Starting Over After Late-Life Divorce
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-07-01/starting-over-after-late-life-divorce
Al and Tipper Gore's recent split has put divorce back in the news. Many long-term married couples are making the decision to go their separate ways -- possibly for another two or three decades. A conversation about the unique challenges and opportunities of late-life divorce.
Guests
Andrew Cherlin
Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family Today."
Janice Green
practices family law as a partner in the firm Farris & Green in Austin, Texas. She is author of the book, "Divorce After 50: Your Guide to the Unique Legal and Financial Challenges."
Abigail Trafford
is a journalist, columnist, and former health editor at "The Washington Post" and author of "Crazy Time" and "My Time."
Comments
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Women of means can easily divorce their spouse and go on living almost like they did before.
In most cases, women would be financially strapped and probably live on a lot less. Of course, if the spouse is a real monster, it would all be worth it to divorce.
Barbara, Michigan
My inlaws divorced after 48 years of marriage. Their unhappiness only grew separately instead of together. They blamed each other for their problems instead of addressing the roots of the issues.
I am a family law attorney. I tell all divorce clients, particularly those with long-term marriages, that a divorce is like a death and to anticipate the normal grief process -- denial, anger, acceptance. It seems universally to apply. Those who do better post divorce are those who deal with the grief effectively.
I divorced from my husband after 42 years of marriage. We agreed about this. We felt that we had another 20 to 30 or more years of healthy life. We cared about each other and liked each other enough to allow a new life for each of us. We did not use attorneys. We have remained friends.
It has been an interesting journey for me. But, from the first day I was happy that we made what for us was a very brave decision to separate and divorce.
I have written a book about this subject. Ahead of the Curve, an intimate conversation with women in the second half of life. In doing the research for the book I interviewed women all over the United States. There are so many stories, enough for many books. Many of them are hopeful and life expanding.
As I always tell people; We all die in the end, so the important thing is not to look for a “happy ending” but to enjoy the journey. For many people who have spent 40 or more years together, the last part of that journey is happier traveled alone or with a new partner.
It should not be taken lightly, nor done in anger, but some people really do benefit from divorce even if it reduces their lifestyle. As we age our values change and having the most money or the largest house may no longer be the most enjoyable choice.
I fully support divorce for later life. Divorce is never easy but if handled properly can be a new lease on life for both.
My daughter after 20 years of marriage to someone that did not make her happy, was brave enough to finish it and move onto the second half of her life. I applaud her. She's happier now than ever, has a new man in her life and has gone back to school pursuing the career she wanted but her husband didn't for her.
She did the right thing. She even lost the extra weight she had gained and is healthier than ever.
Don't you think the high rate of divorce is more a product of women being more self-sufficient than in the past...many no longer must stay together because the wife cannot support herself or her children. Women are not forced to "put up" with what they did in the past. Consider all of the infidelity in the news lately. These are high profile people but the average couple is not immune.
Your guest speakers are talking about divorce like a consumer product - remodeling a kitchen, buying a car, or trading in a cell phone. People in marriages need to stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about everyone in the family. Think how your actions will affect you kids, your siblings, and even how your actions will be reflected on the family's tree. With everything about our lives now being recorded for posterity, generations later will wonder about your strange part of the family tree. Married people WORK it out.
When my husband retired major conflicts emerged in our marriage and I have thought about divorce for at least three years. It will mean the dissolution of my family and a vastly reduced lifestyle. Also, I think the reality is that I will be alone for the rest of my life whereas I am certain that my husband will remarry in a short time. These are painful and enormously difficult decisions to make.
When my husband retired major conflicts emerged in our marriage and I have thought about divorce for at least three years. It will mean the dissolution of my family and a vastly reduced lifestyle. Also, I think the reality is that I will be alone for the rest of my life whereas I am certain that my husband will remarry in a short time. These are painful and enormously difficult decisions to make.
I am a 28 year old child of divorce. My parents made it 22 years (have been divorced for 10 yrs), and through the process of the divorce I had always understood my stand on marriage. I was going to be married once and that would be the one! My husband's parents are still married and he has been through 2 divorces. He jokes that 3rd time's a charm, but for me it just shows the effect of a divorce on a childs perception of "marriage". I almost have to thank my parents for showing me what not to do so my marriage will not turn out like theirs did. Thank You!!!
