Name: Divorcees.
Age: Usually middle-aged, roughly between 45 and 65.
What about them? What are these boomers and Gen X-ers up to, apart from being rich? Getting divorced.
Sad. Maybe not. Especially not for women, as it happens.
Go on. Take Bill Gates …
He really is rich. He is, but money apparently doesn’t buy you happiness. Earlier this year, Bill said that the breakup of his marriage, after 27 years, was the “mistake I most regret”.
Bigger than allowing Google to develop Android? True, he has also said that has been his biggest mistake, but maybe he regrets that one less.
And what about his ex-wife – how does she feel about it? Melinda French Gates says that post-Bill she is “very happy”.
Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott were also “silver splitters” – couples who divorce later in life – weren’t they? Bezos was 55 and Scott was 48 when they called it a day on their marriage in 2019. (He has since snuck off to Venice for a lavish second wedding.) But this is not just about billionaires.
No? Have you got a survey of normal people? I have, by Survation, of more than 2,000 women aged 45 to 65, including 220 divorcees.
And what does it find? That nearly a third (31%) said they were happier than they ever had been. “Many spoke about finally having a chance to become the women they always wanted to be, setting themselves up ‘for the next half of my life’,” the survey reports.
Sounds like some are going to live to 130! It’s amazing what happiness can do for longevity. One divorcee surveyed, 55-year-old Pat, said: “I want other women to know that my rebirth, my return to my true self post-divorce, has been an amazing experience. I am now so much happier.”
Are men less good at divorce? A survey from 2005 suggested that while women are more likely to feel relieved, liberated and happy after a split, it leaves men devastated, confused and betrayed. And in 2019, the behavioural scientist Paul Dolan did some research and wrote a book, Happy Ever After, on a similar subject. He found that unmarried and childless women are not just happier, but also more likely to live longer than their married and childbearing counterparts.
So maybe don’t get married in the first place? Maybe not.
Do say: “I want to break free!”
Don’t say: “Yeah, but 31% happier still leaves 69% …”
• This article was amended on 19 November 2025. An earlier version identified women aged between about 45 and 65 as “boomers”. However, most of this age group would be part of Generation X; this detail has been added.
