Baby boomers lead new wave of 'gray divorce'

Baby boomers lead new wave of 'gray divorce'
Share
By Anita Creamer
acreamer@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1B
Last Modified: Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 - 3:17 pm


As she and her husband drove home after celebrating their 25th anniversary on the coast, Tracy Bryan realized with a shock that being married to him was not how she wanted to grow old.

"We had grown and changed," said Bryan, now 53, whose divorce from her college sweetheart was final in 2008. "I changed what I wanted out of life."

As baby boomers approach retirement age looking forward to many more long, healthy years of life, the number of couples calling it quits after decades of marriage is on the rise.

Born between 1946 and 1964, boomers already have a divorce rate triple that of their parents. And now they're pioneering a new trend in splitting up: the so-called "gray divorce" phenomenon of couples going their separate ways after 20 or more years together.

Their parents were labeled the "Greatest Generation." Now some experts are calling baby boomers "the greatest divorcing generation."

more...

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/15/2959874/baby-boomers-lead-new-wave-of.html

Great Property Settlement Generation.

Not really so great after all.

We celebrate our seventeenth anniversary next month. First marriage for both.

MOST of the friends our age are still married as well.

It seems the baby boomers don't have a lock on divorce, according to the stuff I read in the paper and see in the media.

BTW, how long have you been married, and how many times?

simple math..

our generation also was the first one where the wife had a real career and could support herself.. Once the kids are grown & gone, she may just not "need" that guy anymore.

In times-past, a wife might have held on because she had no way to support herself, so she may have just played actuary-bingo and waited for his number to be called..

41 years coming up for us March 1st

...lifestyle.;)

first for 10 years then one for 3 years, and yes, all of my exs were rolexes.

Are you a member of the baby boomers?

Married 12 years of my 61. Luckily no kids. I'm one of those that is not geared toward marriage. I'd say a third of my friends are good at it, the rest, not so much.

Gotta bash the boomers so I can look superior. Jerk off, I was hauling around a M-60 machine gun when I was 18 fucking years old. You have no idea what your talking about.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

when my son started having his issues in Iraq...my marriage went to shit.In some cultures,men aren't supposed to show sadness.My ex couldn't handle it and left....I guess I fucked up.

this brings tears to my eyes.I'm getting a beer.

of fuckin' up the rest of everything? I mean someone birthed your sorry ass.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

the theory i heard which i can't vouch for, but it's what i heard, is that it's pretty much caused by viagra, cialis, etc

i have to admit to being horrified by this theory, and i think most of women who have a strong sex drive are gonna be horrified, but at the root of the theory was the idea that there's a certain type of woman, and she may be a beautiful woman, but deep in her soul, she really isn't that sexual -- all the mention of "spiritual" in this article makes me think about that --

this isn't ALL women, the women in this article seem to be affluent women who suddenly had a "spiritual awakening," in other words, they decided that fucking some ugly hump for 25 years to get a living was just ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

at one time, the lovely blonde like the lady pictured would have married for money with the firm expectation that, as she aged, her "duties" would grow less or less, either taken to a mistress or the old boy would eventually lose the urge altogether around 40 or so

hard-driving, hard-working men aren't impotent at 40 any more, we have drugs for that, but we don't have a drug that suddenly makes a man of 55 all that physically attractive

to the wife who prob. married in the first place to be taken care of, and now she's looking at, hey, i've got to give up to this ugly sonavabitch for 30 more years? no way, i've been married long enough, i'll just take my half of the property and get some cute turkish boy (or i'll be spiritual and not have to be bothered w. messy ugly body things at all)

in other words, how many of these divorces are cases where the guy still wants sex and the woman either doesn't want it or doesn't want it with HIM? you have to wonder

in my humble opinion, divorce is often kinda stupid because the same money now has to support two households and most of the time, the woman doesn't end up all that well off financially, it just seems a stupid thing to do

but whatever, that's what another lady (divorced) told me, her new hump isn't all that beautiful either if you ask me...but nobody did!

