In the early years of her marriage, Joan*, now 57, enjoyed a life full of her three children’s activities, building a business with her husband and community engagement as a business owner in Bethesda, Maryland. But as her children left the house, the lack of emotional connection with her husband troubled her more and more.
“I wanted to save this marriage so much. I did not want to be divorced,” she recalls. At the same time, she says: “I would fall asleep in tears and wake up in tears. I was miserable. I was not getting my needs met at all.”
After seeing five different marriage counselors, she realized that the differences between her and her husband weren’t going to change and that she didn’t want to spend her sixties and seventies in the same situation. The couple separated in 2022 after 22 years of marriage.
Joan isn’t alone. Long-married older couples, freed from the distractions of raising children or building careers, often reevaluate their life choices and their relationships. While the overall divorce rate in the U.S. has fallen since highs in the 1980s, the rate of gray divorces — between people in their fifties and older — doubled from 1990 to 2010. Now, 36% of adults getting divorced are 50 or older. The rate is even higher among adults 65 and older.
“The reality check is, ‘I’m closer to death than I am to my birth.’ That is a significant motivator for shaking up your life,” says Kerstin Rao, a dating coach in Westport, Connecticut, whose clients include older divorced women.
Gray divorce: Should you stay, or leave?
The decision is fraught. On one hand, you have decades of mutual history, shared family and friends and joint assets. On the other, with life expectancy stretching into the nineties, do you really want to spend your last decades in an unhappy or detached marriage? How do you know when it’s worth trying to save your marriage, if it’s even possible and whether you’d be happier apart?
Experts suggest getting professional help, looking for ways to compromise, and being clear-eyed about the financial, social and emotional cost of divorce before calling it quits.
“In the big life transitions, our relationships need support, especially if you’ve been together a long time. We’re unpacking patterns that have come about over decades,” says Gina Senarighi, a certified relationship coach in Madison, Wisconsin and author of Love More, Fight Less.
Why gray divorce happens
It may seem counterintuitive that couples encounter marital problems after decades of being together. However, retirement often coincides with other stressful life transitions, from health problems to losing your career identity.
“We look around and say, ‘Are you still the person I want to be doing this with long term? Who am I? Do I even want the same things I thought I wanted when I was 20 or 30 or 40 and I met you?’” says Senarighi.
Meanwhile, you might, for the first time, be able to afford to maintain two separate households. While your retirement resources will be split in two and decline, research shows that you are less likely to be driven into poverty than younger people.
When you’re unhappy in the marriage, it can be easy to fantasize about a free and better life after splitting up. But separating from a long-time spouse involves a series of losses — from alternating family holidays to losing friends and community ties.
When Robbye Fox, 62, split from her husband of 31 years, she lost all these things. “It’s a pretty lonely thing to go through. I gave up my community, my family home,” Fox says.
“Most couples regret a divorce, at least to some extent. They wish they had done something different,” says Don Cole, a Seattle couples therapist.
Ways to make it work
Before you throw in the towel, Cole and others advise couples counseling, rebuilding the relationship and learning new skills that will lower the level of conflict and help you get along better.
“Until you’ve tried to create new positive rituals and learn how to regulate some of the disagreements, you shouldn’t give up,” he says.
- Look for opportunities to create rituals of connection throughout the day. Could you share a cup of coffee and connect before diving into your separate projects? Or maybe an after-dinner walk would serve as a low-key conversation time?
- Learn some key communication skills that will help you fight less. Note: this is best done with the support of a couples counselor, who can help you practice skills, break bad relationship habits and find ways to compromise and see each other’s perspective.
- Soften the message. When bringing up a difficult issue, keep it from feeling like an attack. For example, if you’re rushing to get out the door, your habit might be to say: “Why do you always make us late?” Instead, try saying, “I’m worried about the time and I need us to move more quickly.”
- Manage high emotions. When we’re in a conflict, our body and brain go into fight, flight or freeze mode, making it hard to have any rational discussion. Develop a plan for how each person will get out of that state when it happens — and agree to calm down before resuming debate.
- Make repairs. Perhaps the most important skill is recovering after a fight. Couples counselors can help you find your way back to harmony, if you’re out of practice. “Everybody screws up, even me,” Cole says. “Successful couples repair their miscommunications.”
- Accept influence. After decades together, it’s easy to become like two fighters clinging to opposite corners of the boxing ring. The more that one person insists something is black, the more the other views it as white. You need to learn to see the other person’s perspective, and even to agree with it occasionally. Cole says the magic three words in a relationship are: “That makes sense.” Even if you disagree, you are acknowledging the other person’s point of view as valid.
“You’d be amazed at what people, when they have a willingness to work together, what they’re able to do,” says Karen Bridbord, a licensed psychologist and organizational consultant based in New York City. “When there’s been a lot of turning away, it’s really hard to say, ‘I can do it with this person.’ ”
Sometimes, the compromise you reach is more permanent, such as establishing separate homes but keeping extended family connections and shared assets. As Gretel, 64, was anticipating retirement a few years ago, she started spending more time hiking and traveling to the mountains, which her husband Peter, 67, didn't enjoy as much.
As she took more frequent trips from their Rochester, New York, home, Gretel considered ending their nearly 30-year marriage. After a few counseling sessions, she decided to move to the Adirondack Mountains on her own. They stayed married and now live separately, but visit each other. Gretel comes to Rochester monthly and Peter visits her for four to five days at a time.
"He loves my place. It's a vacation for him when he comes. I'm happy because I do what I want and when without giving thought to checking in with him," Gretel explains. "It is rewriting our relationship and making it work somehow."
Editor’s note: Due to the sensitivity of the topic of this article, some persons we interviewed requested that we not publish their last names.
This item first appeared in Kiplinger Retirement Report, our popular monthly periodical that covers key concerns of affluent older Americans who are retired or preparing for retirement. Subscribe for retirement advice that’s right on the money.