My husband and I divorced after 27 years of doing the best we could do. While I felt relief, there was also much grief and sadness. My adult children understood the necessity for the divorce and my son expressed his feelings this way: "It's kind of like having to put our old, sick dog to sleep. You know it needs to happen, but it's still sad when it does."
Both my husband and I feel that this was the right decision.
As the daughter-in-law of now deceased, divorced-after-35-year-marriage parents-in-law, I can tell you that my husband was devastated by his parents' divorce. His view of his family and childhood was shattered, his opinion of his parents as problem solvers changed immediately. We often wondered why they didn't stay married and just split the house. Neither ever remarried. They each became ill and died within eighteen months of each other.
People are being told to get divorced, by "advisors" who have no concern for marriage -- and may never even meet the spouse.
I have observed (and myself suffered) divorce driven by unqualified "mentors" and "spiritual guides" pressing bizarre New Age concepts.
If one spouse buys the drumbeat of nonsense -- "Leap and the net will appear," for example -- they begin to imagine NO downside in walking away from home, work, family, or any other commitment. Once they've bought into enough magical thinking -- such as The Secret, and Law of Attraction -- they believe there is no such thing as "commitment."
Many of these so-called "life coaches" themselves have long been divorced, or always single. Perhaps they merely want others to validate their choices by joining them in being alone...
My husband and I have been married 26 years, neither quite 50 years old, and have a 16-year old son. We have acknowledged between ourselves that our marriage is over due to personal differences. We are still friends and care deeply for each other. We have decided to stay together for our son, to give him a stable home during the turbulent teens - but many of my friends have questioned this decision. I'm not sure if they question because of their personal experiences, or because the concept of a friendly divorce is so foreign.
I would appreciate more information about how other people have handled this situation?
My husband of 29 years and I divorced 3 years ago; our children were 20 and 22. In retrospect we should have split about 10 years earlier. It would have been healthier for our kids, and us. Way too much pathology on both sides.
Ex announced his engagement to his high school girlfriend 3 months after we filed, by mailing a letter to our daughter and not telling our son at all. No one knew he was seeing anyone.
I feel so badly for my kids, who don't have a very close relationship with their dad, and may never. He lives out west and invites them to visit for four days in August and January. I can't change him (it has taken a long time to grasp that), but it's sad. The kids won't talk to me at all about the divorce, but I know they try to "protect" me from certain things.
As for me, I'm 61 and live in quintessential suburbia, where all my friends are married, most with kids still at home, or at least have complex family lives. I'm not good at reaching out or going into new social situations, never have been, so it's a continual struggle for me to build some kind of social life - so far not terribly successfully! Fortunately, my financial situation is stable, and I live reasonably well, if quietly.
After 20 years of marriage ex-wife decided that we had married too young and that she had not lived her life.. therefore she left me for a young man half my age that she met online. totally flooring me and my daughter.(she is 20 now)
I am much better off in hindsight however it was not as easy as your guest suggest that it is. I have recently met a woman who is also divorced (after 24 years) I am now looking at my first wife as my practice wife and I am moving on! Humans are very adaptive that is why we are still around as a species.
TO me this really speaks to the idea that people have, that are in a bad or failed relationship, of staying together "for the kids". Which being a child of a divorce, I have certain feelings about. I was very glad that my parents divorced because I was tired of the fighting and I was only 12. I think staying together for the kids leaves the children with either devastation that what they thought was a good marriage was not or it teaches them to accept a bad relationship model as something that is acceptable.
I grew up in a house hold where is was obvious that my parents had fallen out of love early on. Constant fighting, alcohol abuse on my fathers part. My mom never divorced him, although my sister and I always wished they would separate. In his 50's my father passed away and my sister and I finally thought my mom would have her life back. Unfortunately she soon developed breast cancer and also passed on. I just wish she would have divorced early on so that she would have experienced some part of a happy life with a man who would have loved and cherished her.
Of late (say, past the 1970s or so) the issue seems more to me to be that those in a relationship don't understand why they formed it in the first place. "Love" doesn't conquer all.
