What we know about middle age divorce

Yikes! Divorce over 50 is surging. AARP has a new survey why after all of those years couples are calling it quits and it shows, among other things, that women are most often the ones walking out and more often than not men don’t see it coming.

"The divorce rate has risen for adults at all ages over the past decades," says Andrew Cherlin, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who has researched divorce trends. Few states include age in their divorce statistics, but researchers—and those involved in divorce filings—say the trend is clear. "So many of this generation are sitting with the prospect of many happy, healthy years ahead of them," says Kate Vetrano, chair of the Elder Law Committee of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association. "They're shedding their marriages in the quest for happiness."

Are middle age divorcees finding happiness? Not so clear.

The AARP study, which looked at couples who experienced a divorce in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, the conclusion was that individuals experiencing later-life divorce ended up "far happier and emotionally healthier than most would have dared to hope at the outset."

This is definitely not the conclusion of a study at the University of Chicago, which found in short that "unhappiness persisted whether the spouses were married or divorced."

Aside from the unresolved question of post-divorce happiness, the AARP study learned that the majority (66%) of midlife divorces are initiated by women. And men more often than women were caught off-guard by their divorce (the news blind-sided 26 percent of men, compared with 14 percent of women).

What about the kids?

Keeping together for the sake of the kids is the number one reason cited for not divorcing. This is especially true for dads, "58 percent of men—compared with 37 percent of women—cited their children as the top reason they postponed a divorce for five years or longer."

The number two reason for not divorcing was split between men and women. Men citing "not believing in divorce" and women citing "financial concerns".

Second Divorce?

Nearly half (47 percent) of the divorced people in the AARP study had also gone through a divorce when they were younger. "People who were somewhat traumatized by their first divorce tend to bail out sooner on the second marriage," says John Gottman, Ph.D., a noted marriage researcher and executive director of the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle. "If things aren't going well, they'll predict that they're in for the same painful experience, and they get out."

The blame game?

Most women in their 50s or older said the top killers of their marriages were physical or emotional abuse, infidelity, and drug or alcohol abuse—and they put almost all of the blame on their ex-husbands. On the flip side, most 50-plus men said they simply "fell out of love" or had "different values or lifestyles." And a larger number of men, though not the majority, said it was their own fault.

Post Divorce Relationships?

The survey found that more than 75 percent of women in their 50s enjoyed a serious, exclusive relationship after their divorce—often within two years. And 81 percent of men in their 50s did the same. In fact, 26 percent of all respondents were dating before their divorce was final.

Remember when reading studies dealing with human emotions and behavior that "numbers don't lie, but statistics do." Divorce is an enormously individual experience and there is only so much that can be learned from the "majority." What is nice to be seen from studies such as these is that your destiny is not predetermined no matter what path you elect to follow.