Men are the visual ones--not the women.
It MAY be about sex and the Viagra revolution.
It is UNNATURAL for humans to have sex like teenagers when they are in their 50's and 60's and just because someone in a laboratory figured out how to give old men stiffies on request--doesn't mean that the women are interested in it.
There are MANY normal physiological changes that can make sex uncomfortable for older women--pain and stiffness of joints, less elasticity and lubrication of the vaginal walls, etc.
Wanda Sykes said it best...paraphrased..."any man that gets a prescription for Viagra needs to have a note from three women who want to fuck them".

i really didn't want to get into the whole "dryness" issue etc.

nor do i want to guess how often "i'm more spiritual now" is shorthand for "sex doesn't interest me any more"

but i think it's an issue with some older couples, based on what i've seen

:rofl:

who've been unceremoniously dumped by men who apparently think they're missing out on something and want to prove yet again they've 'got it', whatever 'it' is.
I agree, all this can get mighty expensive if the divorce is acrimonious and the wealthier partner hoses the other. Very doable with the right lawyer.

i don't know if it's the south or if it's the people i happen to know by chance but "those guys" that i know don't wanna get divorced, they wanna have cake and eat it too (mistress or affairs while still having the wife at home)

that's why i said "it's the wife who walks" but of course you are right, what you describe is not rare and i know from talking to people that it can often be the other way around

when we think of only the people we know personally...small sample size, statistics are skewed!

:-)

My evidence is anecdotal but it is more often the men than the women around here. The women I know who walked away did so for another woman having discovered they were lesbians late in life.

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=713110>

4 states divorce filings examined.

Why? I did not read the whole thing but...come to think about it I should read the whole thing.

but then i am an older woman.

I was born in 1942, what do they call my generation? The 1930-1945 ones? We dealt with our fathers off to WWII, then coming back with untreated stress syndrome from that war, coming out of the depression yet, times weren't so great for the bottom tier of the economic scale and living around grandparents and parents who also lived through that great depression then hopped right into the cold war and the nuclear threat.

And I go by different birth years for the Boomers based on sociological criteria: 1943 to 1960

really hard being called a boomer when i didnt get any of the boomer stuff. i was a kid, or toddler

great.

Maybe its the fear of getting old.
Maybe because people are living longer its the thought of spending 24/7 with a person so many years after retirement.

I'd bet there are lots of reasons.

To our parent's generation divorce was a scandal, not so much any more.

see my post above.I don't think I'm a f*ck-up...I could be wrong.

so people aren't going to know why we're pissed about the bashing...

others went beyond the subject at hand.

I posted some statistics below that show the story is crap. According to Statistics Canada the only aspect of divorce that has gone up significantly in the last 30 years in Canada is repeat divorces. That rate has tripled, but the overall divorce rate has dropped by 25%, and the highest risk of divorce is still within the first half-dozen years of marriage.

The story is pure unadulterated, anecdotal junk.

I was maybe 8 or 9...way back in 1960 or '61.

I looked at her like she was from a different planet or something...OMG people just didn't DO stuff like that!

Not even when they couldn't stand each other!!


But when I got to be about 13 or so, my own parents divorced. I was sad, but I was also glad, because I knew I wouldn't have to listen to them argue all night and I wouldn't have to see injuries on my mom's neck or face or actually see them physically assaulting each other with hot irons, steaming hot pans of soup, dinner plates full of food, bottles, hands, and whatever else there was handy.

As I grew up, I was really really glad they didn't decide to "stay together for the sake of the kids". One of the stupidest justifications I ever heard for people to stay in a marriage that neither one wants to be in.

Kids aren't idiots...even if there's no physical abuse, they know when things aren't right, and they feel the tension too.


PS...Like you, I'm also sick of the Boomer bashing...

None of us can pretend to know what someone else can or cannot live with.

One thing's for sure -- every woman I know who fits into the "baby boomer" age group and who got a divorce did so because of her ex's infidelity. Every single one.

The comments towards the woman quoted in the SacBee article are amazing. In other words, since she wants something different out of the next 20 years or so of her life, she's a "cougar" or worse, while guys who buy a sports car and get a brand-new script for Viagra are THE MAN.

It's depressing to see how little things have changed.

Iraq war has an effect on the family,too.It destroyed my marriage.My ex (dad of a 3 time vet) is still suffering...although he probably will never admit it.

