Gray divorces, or those that happen when couples in their 50s and beyond end long-term marriages, have become increasingly common. We’ve seen it in the headlines: Bill and Melinda Gates are a notable example, along with more recent reports about Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. But when two people (famous or not) who’ve navigated decades together suddenly decide they can’t—or won’t—continue, it’s hard not to wonder: What changed?
There are a few modern causes of gray divorce, experts say. For one, “dating apps have opened up so many more opportunities, and social media has allowed us to reconnect with more people,” Marina Edelman, LMFT, a licensed couples therapist based in Los Angeles, tells SELF. “So definitely, it’s become easier to gamble with finding another forever love.”
But beyond the excitement of new possibilities, gray divorce is often driven by different triggers from the ones that end shorter relationships. Here are the most common reasons, according to couples therapists.
1. Quiet, accumulated resentment—and a new phase of life for women
“What ends marriages usually isn’t the big, dramatic moments,” Edelman says. “It’s the little stuff that piles over decades”—think, a lack of effort in household chores or mismatched communication styles leading to constant bickering.
For many women, menopause is actually the wake-up period to pay attention to these issues that have been pushed aside. According to Edelman, symptoms like hot flashes, changes in sex drive, restlessness, and suddenly intense mood swings—combined with years of unspoken frustration—can turn this stage of life into a powerful moment of reckoning, a pivotal time to re-evaluate long-ignored dissatisfaction.
2. Repeated infidelity
While this is a pretty common reason for breakups, Kate Engler, LMFT, an AASECT-certified couples and sex therapist, tells SELF it plays a major role in gray divorces specifically. In many cases, “it’s a longstanding pattern of unfaithfulness that’s been repeated over time,” she says. As you get older, it’s common to reach a place where you’re reflecting on what the last chapters of your life will look like—and whether you want to spend them in the same exhausting loop. “So there comes a point where people are just like, ‘This isn’t changing,’” Engler says. “‘We’ve been through this so many times—I’m finally done.’”
3. Disconnect after the kids move out
For some couples, parenting isn’t just part of the marriage—sometimes, it is the marriage.
“Often, children become a buffer,” Engler explains. The busyness of packing lunches, organizing birthday parties, and prepping for college applications “makes it easy to avoid the problems in your relationship.” But once the kids move out and the house goes quiet, couples are often left facing the reality that their bond may have been built more on coparenting than a fulfilling romance built for the long haul.
4. Changing political views
In more recent years, Edelman says she’s noticed the current political climate straining even the longest-lasting marriages. “Many couples that are going through gray divorce now met in their 20s and 30s when their values were more closely aligned,” she says. But new experiences—rising gun violence, the restrictions on abortion access, and the global pandemic—have led some people to re-evaluate (or even completely change) their beliefs. And those shifts, Edelman says, can spark conflict.
“What makes it even trickier is that when you’re retired (or close to it), you’ve got more time to watch the news, read opinion pieces, and think about these current events,” she points out. “So in today’s political climate, many partners are either unequipped or unwilling to find new ways to co-exist with their new ideologies.”
5. Health and caretaking concerns
As grim as this sounds, later-in-life relationships inevitably come with heavy questions about health and caregiving: Do you trust this person to take care of you when you’re seriously ill and on your deathbed? On the flip side, are you willing (and able) to commit to a lifetime of support when they need you?
As we get older, these abstract concerns can become sudden dealbreakers—and in Engler’s experience as a therapist, women especially face this moment of reckoning: “They’ll see a friend go through an illness and think, Would my spouse be there for me?” And if the answer isn’t a resounding yes, those doubts can become powerful enough to lead to divorce—especially if past experiences, like your partner failing to bring tissues or soup when you’re in bed with the flu, offer no reassurance.
While these concerns are definitely practical, perhaps more importantly, they strike at the heart of what most people want in their final, dying years—the hope of a meaningful, fulfilling future, which sometimes outweighs the comfort of staying put.
Related:
- 6 Things I Learned From Blowing Up My Marriage (and Life) in My 30s
- Workplace Affairs Are More Common Than You’d Think. Here’s Why, According to Infidelity Experts
- 5 Bad Habits That Make It Harder to Get Over a Breakup
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