After years of working together in their computer software business, Mary Olson and her husband sold the company, retired to a barge on the picturesque Saône River in France and knocked around Europe for months.

Back at home in Minneapolis after their romantic adventure, he worked as a company consultant. She enrolled at a culinary institute to reinvent herself as a gourmet cook.

Married life past age 60 was good, she says. “He was my best friend, and he told me I was his. On our 40th wedding anniversary, I remember thinking, 'I guess we've made it.'”

A year later, she arrived home one day after work to find her husband gone and his closets empty. “I had a note,” she remembers. “It said 'Goodbye.'” He left little behind, she says, not even an explanation.

An Exploding Phenomenon
Olson is one of many people past midlife who see their relationships self-destruct after 20, 30 or 40-plus years of marriage. A buzz about the phenomenon has coined the term “gray divorce,” a trend some say is growing.

In Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over (Random House, New York), [1] [2]author Deirdre Bair taps into the experience via 400 interviewees, calling it an “exploding phenomenon.”

AARP attracted attention to divorce past midlife with its study that plumbed the reasons for it and “assumed” an imminent rise in later-life divorces, given the track record of an aging baby-boom generation so far. Chalk that up to a propensity for valuing self-expression over tradition that earned boomers—now ages 42 to 61—the “me-generation” label.

Keep in mind that another baby boomer turns 60 every seven seconds. And remember boomers' history up to this point of initiating more divorces than generations up the line. Why wouldn't the rate of later-life divorce be on the rise?

Very likely it will, said Xenia Montenegro, director of the AARP study and the organization's manager of marketing research. She said the 2004 survey of people ages 40 through 79 “assumes there will be more divorces” among Americans past midlife as boomers continue up the age ladder.

(Meanwhile, the 2005 U.S. Census reported 15.4 percent of women and 12.4 percent of men past age 45 as divorced. Those numbers don't measure the divorce rate per se, only the number of people divorced at a given time, without documenting the date that they divorced.)

“Boomers have been more likely to do things that go against social mores,” Montenegro said. With credit, no doubt, to the boomers, “Divorce is easier now,” she said. “The stigma is less.”

Somewhat surprisingly, 66 percent of 1,147 participants in the AARP study said the wife initiated the divorce. Among top reasons they gave for divorcing were abuse, particularly among women, along with differences in values and lifestyles, cheating and alcohol or drug abuse.

Among couples who hung on through years of dissatisfaction before making the break, both men and women said they persevered for the sake of their children, waiting until they left the nest or settled into their own lives.

Along with personal reasons for later-life divorce, researchers and writers point to societal factors that up the ante for “gray divorce”: Growing longevity has spawned a feeling among people in their 50s, 60s and older of “staying younger” longer, coupled with a belief that they have several more years to live. We live in an era of new beginnings when once-traditional mainstays—jobs, family homes and marriages at any age—just don't last as long.

The new “superwoman” who spent much of her adult life working outside the home probably has her own financial security, something her mother only dreamed of, in addition to a sense of independence, confidence and a comfort level with calling the shots.

Reacting to Life's Curve Balls
The last gasp in a marriage comes as a surprise for some. Others describe a sometimes long series of events that eventually leads to a defining moment.

Those two patterns crossed for Jim, director of marketing for a real-estate investment firm in Dallas, who asked that his last name not be used. His grown son had left home, and his wife, a musician, took a job performing on cruise ships. The cruises were short at first, but gradually got longer.

Then the surprise landed. “You could've hit me with a baseball bat,” he said. “I found out there was an affair going on, and she had signed up for a four-month cruise.”

He suggested they work things out, but she said her work was important, and insisted that she go. “It was a very hard time for me,” Jim said. When she returned, she told him she was going on another four-month cruise. He learned of other relationships, too, he said. “At that point, I said, 'I need to do something here.'”

