A gray divorce, or a divorce that occurs when couples age 50 or older end long-term marriages, has 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 have been sailing together for decades suddenly decide they can’t (or won’t) continue, it’s hard not to wonder: What changed?
According to experts, there are some modern causes of gray divorce. For one thing, “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. “It’s definitely become easier to bet on finding another forever love.”
But beyond excitement about new possibilities, gray divorce is often driven by different triggers than those that end shorter relationships. These are the most common reasons, according to couples therapists.
Silent, pent-up resentment…and a new phase of life for women
“What ends marriages is usually not the big dramatic moments,” Edelman says. “It’s the little things that accumulate over decades”; Think about a lack of effort in household chores or mismatched communication styles that lead to constant bickering.
For many women, menopause is actually the period of awakening to pay attention to these neglected issues. According to Edelman, symptoms such as hot flashes, changes in sexual desire, restlessness, and sudden, intense mood swings, combined with years of unspoken frustration, can turn this stage of life into a powerful moment of reckoning, a crucial time to reevaluate a long-ignored dissatisfaction.
Repeated infidelity
While this is a fairly common reason for breakups, Kate Engler, LMFT, an AASECT-certified couples and sex therapist, says it plays a big role in gray divorces specifically. In many cases, “it’s a long-standing pattern of infidelity that has repeated itself over time,” he says. As you get older, it’s common to reach a point where you reflect on what the final chapters of your life will be like and whether you want to spend them in the same exhausting cycle. “So there comes a point where people say, ‘This is not going to change,’” Engler says. “’We’ve been through this so many times that I’m finally done.’”
Disconnect after the kids move out
For some couples, raising children is not just part of marriage; sometimes, is the marriage.
“Children often become a buffer,” Engler explains. The hustle and bustle of packing lunches, hosting birthday parties, and preparing college applications “makes it easy to avoid problems in your relationship.” But once the kids move out and the house falls silent, couples often face the reality that their bond may have been built more on co-parenting than on a satisfying long-term romance.
Change political opinions
In more recent years, Edelman says she has noticed that the current political climate is testing even the most enduring marriages. “Many couples who are going through a gray divorce now met in their 20s and 30s, when their values were more closely aligned,” she says. But new experiences—rising gun violence, restrictions on abortion access, and the global pandemic—have led some people to reevaluate (or even completely change) their beliefs. And those changes, Edelman says, can cause conflict.