Some of my female friends were having affairs. On the other hand, lots of couples we know split up during height of the ideological war in the late 70s and 80s. One wanted to stay and build Jamaica and the other wanted to head to the US or Canada. Separation as a result of migration destroyed more marriages than anything else among our friends and acquaintances.

the succeeding generations? . . . **crickets** Oh yeah, and we're not done yet. I'm seeing trends now of Boomers completely changing careers and starting businesses in completely different areas -- me being one of them.

I wouldn't be so quick to slag off the youngsters, though. We may have had acid and rock and roll, but they did the high tech bubble. That was quite a feat.

all boomers. Coming from the portion of the boomers that holds social justice as the pinnacle for which to strive, I see too few from succeeding generations taking up the torch. Good thing we're not done yet. :hippie:

You mean, criticizing the generation that's stripmined the wealth of future generations to fuel their lifetime orgy of consumption?

Why would they be exempt from criticism?

Sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me. The last time I looked in my hometown newspaper, the vast majority of petitions for divorce were filed by people in their 20s and 30s.

This is a brilliant course of action if your goal is living out your years in solitary poverty. I have seen a few couples do this and all they ended up was broke an lonely.

Broke and alone is a choice.

I know a couple that divorced in the classic "she doesn't give me blowjobs anymore" and "he is boring, all he does is watch football" divorce only to find out that there aren't a ton of social opportunities for a guy in his forties with limited income potential and an overweight woman also in her forties. They both went bankrupt, neither could afford to keep the house and years later they are once again living together if only for survival because neither could afford to make it alone on their single income and out of severe loneliness.

He went into the divorce thinking he was going to find a wild young woman to fulfill his every sexual fantasy and she thought she was going to find some debonair George Clooney like figure to travel the world with. Both pretty unrealistic considering where they were in their lives. But based on that mutual delusion they both lost everything. Only to end up together again out of sheer necessity a whole lot poorer.

Another couple did roughly the same thing, except they divorced because the wife was upset about excessive business travel. Same story - they both lost everything and while he is fooling around with a female superior, she has found nothing and has adjusted poorly financially.

People need to think these things through and not make decisions with catastrophic consequences based on the fantasy of a perfect life they imagine to be attainable.

before they get married.

Being "in love" is, basically, a crock of shit most of the time.

People get all crazy with this "in love" crap and get blinded to Reality. Marriage isn't a friggen fairy tale. It's lots of work, and it's lots of compromise, and it's not even about "trying to change" the other person when we realize we didn't exactly get what we thought we were getting.

the greatest divorcing generation? sometimes i wonder if the writers of this stuff ever think about what they write.

i guess it`s easy to write such tripe instead of actually research what they are writing about. of course that would take time and research but there`s a deadline for the next article.

was some research going on. From the article:

Born between 1946 and 1964, boomers already have a divorce rate triple that of their parents.

snip//

The Census Bureau, which has tracked divorce only in recent years, reports that in 2008, one-fourth of new divorces took place in people married at least 20 years. The same year, almost 51 percent of all divorced (but not remarried) people were in the baby boom age cohort, according to the bureau.

there`s a lot of reasons why there would be an increase in divorces in the baby boomers. none of these reasons were even mentioned. i`m sure we can both come up with a list of reasons why our generation have a triple rate of divorce of our parents generation.

i got my boomer divorce in 1969. starting in 1973 my wife and i have been through thick and thin but we have stuck it out.

I've only been married once, in 1982. My husband asked for a divorce last year, so after 28 years of marriage, official last week, he pulled the plug. He still won't tell me why, other than the fact that he's not in love with anyone else, but fell out of love.
:shrug:

I'm working on not being bitter and vengeful. When I can wish him well, that will be good. I heard it takes 4 seasons.

but i don't see a need to wish him well either. he hasnt "earned" it

fuck him, wink

The marriage had been over for some time but had one child with 2 yrs of school left. Was willing to stick it out but hubby fell in love with some loser alcoholic he was going to "save" so family had to break up. Two years later he and she had ugly break up and he's left with a lot of shit to clean up in his life and I have moved on. Still, I really think it messed with my son's head a bit.

Selfish asshole hubby was/is.

I can wish him well at this point but know what a selfish bastard he is and know better than to expect any other behavior.

Hang in there, it will get easier.