He never issued an ultimatum, but at 54, he felt he had no choice but to file for a divorce. “When you're married over 30 years, the last thing you want to do is break it up,” he said. “I just knew I wasn't going to continue living that way.”

His attorney told him there was another option. “He said, 'You can stay married and stay unhappy. There are people who do it. You'd be surprised how many people are doing it.'” But Jim chose the divorce. He credits counseling, prayer, a fellowship group and bible study for helping him make a tough transition. “You go through all the different phases of it—anger, disappointment, disbelief, compromise—a thousand different emotions.”

A counselor told him he had to go all the way down, to feel all his emotions, in order to recover. “He said, 'You can't hide the anger and bitterness. It will reappear.'” Jim worked at not looking back, at not feeling resentful. “A man always wants to control,” he said. “I thought we'd get back together.

But when trust is gone, it's very difficult to get it back. Curves get tossed to us in life. It's how you react to them. You've got to change and get hold of things. Finally, you deal with it. You say, 'It's OK.'”

He found himself lending an ear to other men struggling with problems in their marriages. Several began confiding in him. “I can count at least a half-dozen guys in their 50s who've been married 20-plus years and their wives don't want to be married any more,” he said. “They say, 'There's nothing left in our marriage,' or 'There's another man.'

If there's any peace in this, it's that I was able to mentor other guys, understand where they are and help them through it.” He partly blames what happened in his marriage and what he hears from others on “an attitude of permissiveness given to us in today's society,” he said.

Fortunately for him, the divorce's financial impact “wasn't devastating,” he said. In Texas, a common-property state, he and his ex-wife split their assets 50-50. Still, he didn't end up with what he’d spent 30-plus years planning for. Any way you count it, it's half as much, he said, “with fewer years to recover it.”

In other ways, Jim, now 61, has recovered nicely. Some friends pushed for him and a single woman they knew to meet each other. When they did, “we laughed about it over lunch,” he remembers. “We had no intention of getting into a serious relationship.” They were married two years ago. “She's wonderful,” he says of his new wife.

Emotional Changes...and Newfound Wisdom
“Divorce is a terrible thing if you didn't want it, and sometimes if you did,” said Leda Sanford, a Sausalito, Calif., writer who for 10 years addressed a nationwide audience of single older women in her newspaper columns, now compiled in her book, Look for the Moon in the Morning (2006 Elders Academy Press, www.elderspress.org [3]).

“You fall to your knees, and then you get up again,” she said. “Friends are very important."

So is walking away from a marriage with enough money to live on comfortably, said Stuart Webb, a Minneapolis-based lawyer who has helped hundreds of people negotiate divorce settlements. He assists couples in getting a collaborative divorce, in which both partners—each represented by a lawyer trained in collaborative law (collaborativepractice.com [4])—work together to negotiate a divorce settlement, and no court appearance is required.

With child custody seldom a factor in later-life divorces, dividing a couple’s money is likely to become the sticking point. For some people, he said, it’s a form of “sticker shock.” Most people think they know how much money they have.

However, said Webb, “All of a sudden, it’s half that.” While money doesn’t necessarily inhibit a divorce, he said, “It puts a reality to it.” Some people end up with more than they ever dreamed they would. On the flip side, the division is hardest in cases that dictate spousal maintenance, where one partner must pay long-term out of his or her pocket to support an ex.

For money-related or other reasons, some couples decide not to divorce. Some end up saying, “Let’s hang in together,” Webb said. “Others find creative ways to stay married but live more separately.”

Financial security isn’t the biggest fear for people who divorce later in life, the AARP study found. “It’s getting old alone,” said Montenegro, the study’s director. Forty-two percent of men and 47 percent of women in the study said what they fear most is being alone. “But at the same time, life after divorce is freedom and independence,” she said. “It cuts both ways.”

Loss of Love, Loss of Respect
A St. Paul, Minn., man credits close friends and his first taste of independence with helping him to rebuild self-respect—and his life—after the breakup of his 32-year marriage. Don Schmitz, a former schoolteacher who now runs a pair of businesses, said he internalized his divorce six years ago as a personal failure.