"Marriage" (nor relationship building) has never been "taught" in public schools and not really in church classes either. Seems like of late that "arranged marriages" seem to have as much success as those in which lovers joined with eyes wide open.
Marriage is a partnership of sorts, with lots of pitfalls and pratfalls (Woods, Gores, et al) and those who don't first learn, and then understand the values of relationships are doomed to either falter or fail.
Nothing in life is perfect but "new couples" or newly wedded couples seem to think it is.
Best analogy I can offer is in the Major League Baseball, a .350 or .400 hitter is a hero. But he also fails .650 or .600 in his at bats.
Lovers seem to expect to bat 1.000 (or close to it) and later in life they don't understand that a really successful relationship is more in the .500 range because "stuff happens."
I recently dated a girl who had personally experienced the late life divorce of her parents. It was a very traumatic experience for her. I think it is just as bad for older children as it is for younger children, if not worse. We found out together that she has a negative outlook towards marriage. It was tough to deal with but that is the reality of such divorces and the effects on the children. On the other hand, her parents are both remarried and happy. So I believe there is a positive outlook in the long run that can encourage the children but maybe not as much the shock of divorce has the effect of having a negative outlook on marriage.
My parents were the only people I knew that had not divorced, that is until they divorced last year. I understand that they had been living with very different views/ideas for decades and were waiting until all the kids were out, college educated, and married (I am the only one still single of three brothers) before they got divorced because my father did not want his kids to have to experience divorce as he did when he was a child.
I have an uncle who teaches psychology that I have long joked "if anyone should know how to stay married, it would be someone that teaches psychology" who got married and divorced a couple times when I was a child - I lost a lot of faith in the institution of marriage because of that.
My feeling is that no one takes vows promising forever seriously anymore. I don't remember the actual statistic, but something like half of all marriages fail in the first 5 years... why would anyone want to put themselves through that? It seems better to me to avoid all those emotional (not to mention financial) entanglements and not marry to begin with.
re: older couples divorcing when one spouse becomes ill. I work with a hospice, and I have seen many instances where couples divorce, then remain together until the end. This is often because, in order to pay for nursing-home care, they would be forced to go through all of their assets, up to and including selling their home, before Medicare/Medicaid would step in. This would leave the surviving spouse with nothing to live on in cases where he/she survives for a number of years. By divorcing, some of the assets can be settled on the well spouse, and these are not taken into account by the Medicare/Medicaid formula.
Refreshing conversation. Does anyone take into account that the couple "invested" in each other?
We all change, the thought is that as we change, we need to counsel and consider each other's new views and needs. Encouragement for development has always been my wish for my younger and estranged wife. I wanted her to get into college, expand her views and abilities.
We had differences arising out of the upbringing of her child during twenty years. The Child is now an adult, and a very expensive person who is just only recently has understood the meaning of self-responsibility. For the past decade and more (we) raised her daughter also, bearing both the mental and monetary weight of rearing our grandchild who is both highly intelligent, mature beyond her years, and adorable in manner and appearance.
Having labored for years upon raising my step-child, and her daughter, I am without the latent bonus of a deep and personal comfort of sharing the rest of my life with my departed wife.
In reading many "self-help" publications, I have found little solace nor satisfaction except for one book by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. His 20th Anniversary Edition of "GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT" reaches deeply into the depths of the brain and the reasoning that convoke a variety of behaviors and dysfunctional relationships.
I recommend that every couple read this publication after two years of being married, or earlier. In fact it does make a very positive case for marriage and would be helpful if read BEFORE the marriage.
If both partners of the marriage would consider his published study, writings, and workshops, we might, in a greater plurality, enjoy our marriages to the end of lives.
In listening to your program today, I hear very little about determined commitment to develop a relationship into a happy partnership. Not all marriages may survive, but today, to many fail owing to outside stresses and circumstances that are unnatural to human behavior.
I had some friends who had been married for a couple years when the man pulled me to the side one day and commented that "things have not been bad at home, but she has not seemed interested in making our marriage work - I have really been thinking divorce might be our best move."
My reply to him was: "Jesus said that Moses was only allowed to write divorce into the law because of the hardness of mens ("mens" is understood to be "people" - not just the male gender) hearts." We continued to discuss what being married really means and the level of commitment it is and that means working together to get things to work.
