one who is left who often winds up doing better.”