“I think when you get divorced, you lose confidence in yourself,” he said. “I was supposed to be this guy who was always in control, always in charge. And I couldn't even keep my marriage together.”

He saw warning signs for many years, he said, that he and his wife were growing apart. “We used to have discussions on 'OK, what can we agree on?'” he remembers. They got to a place where they couldn't agree on much, he said. “There became so many things we couldn't talk about. All of our conversation became superficial.”

They began asking, “Why should we stay together, other than that we've been together for 32 years?” Schmitz said. “That scared the hell out of both of us.

It isn't something we dealt with lightly,” he said, partly because of concern about how it would impact others. “We were very well-respected in the community. We had a huge circle of friendships, both in the business and education world.”

The couple worked together for several years in a family-owned business where, according to Schmitz, “she was the boss.” Some of that carried over into the marriage. Looking back, he believes he let too much of himself go. “I compromised on things I didn't want to. When you give up part of yourself, you can lose part of why that person loves you.”[--pagebreak--]

They had been through years of counseling, he said. They talked seriously about divorce, but something always got in the way—a family wedding, grandchildren or something in the business—so they carried on.

 

The Defining Moment Always Comes
The defining moment came with recognizing they had lost respect for each other, he said. “When that was gone, there was just no alternative.”

Schmitz moved from the couple's spacious home to a small apartment, taking plenty of his fears along, he admitted. “Fear of being alone. Could I do it?” Married right after college, he had never lived alone before. “There were things I didn't know how to manage. Money, because she managed it. Food, I never worried about it.” He lost 20 pounds in 30 days and got sick.

“It all went down to fear,” he said. He joined an after-marriage group at his church and invited the participants for Thanksgiving dinner at his apartment. “I didn't want to spend the day with the family; I was too embarrassed,” he said.

His contributions to the home-cooked feast: a grilled turkey, potato chips and Jell-O. Eleven fellow group members showed up. “It was a nice day, just saying, 'This is our Thanksgiving.' And not being alone.”

Friendships, along with many family members, helped him to make the scary transition. “I felt a lot of strength from talking with friends and listening to friends. And I was able to make new friends. Friends help you recognize that you have value, that you should respect yourself.” At the same time, he was watching some friendships tied to his former life fall away.

The divorce became a turning point, he said, for the couple's three grown sons. “Parents are the focal point of a family. When a divorce occurs, it's like a death. It's not a Cinderella story any more.” He said it changed their perception of him, too. “They saw me as someone who didn't make mistakes and, suddenly, I was human. And I've been human ever since.”

As Schmitz revamped his life, he plugged some pursuits into it that he had long wanted to do. Always a lover of music, he learned to play guitar. Though he never thought he was good at it, he took up writing. His book, The New Face of Grandparenting: Why Parents Need Their Parents [5], was published in 2003.

He writes a monthly newsletter to post at grandkidsandme.com [6], one of his two businesses. “Now I'm being paid to write” for a New York-based website launched this month, he said. And that's not all. “I think I handle money extremely well,” he said. “And I handle relationships better than ever before.”

Two and a half years ago, he married again in an elegant summer ceremony with a Great Gatsby theme, after meeting his new wife two years earlier at a mutual friend's house party. The couple bought a house with a big lawn where he has planted sprawling flower gardens, and they gather there often with their large extended family and friends. He juggles his two businesses with help from his wife.

“Finding another person who really respects you helps you relearn to respect yourself again,” he said. Divorce and finding new love have helped him to “regrow” himself. Schmitz said that has brought some newfound wisdom. And with it, an ability to forgive.

Higher Expectations Make Marriage More Challenging
Some people, like David Popenoe, are skeptical that divorce among people past midlife is increasing to any significant degree. Popenoe, co-director of the Marriage Project at Rutgers University, cites a declining overall divorce rate in recent years. “If there's an increase among older people, it would run against the trend,” he said.