I did not ask him how or what they changed, but they stayed married (my talk with him was 9 years ago) and now they have a beautiful daughter together.
The reason I told this story is to echo the sentiment you posted, people have a poor understanding of what marriage actually is. In my personal search for someone worth being married to, I am not concerned so much about looks (although spectacular looks don't hurt, with time looks fade) or sex, but someone who I feel I would be willing to go into business with on a partnership basis.
The next thing is "How do you know who you should go into business with?" - That takes experience, a lot of going out and doing on your own, a lot of trying and failing in order to understand what is required to be successful. If your not capable of being successful on your own, it is hard to believe that you can be successful when you include the complications of someone else's life.
I just divorced my husband of just over 39 years. We married young and as a product of the 50's, I always thought that I HAD to "put up" my choice of a mate and stay in the marriage regardless. The birth of my first grandchild two years ago challenged me to leave that unhappy and unhealthy marriage because I was not going to let another generation see what I was going through. My adult children were and continue to be extremely supportive and both said, "It's about time." The people who are NOT accepting of my divorce are my parents who are and continue to be the example that lead me to think my own bad marriage was "normal".
Diane, Ann Arbor
My parents divorced when I was 20 (I'm now 30) after 35 years of marriage. Though there was a slight sense of sadness/loss, the overall feeling my siblings and I shared was one of relief. My parents were strong Catholics who fought against divorce the entire time I knew them, but they also constantly fought, undermined, and slandered each other to their children. They stayed together until I, the youngest child, was securely out of the house (no more summers home from college), then split. I wished my whole life they would divorce. Home life was stressful and tense, and they did me and my siblings more harm than good by staying together.
However, the one important thing I got from that situation growing up was an appreciation for a quality marriage and the characteristics that make a marriage great and lasting. I was engaged at a young age and luckily recognized some of the traits of my parents' relationship manifesting in my own. I broke off the engagement b/c I didn't want to have the same kind of marriage my parents did. Afterward, I met the man I eventually did marry, and we've know been happily married 7 years.
In response to Charlie's comment:
I hear judgement without facts. I stayed married to a woman for 36 years for many of the same reasons you list. I had a job that allowed me to travel 5 days a week which is probably the only reason we were together so long. We are in the process of divorce now because I can enjoy life with someone I truly love while giving my spouse an opportunity to do the same. My children and grandchildren will not be witness to our unhappiness anymore. My siblings are very supportive for both myself and my spouse because they know both of us will be happy. Surely you are not suggesting couples should remain together for the sake of a geneology? I hope your marriage is outstanding but take the blinders off and try to see marriage through other eyes.
As I contemplate divorce from my husband of 39 years because of his repeated infidelities, I am faced with the reality that after divorce his pool of available dates will be women 30 years old and older, while mine will be octogenarians. I stay with him even tho I no longer love, trust, or respect him because I enjoy being part of a couple and included in couple activities. Where I live, an older divorced women is dropped like a hot potato, while an older divorced man is an eligible bachelor.
Great topic and great show! I'm one of those discussed, being 54 and getting ready to divorce after 32 years with an alcoholic husband. Things were bad for years but I couldn't come up with the energy to do something until recently. I'm staying with friends and looking down at a big hole I need to jump into. It's scary but I feel I have no choice---the emotional abuse was too much to take anymore and he is physically shot.
I've been married now for 31 years and am contemplating divorce. My husband goes every night to the bar and drinks for a few hours with his guy friends, before he come home. He has done this for years on both workdays and weekends. I plead with him to spend time with me, he agrees and then in a few days he is back to his old game. I prayed for years that he would get sick enough to stop this crap and realize where his priorities are. Well he did get sick, he ended up with a quadruple bypass and I took care of him and thanked God that this would shake him up. It did not! Shortly afterward he started losing weight, bought contact lenses, started carrying his hairspray and cologne in the car and began texting women. When I found out after months of him doing it, I told him to leave. He swore he loved me and it would stop. It did, but his drinking and going out did not. Problem is, I love this man, or I think I love this man. Now all I think I want to do is roll up in a ball and sleep.
I just started a new website for women over 40 who are having to start life over after 40: http://www.job-hunt.org/onlinejobsearchguide/article_over-40-job-search....
Love the show!