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Grey Divorce: What It Is and Why This Feels So Different

Grey divorce is the end of a marriage later in life, often after twenty, thirty or forty years together.

Maybe this was your decision.

Maybe it wasn’t.

Either way, the life you knew has changed.

And it has nothing to do with just the paperwork.

It’s the part where you may have no idea who you are outside all of this, while feeling the pressure of having to have answers about the house, the money and what comes next.

That can become very overwhelming when you are still trying to process:

How did this become my life?

That is the part I want to talk about here.

What grey divorce means.

Why this can feel so different after a long marriage.

What may be happening in your mind and body.

And why some of what you are feeling may make a little more sense once you understand it.

What is a grey divorce?

Grey divorce

/grei dih-vors · noun

A grey divorce is when a marriage ends later in life, often after twenty, thirty or forty years together.

The term may be new to you.

It was to me.

And sometimes simply knowing there is actually a name for what you are going through matters.

Because it means there are other women here too.

Women scared, confused and wondering how the hell this became their life.

Especially in a grey divorce, after you have spent twenty, thirty or forty years building one life with someone.

Of course it is going to affect more than just the marriage ending.

The house.

The money.

The routines.

The family as you knew it.

The future you thought you were going to have.

And sometimes the version of yourself that existed inside all of it.

That is a lot to suddenly have change.

Research by Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin at Bowling Green State University found that the divorce rate among adults over fifty roughly doubled between 1990 and 2010, while divorce among younger adults was becoming less common.

SourceSusan Brown and I-Fen Lin · Bowling Green State University

So if part of you has been thinking:

Why is this happening to me at this age?

You are far from the only woman standing here.

Why marriages end after twenty or thirty years

There usually is not one answer.

Sometimes the marriage has been changing for years.

Sometimes something happens very suddenly.

Sometimes she leaves.

Sometimes he does.

Sometimes there is an affair.

Sometimes there is no one huge dramatic moment at all.

Just years of distance, loneliness, resentment, silence or slowly becoming strangers inside the same house.

Research into divorce later in life has looked at things like children leaving home, retirement and health changes as times when long marriages may be looked at differently.

That does not mean one of those things caused the divorce.

Plenty of couples go through them and stay together.

Sometimes they simply change enough of the life around the marriage that whatever was already there becomes harder to ignore.

And doing the leaving does not mean you do not grieve.

You can know something needed to end and still be completely affected by the fact that it did.

Both can be true.

Shock can come first

Nobody warned me about this part.

I thought it would just be my heart that hurt.

Instead, it looked like this:

Not eating.

Not sleeping.

The exhaustion.

The crying.

Then the numbness.

Then the crying again.

Walking into a room and forgetting why I was there.

Reading the same thing over and over and still not taking it in.

Being okay in the grocery store and then sitting in the car crying with the engine off.

And somewhere inside all of that, thinking:

What is wrong with me?

That is one of the reasons I use the word shock.

Not as a diagnosis.

I use it the way we use it in ordinary conversation, to describe what it can feel like when your life changes faster than you can absorb it.

Grey divorce can change so much of your life at the same time, and your body can react before you fully understand what is happening.

Your sleep.

Your appetite.

Your concentration.

Your energy.

Your ability to settle.

Research into romantic loss has found physical effects that can resemble other forms of grief, including changes in sleep, appetite and physical wellbeing.

So before you decide you are too emotional, too foggy, too frozen or completely all over the place…

pause for a second.

Something real happened to you.

And being deeply affected by it is not the same thing as something being wrong with you.

The emotional stages are not really stages

One of the things that can make this part so confusing is that you may feel okay…

and then fall apart again.

I would have a good hour.

Maybe even a good day.

And I would think:

Okay. Maybe I’m getting through this.

Then something tiny would flatten me.

A song.

A smell.

The empty side of the bed.

Something completely ordinary.

And immediately:

I thought I was doing better. Why am I back here again?

You are not necessarily back anywhere.

Grief does not move in one direction.

Research by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut describes grieving as moving back and forth between dealing with the loss and continuing with ordinary life.

SourceMargaret Stroebe and Henk Schut · research on grieving

Which makes a lot more sense to me than pretending grief happens in five neat stages.

You can laugh and cry in the same afternoon.

You can feel relief and miss him.

You can have a good day and a terrible night.