He attributes any increase in divorce past midlife to the size of the baby boom, rather than any societal shift. “To be sure, there are more 55-year-olds than there were 20 years ago,” he said. “What we want to avoid saying is that there's any higher risk of divorce for someone at 55 and older than for someone 20 years ago.”

But Popenoe calls marriage “more difficult” now than in the past. “We have a higher expectation today, especially women, who initiate most of the divorces,” he said. “The reasons are pretty obvious.

Women want a close friend, a compassionate helpmate and lover and, in times past, you basically settled. People didn't get a divorce unless they felt hopeless and couldn’t keep up the struggle for life. The expectation of the quality of a marriage has gone up.”

A new book by author and educator Mary Louise Floyd illustrates his point. Retired With Husband: Superwoman's New Challenge [7] (2007 VanderWyk & Burnham) focuses not on divorce but on helping couples who've been married for decades stay married for life. Floyd encourages women to “train” their husbands to create a new, non-job-based identity in retirement, respond to their wives' emotional needs and become equal partners on the home management team.

It's not your mother's Oldsmobile. “If we want a golden anniversary with our golden years, we need to reengineer some things,” she said. “We need to change the 'me generation' to the 'we generation.' And we need to start with our husbands.”

Change can happen, Floyd said in an interview from her home in Atlanta. The baby boom generation is poised for it. “We've done it five or six times,” she said. “We've morphed from a happily-ever-after image reinforced by Doris Day—we grew up with that; that's why so many of us are divorcing—to hippies, Vietnam vets and yuppies who made our megabucks. We're the positive change-making generation.”

That's one reason she believes that “if a woman's husband does not respond to her emotionally, she needs to communicate that to him,” she said.

Her book neatly lays out strategies for reengineering a retirement lifestyle for the times in which we live. “In retirement, today's women are simply not willing to put up with a husband who's not willing to do anything when she's taking on the next goal.”

A Second Chance
Marcia likely would not define herself as a superwoman. But despite her gentle demeanor, those who know her would insist upon it. After her divorce from a physically abusive husband decades ago, she almost singlehandedly raised her children, now successful adults with families of their own.

She went back to school to graduate from college and complete a master's degree, and she rose to the position of executive director of a work-life education program for businesses. She asked to use her first name only in this article.

Twenty years ago, as her children were leaving the nest, she married again—a man several years older than she, who retired from his career job three years after the wedding. They settled into a comfortable home in a Twin Cities suburb.

He painstakingly tended their beautifully landscaped lawn but ignored her emotional needs, Marcia said, though she barely knew how that might feel. “I didn't know what it was to be loved, to experience love,” she said. “I didn’t seek it out for that reason.” Instead, she poured herself into her work, caring for her aging parents, entertaining her grandchildren and staying involved with a wide circle of women friends.

She also went through years of therapy, some of it with her husband. “He just didn't want to do the work,” Marcia said, tears filling her bright-green eyes. “As I look back, I think, 'Why wasn’t that a wake-up call?'”

For as long as she can remember, she loved poetry and stories about deep love—the compelling stuff of Doctor Zhivago—but she thought that kind of love would never come to her. She knew for years she wanted out of the marriage, she said. “We had just been in a bad place for a long time. But I didn't know what to do.”

Her husband gradually became a part of the family. Her parents enjoyed his company. Given his age, somewhere between theirs and hers, they identified with him, and he became “Papa” to her children and grandchildren. [--pagebreak--]“I loved him as a person, but he was not the right person for me,” she said. “I thought I could make him happy. I did. But at a cost to my own happiness and my spirit.”

The defining moment in their relationship came not as a surprise but a real shock. They were traveling home from an event in another part of the city. She was driving the car on a busy highway while they talked. He suddenly became angry and violently struck her, again and again, on her arms and her neck.