Julie

this is total bullshit.

Misogynistic bullshit.

And to the long time duer upthread, you got your head up your ass!

That's pretty much what everyone else says,too.

chin up, friend!

:-)

it's really depressing when the hubby takes it out on his wife, for things she can't even control, how is walking out on you going to fix iraq?

i don't know what to say, i'll have a beer w. you

:hug:

I'm 2 beers in...

and I want to be married to my Wife more than ever.

Of course, she doesn't post here.....

not 49, but we werent kids.

It is about growing apart, and as others have said, how you want to live out the sunset years of your life. Most couples don't talk abou this aspect of their married lives when they are in their 20s or 30s.

This is my problem. Living and retiring to Florida in hot weather year round, being a thousand miles away from my kids, was never on the radar for me. This is just to basic to who I am. If this means splitting up at the age of 62, so be it. I cannot be someone I am not.

the women in the article were not splitting up for serious reasons, they were splitting up because one woman decided she didn't like her hubby after their 25th anniversary vacation, another decided she was more "spiritual," etc.

you have a concrete issue -- you want to stay where you are and apparently your husband wants to move

people can have differences and still remain married, if you guys compromised and, say, you kept a place near your children and lived there during the six months of hurricane season (which are not too coincidentally the hottest and most miserable months in the hurricane states) and then lived in florida in the cooler season -- couldn't you both be happy?

it's a little pricey to keep two places, but if you get divorced, you're keeping two places anyway, and it's just as much, if not more, expensive to get a divorce

i meet a lot of very happy "snowbirds" in my travels, your gut reaction right now may be, "why should i have to move house every six months because my husband wants to retire in florida" but it does work for a lot of people

even if for tax purposes it has to be 7 months florida 5 months up north -- it still way beats getting divorced and having bitter christmases and thanksgivings forever...

you've prob. already thought of this idea so maybe i don't even need to say it

in that case to you i will just send a :hug:

It's hard for most people to understand just how deeply spiritual differences can divide a couple. I've gone through a major spiritual awakening following a four-year "Dark Night of the Soul", and in the process my entire world-view has changed. I'm literally no longer the same person I was when I started this involuntary journey. My personality and values have changed in major ways.

Along the way I lost two partners. One couldn't live with the despair I felt during my Dark Night, and then I grew apart spiritually from the next. When two people are spiritually different it's very difficult to stay together. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss spiritual reasons for breaking up.

Sometimes the price of a divorce seems small compared to the price of staying together.

Well, maybe NOT. That little gem may well have been written by a male of the species. :rofl: Who's gonna take care of MEEEE?

Last night my almost 60 yr old butt was out partying with the newly 40s. My best bud girlfriend (only child) whose parental units are in my age demographic filled me in on the latest. M has carried D's ass for decades. She's established their "nest" and now has little interest in carrying his deteriorating ass, in addition to her own, in a place NOT of her choosing. Babykins has long since flown the coop, nice place to visit, don't wanna live there, OMMIGOD! They're getting old and dependent on...

When she brings me up to date on the saga, I point out little clues she regularly misses. D wants to retire in Florida. M HATES Florida and hasn't much interest (to be polite) in his circle there. She's also finally figured out that SHE has a choice in the matter and the more she says, "YOU GO. I'm staying." the more HE find reasons to BACK THE FUCK OFF HIS ADDLED FANTASIES. Just my take on kid unit's anecdotes.

Girlfriend, what kinda rinks dey got down in those parts? Ice in FLORIDA? Gimme a fuckin' break! Mama Rink Rat from Culver City here callin' yo ass OUT!!! :rofl::loveya::rofl:

i think you hit it right on.

Well, mostly.

:)

Why quit now?

two beers huh. doesnt take much with me either. i am sorry you are so sad.

The single greatest cause of divorce is . . .


Drum Roll Please:












Marriage. :rofl:

Presumably we had some different reasons for getting married, more options to get "unmarried" without social stigma...my parents had a wonderful marriage until death did them part. They were content & very happy with the rather old-fashioned arrangement, which frankly wouldn't have been what I really wanted.

There are so many environmental & personal variables in these areas. I guess I'll stick with the humor angle: two Soc. Security checks buy more cat food than 1.