A hard day does not put you back at the beginning.

What makes grey divorce feel different

One

Identity

After twenty, thirty or forty years, being someone’s wife may have been part of how your entire life was organized.

Someone’s person.

The one who knew what came next.

The one who remembered the appointments, the birthdays, what was running out in the fridge and what everybody needed.

Then the marriage ends.

And the strangest part may not only be losing him.

It can be losing the version of yourself that existed inside that life.

That is where the question can start:

Who am I outside of all of this?

You do not have to know yet.

Two

Time

There is also a very real fear that can come with a grey divorce.

Did I already have my life?

Is the good part behind me?

Is there enough time left to build something that feels like mine?

I understand that fear.

Your marriage ending at this age does not mean the rest of your life is already behind you.

You may just be too close to the ending to see what comes after it yet.

Three

Money

Then there is the money.

The house.

Retirement savings.

Pensions.

Investments.

A future that may have been financially planned for two people and now has to be looked at differently.

Research on adults divorcing after fifty has found that the financial effects can be significant, particularly for women.

SourceResearch on adults divorcing after fifty · The Journals of Gerontology, Series B

That does not mean panic.

It means information matters.

You do not need to have the whole financial plan figured out immediately.

But you do need qualified financial and legal information before making decisions that can affect the rest of your life.

Four

Adult children

Adult children do not make the divorce emotionally simple.

They are having their own reaction to the family changing.

They may be angry.

Confused.

Sad.

They may have opinions.

They may have relationships with both parents that have nothing to do with how you feel about each other.

They get to have their reaction.

And you get to have yours.

They do not need to become the referee, the messenger or the person holding either parent together.

Five

Friendships

This one can surprise you too.

Some friendships change.

Some people do not know what to say.

Some disappear.

Some mean well and say completely the wrong thing.

And some are the people who keep showing up long after everyone else has gone back to their normal life.

That matters.

Because one of the hardest things about this part can be how alone it feels while everyone around you seems to keep living normally.

Practical

What to do in the first thirty days

First…

slow it down where you can.

Everyone is going to ask you questions.

What are you doing with the house?

What about the money?

What happens next?

And in a grey divorce, those questions can feel even bigger after twenty, thirty or forty years together.

Honestly…

I didn’t even know what I was making for dinner that night.

And suddenly everyone wanted to know my plan.

You may start feeling like every question needs an answer right now.

It doesn’t.

Some things genuinely do need attention.

Legal deadlines exist.

Bills need to be paid.

There may be financial things you need proper information about.

But not every question deserves an answer simply because somebody asked it.

So for now:

  • Take care of your body.Eat something. Drink water. Sleep when you can. Go outside. Do the ordinary things that help bring you back into the room.
  • Get a clear picture of the money.Not necessarily the whole plan. Start by understanding what exists, what is owed and what needs attention.
  • Get proper legal and financial advice.A long marriage can be complicated to untangle. You deserve information from people qualified to give it.
  • Let a few people know the truth.You do not have to perform being fine for everybody.
  • Do not rush the biggest decisions where you genuinely have time.You do not have to decide everything from the floor. You need a little steadier ground first.

Am I actually going through a grey divorce?

If your marriage is ending later in life after twenty, thirty or forty years together…

yes, there is a name for it.

Grey divorce.

You may still be separated.

You may not have completed the paperwork.

Maybe you chose it.

Maybe you did not.

Maybe part of you knew it was coming and another part still cannot believe it is real.

Either way, you can still be standing in a life that suddenly does not feel like yours.

And that is the part I care about.

Not simply what happened on paper.

What is happening to you inside it.

If you want more help with this part

The Wreckage

The free guide gives you the first seven things I wish someone had told me.

The Wreckage goes deeper into each one for the first hard stretch of a grey divorce.

  • The shock.
  • Your body.
  • The waves.
  • The pressure to decide.
  • The part where you just want it to stop.
  • The 3 a.m. voice.

And slowly…

finding a little more ground under you.

It is seven written modules.

Self paced.

Nothing live.

Nothing you have to submit.

It was created to help you understand some of what may be happening to you, and maybe take a little of the blame you have been putting on yourself.

Not to fix you.

Not to promise you that you will be healed when you finish it.

Just to help you understand this part a little more.

Because that can really change something.

I know it did for me.

More on grey divorce

Keep reading

Sources

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