She struggled to keep her hands on the wheel, then pulled the car off the road and ran. Her bruises documented the force of the assault. “When he hit me, there was no turning back,” she said. “It was wrong.”

She sought out a lawyer and filed for divorce. The divorce disturbed her children. “I was shocked,” Marcia said. “I never dreamed they would object so strongly.” But the confidence she had gained in her years of making decisions in the workplace strengthened her resolve, she said. “As time evolved, I think I became much stronger.”

In the year since she ended the marriage, she has been happier than ever before. She reconnected with a former schoolmate she had dated as a teenager, and now believes she finally has found her true love. “I'm excited and energized. I'm 62 years old, and I'm finally making my life stronger. It's like now, at last, I'm living the poetry.”

"Freedom, Self-Identity and Fulfillment"
There is life after divorce, even past midlife, say aging-issues guru Ken Dychtwald and journalist Daniel J. Kadlec in their book, T [8]he Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life [9] (2005, John Wiley & Sons). Almost four of every 10 people past age 45 in North America are single, they said, and opportunity is out there for those who go looking.

Older people, who now use the Internet more than ever, are discovering websites such as match.com [10] and a slew of others, where many say they've met interesting people. Some sites are even designed for people with special interests, such as fitness, dance, environmentalism or specific religious groups.

The book suggests churches and synagogues, classes and workshops as places to connect with people. Its authors emphasize staying involved with friends and making more of them by getting involved in something of interest.

“Three in four (76 percent) claim they made the right decision in divorcing. Their buzzwords are freedom, self-identity and fulfillment.”

The AARP study bears out the possibilities for divorced men and women past midlife. “Despite the worry, torment and fear they go through in making the decision and going through the divorce process, divorcees cope fairly well with life after divorce,” study director Montenegro wrote. “Three in four (76 percent) claim they made the right decision in divorcing. Their buzzwords are freedom, self-identity and fulfillment.”

Mary Olson, the Minneapolis woman whose husband abruptly left with no explanation, still doesn't know his reasons for leaving her. Three years later, she asks herself, “Did he not care anything about me all those years?”

In her heart, however, she knows he did. “We had such wonderful times,” she said. “We worked together for all those years. I used to say we were joined at the hip. Maybe it was too much togetherness.” She wonders if, in the last years of their marriage, she was gone too much. “If he had just said, 'Mary, I really don't want you working.' Or 'I don't want to be alone.' But I look back and ask myself, 'How was I supposed to know?'”

Her two sons turned down her plea to help her get an answer. “They said, 'Mom, we don't want to get in the middle of this,'” she said. Married at 19 and for four decades, she wondered, “Could I last? Could I live? Would I survive?”

She talked with her ex-husband once on the phone. “He never said anything about the divorce,” she said. He came by the house once after she emailed him to pick up some tools and other belongings he had left behind. “That was when I confronted him,” she said. Still, she got no answers.[--pagebreak--]

It's been more than three years since she found his goodbye note. Close friends and two-and-a-half years of therapy have helped her to recover. “My therapist tells me it wasn't me,” she said. “But I still wonder, what could I have done?”

When they divorced, there wasn’t much money to divide, she said. She works full-time as a cook for a food company that makes packaged seasoning products. “I’ll probably have to work for a long time,” she said. For fun, she teaches once a week at Cooks on Crocus Hill in St. Paul, a popular gourmet cooking school that offers classes to people in the community. It’s just one sign of her emerging spirit of adventure.

She thinks about enrolling in weekend classes to get a college degree. She feels a drive to do some kind of writing, and has thought about dating, too. “But I haven't met any unattached men,” she said. She loves to travel and has taken some trips since she's been alone. When no one she knew wanted to go along, “I went to Malta by myself,” she said.

She’s not sure she’d want to marry again. But a traveling companion? “I'd love to meet somebody to travel with,” she said. She doesn't know yet what the grand plan is for her, she said. “But when I know, I'm going with it.”