Gray Divorce – Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow – Or Is It?

An odd phenomenon is sweeping the nation in 2024 – Gray Divorce.

Boomers and GEN-Xers are calling it quits in numbers these days. Kids and even grandkids are off to college and adult lives – leaving the aged behind, wondering what to do with the rest of their lives.

The answer for some is – to move on…

What makes our generation different is how we have always approached life, I suppose. I guess you could call us the throwaway generation. Whereas our parents and grandparents fixed and kept things, including each other, our generation has traditionally thrown everything away.

For boomers, nearly everything is disposable, including lifelong relationships. It speaks volumes about us as a generation – or does it? A whole lot of us have wound up in comfortable ruts because the unknown – the world out there – is so unnerving. It makes us fearful of radical change.

When we need the courage to move on, it slips right out of our hands. Some of us stay together for financial reasons or that unsettling fear of the unknown. Others part ways because it is just too miserable for them to stay together. As my mother used to say – peace at any price.

Our parents and grandparents were schooled to go the distance – to stay the course despite how troubled and challenging some marriages were. A generation of people who stayed when it might have benefitted them to walk away. I think of my grandparents long ago. They remained together no matter how miserable they made each other.

Divorce was taboo and just not done. For better or worse, and so it went.

Boomers have learned something from watching unhealthy relationships that have come before us – parents who fought all the time and made each other miserable who never found a path to peace. We learned when to call time and jump ship unlike our parents who stuck it out – at times because they had no other choice. Despite that knowledge, many of us have stayed together only to wind up in an unhealthy twilight.

Divorce is a frightening prospect. It means being cast adrift where you are very much alone with no one to shoulder life with. It has often been said divorce is the most traumatic of emotional experiences, ranked even greater than the death of a loved one. With death of a loved one, there’s closure regardless of how painful it is. In divorce, they’re still out there, perhaps with someone else.

We are also living longer than our parents and grandparents. There’s more life beyond 50 than there used to be. More life out there to be discovered. More are asking, “What’s in this for me?”

This is not to say The Greatest Generation didn’t know divorce – it did, perhaps beginning a new trend in marital longevity or the absence of it. My mother divorced in 1957 at age 35 with two children to take care of. Long story short, our father cultivated eyes for someone else, which is typically why couples split up. Other times, couples just grow tired of look at each other’s faces and hearing one another’s voices. Instead of a spirit of compromise and learning how to live with one another’s differences, contempt grows to where a marriage is beyond salvage.

Baby Boomers have approached marriage differently. Maybe it’s that we are more self-absorbed to where we think more about what’s good for our own well-being than what’s good for another. Other times, we pour ourselves into someone and learn our love for someone just isn’t enough. Eventually, our emotional reservoir runs dry with no more to give it. I believe this is what has happened to a lot of people. They’ve become worn down by life and would rather move on.

I’ve personally been shocked by Gray Divorce – with friends who’ve divorced in their sixties and even seventies. Even if it means growing old and dying alone, they’d rather travel that path than continue to be miserable with each other. However, being alone can also mean freedom and the option of choosing a new path to a better life.