That's me and the lovely future ex wife........

:cry: :rofl:

confusion.

happy, sad, laughing or all wrapped in one.

and i am sorry, or happy, dor you, depending on the answer

some days are completely OK, some are tragic in their levels of self pity and angst.......

take care of you.

My first (hippy-dippy) marriage lasted 7 years, but the next lasted 20.

Now, just shy of my 60th birthday, I have been re-united with my twin flame - a woman I was friends with in the 70s but then lost all contact with almost 30 years ago. True love can happen late in life, and it seems that all the relationship "sturm und drang" we go through when we are younger can be a preparation for that event.

I think what happened is that the boomers finally shed some of the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" of previous times, and set out to find their own paths. Divorce was simply a side effect of trying to balance the social expectations of marriage with a realization that we didn't need to stay in bad situations.

Two divorces have left me as poor as a church-mouse but as happy as a clam.

spending WAY to much time together! Everyone needs a break from their spouse, even if it's just a break long enough for one to be away from home at a job. Being around someone, the same someone, 24/7 can get very aggravating.

My second marriage lasted 20 years, and the last 10 were a barren emotional desert. W had childhood issues she refused to face or work on, got caught in what Eckhart Tolle would call her "Pain Body" and shut me out despite my best romantic and life partnering efforts.

When we split up she got half of everything, which was fair, plus a bit more to make sure my karma was clear. There were no kids.

Looking back on it now (10 years after the divorce) I realize we were incompatible in some very fundamental ways from the word go, and the gap between us kept getting wider with time rather than shrinking. We definitely should not have gotten married in the first place. While I was the one who pulled the plug, I have to wonder how long the marriage moralists in the crowd think I should have stayed?

i have read three of your posts in a row, i am getting it.

you say you went thru a spiritual journey that left you a different person. i did too. and it did me, too. when i first progressed thru, being os different i wondered how i could live with a man that didnt see what i did. but then i saw that he was the type that could easily come along for the ride, and be ok with what i needed to do, or be.



Eckhart Tolle ... i havent read him, but i do hear that my thinking is along par. since i havent read him, i wont totally say i love him, lol. i think i perused some of his books. but zukav, have you heard of him. i liked him. what is wrong with tolle, if you dont mind saying.

Eckhart Tolle's concept of the Pain Body is (IMO) one of the more important new ideas in the burgeoning field of psycho-spiritual convergence. Essentially, he proposes that in much the same way that each of us has a physical body we also have a constructed psychological aspect of the self that he calls a "Pain Body". It is composed of (arises from) all the accumulated suffering in our life. We get very attached to our pain bodies, and spend a lot of time and energy nurturing them.

My ex got caught in her pain body that arose from attachments and painful episodes from her past. All the hurt from our relationship got channeled into it. The bigger it got the more painful it became, and the more it hurt the more she reacted to it in ways to hurt me and cause more pain to feed the pain body. In situations like that the Pain Body enters what can only be described as a positive feedback loop. Unless the loop is broken it eventually explodes psychologically. In our case she refused to even see that there was a problem, so nothing broke the cycle and the relationship eventually crashed and burned.

There's a lot more to Tolle than the Pain Body, of course. He's part of a long lineage of nondual teachers that include people like Adyashanti, Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi.

thank you for taking the time to explain. i was referring the the power of now, .... i havent heard pain body, but it makes sense.

appreciate.

Canada has a similar demographic profile to the USA, so since I'm a Canuck I looked up some Canadian stats for comparison:


So new marriages are at much higher risk of divorce than long-lasting ones, and in the last 23 years the divorce rate has declined by 25%. This doesn't look like a recipe for a boomer divorce epidemic to me.

The story is a combination of boomer-bashing and moralistic tongue-clucking. It's crap.

They would rather be single but, for now at least, it's impossible to do without the other's paycheck...

I just got my life's love out of a 14 year marriage that died about 4 years in but was held together for a decade by lack of funds.

I had been married for 23 years. For the last five years of our marriage she worked nights, I worked days. We never saw each other and grew apart as time went on. Bottom line? If you are going to be alone, why stay married?

It's been hell, but I am getting through it.

Amen to that! And if you feel alone although you're both in the same room, then it is time to separate and go your separate ways.