Gray Divorce
The number of late-in-life divorces is on the rise… with no end in sight

By Beverly J. Graves

I wrote my divorce affidavit on April 6, 2009, on what would have been our 35th wedding anniversary. As I penned the details for a pre-trial statement, I succumbed to the irony of that day. This was a defining moment in what was left of our marriage. Four months had passed since my husband had moved out and since a lawyer started guiding me through divorce proceedings. As I opened a new checking account, got his name off joint accounts, changed beneficiaries, and shut down all avenues he might use to encumber me financially, I was protecting myself. I was a “wise Caucasian woman” who was taking care of business in a timely and assertive manner- without the help of a loving spouse.

Yet, Harry Potter‘s Dementors — those wraith-like, supernatural creatures — were feeding on my emotions and sucking the soul right out of my words. I had become a statistic overnight. At 58, I was fueling the increase in those of us getting divorced late in life according to Census Bureau numbers, an increase from 6.7% in 2000 to 8.3% in 2004, with no end in sight as Baby Boomers age. How could this be? We had role models. His parents and mine had a combined total of over 120 years of marriage. We had already weathered so many inevitable dark times that challenge every marriage. Why me? Why now? Who else asks these same questions?

I don’t have clear-cut answers. Even though an AARP survey listed the top four reasons for what is termed “gray divorce,” (verbal/physical abuse, different lifestyles, cheating, and simply falling out of love), 25, 30, 35 years of history is enough to confound a simple listing. If we survived the 7 year itch, didn’t that bode well for the 14 year itch, the 21 year itch and so on?

Even though all divorces take time, are expensive, and seldom end gracefully, gray divorce poses different emotional problems than just who gets what car, what furniture and what friends. Gray divorce confronts old habits that die hard and unique feelings that have been forged in a lifetime of partnership. Although I had financial issues to work out, my emotional stages would take precedence in gaining a footing for the future.

The Marooning
I enter the house. He is gone. No matter what trials and tribulations precede this desertion, I am now alone on the island. I was soon to retire from 36 years of teaching, looking forward to the abundant rewards I had earned. I was rendered insensible that somehow I had been thrown overboard and discarded so late in life. I was not eating or sleeping. How could someone who claimed to care about me for 35 years live a life not including me? How had I become useless flotsam, after years of being a mother and wife? What right did he have to reject me when a second life, including both of us, was just beginning? I had not devoted just five years to a marriage. I had made a lifetime commitment to a man who evidently could not do the same late in the game. No matter how friends and a counselor tried to convince me otherwise, I felt as if I were a late life loser. I had been a confident woman who had raised two good kids, who had loved her job, and who had accepted most challenges in life. Sure, he had his own Dementors, his own issues that were infringing on my needs and rights as a partner. But I wasn’t going to vote him off the island. So why was he betraying me, rejecting me? Surreal pain trumped logic every time in this beginning stage. I survived by taking deep breaths, gasping for fresh air above the self-doubting waves pulling me under methodically. I lacked the speed and endurance to swim like I used to when I was young but swim I must.

The Mourning
Everywhere I turned I saw only partnerships. I saw couples my age holding hands. I scanned left hands for rings, never having done so before. In my despair, I irrationally saw that person as fulfilled and I as not. I couldn’t take off my rings yet, thinking that people were scanning my hand. I wanted to fool them into thinking that I was happily married by fooling myself. I was missing the idea of marriage and of what should have been, even as I distanced myself emotionally from him. I mourned the idea of not growing old together gracefully. I also questioned who would want me if I couldn’t keep a marriage of 35 years together. Losing my identity as a wife and as a working woman at the same time, I suffered collateral damage. The only shingle I could still hang on my doorstep was of mother, single one at that so late in life. I dreamed every night of a casket I couldn’t close because divorce is a death that seemingly has no earthly ending.

Yet, I was overwhelmed when I went to the beach and watched sailboats on the water. Our family life centered around sailing, and I remembered the solid trim of the sails on a windy day- the joy, the laughter of family life. When my kids tell me they had the best childhoods ever, two loving adults made that happen. I couldn’t help but miss him and the fulfillment we once had for a good part of our adult life. Family pictures hanging on our walls are holy. I can’t be sacrilegious, but I can’t worship their meaning any more. Now I question how to develop a new normal, a new home, a new routine when old pictures remind me of once what was.

The Historical Rewrite
Those same pictures, however, taint the history I once had. When did the lying actually begin? A year ago? Five? Ten? Did he really mean it when he said that he could never love another person like he loved me, a line I heard days before he left? What lies had he told our kids and when again did those lies begin? His rejection of me has also become a rejection of them. Unfortunately, late life divorce sometimes causes schisms between a deserting spouse and his children. My grown children keep asking, “Do you think he even cares about us any more? Can we trust anything he has told us, especially about how important we were?” My lawyer once told me divorce is often harder on adult children than on little ones. Adult children have too many memories that must now be viewed through a different lens.

Late life divorce seemingly wipes out one’s history. It rapes it of its significance and meaning. When I thought the family was happy, was it? Was I? Was he? How long had he been planning to leave? When he bought new furniture and then took it, was this part of some elaborate hoax to blindside me? Yes. My family history had become a moving target, and I couldn’t seem to get a good bead on it any more.

The Rebirth
Eventually, I could no longer ignore daily concerns. The furnace died, a fence blew over, someone hit the car, a new puppy ruined the carpet beyond repair. Talking to insurance agents, a counselor, friends, a lawyer and processing the endless piles of paper work drained me. I wanted to scream every time someone told me that I would be a stronger, happier, more liberated person after the divorce and once the fence was rebuilt in the spring. I was spinning in place and running on empty.

When we experience a crisis, our initial thought is to ask, “Why me?“ What am I to do? How do I fix what happened?” I took six months before I asked the more important question- What am I to learn from this?- my first step to recovery and rebirth. I stopped asking questions and needing answers that would never come. I was tired of “being that poor woman.” I was now ready to define my own proverbial 12 step program.

I stopped doubting myself and forgave myself. I let go of the person I thought that I had to be. I only needed to know who I was at this moment of my life, a person who refused to be reduced by events. I also let go of him and forgave him. I had to forgive him for being who he is and give up hope that somehow he will be different. If I didn‘t, the pain he had caused was too controlling.

I next needed to connect with my spiritual purpose for living. Dementors can only suck out my soul if I didn’t acknowledge it, protect it, and nurture it. As I had once put faith in a long term relationship with my husband, I now could only trust a spirituality living in me that will always transcend human failure and weakness, mine or someone else’s.

Finally, marriage over time develops habits, rituals, events that can become more form than function. Even though my “form” of living is still an unknown, my daily mantra isn’t. I have a second chance to function meaningfully in this world. Changes and endings are inevitable and often out of my control. However, I can accept where I choose to go in life and how I plan to get there. I still have many tough decisions confronting me. But late life divorce doesn’t mean that it is too late for me to make the right calls.