VOW

Since reaching their highest levels in the 1980s, national divorce rates have declined. But according to new research presented by sociologists Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin of Bowling Green State University, the divorce rate among people ages 50 and older has doubled over the past two decades, rising to its highest level on record.

In 1990, only one in ten people who divorced was 50 or older. By 2009, the number was roughly one in four, with more than 600,000 people ages 50 and older divorcing.  Just this past year, the number of dating-site users 50 or older has grown twice as rapidly as any other age group.

Women - aged 40-69 - initiate most of the breakups between long married spouses, seeking a split 66% of the time.

Infidelity, cited in only 27% of ‘gray’ divorces, is not the major cause. So why are so many marriages fracturing decades after couples vow to love one another for a lifetime?

John Mordecai Gottman, author of “What Predicts Divorce?” suggests that the behavioral precursors to late-life divorce are the same as those confronting younger couples: criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. The longer such behaviors persist, the more they affect a relationship.

But Professor Brown presents another theory. Over the past century, there have been three distinct notions of marriage in America.

The "institutional" phase occurred in the decades before World War II. Marriage was an economic union.

The 1950s and '60s marked the "companionate" phase. Husbands played the role of providers. Wives honed their skills in homemaking and child-rearing.

The 1970s brought about the "individualized" phase of marriage. Personal satisfaction became of supreme importance. “Individualized marriage is more egocentric,” Brown says. “Before the 1970s, no one would have thought to separate out the self as being distinct from the roles of good wife and mother."

The generation that viewed marriage as a source of self-fulfillment and personal happiness is increasingly disillusioned with it. In "The Gray Divorce,” author Susan Gregory Thomas writes, “As (boomers) look around their empty nests and toward decades more of healthy life, they are increasingly deciding that they've done their parental duty and now want out. These decisions are changing not just the portrait of aging people in the U.S... but also the meaning of the traditional vow to stay together until “death do us part.”

“Complex marital biographies," also seem to play a role in the phenomenon of 'gray' divorce. Fifty-three percent of individuals over 50 who seek divorce have been divorced before. Having been married previously doubles the risk of divorce for those ages 50 to 64. For those ages 65 and up, the risk factor quadruples.

By 2030, the number of over-50 divorces could easily top 800,000 per year. Author Deirdre Bair conducted nearly 400 interviews with individuals divorcing in midlife for "Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over."  Bair writes, "With the children out of the house, boomers in unhappy marriages often look at each other and think, ‘I may have another 25 to 35 years to live. Do I want to spend it with this person?’ …There is an overwhelming, urgent feeling among them of, ‘I have to strike out now, or I'll never have the chance again.’”

Wow.

Can this research be on target? 

Time for some Quing Research.

Subjects include:

1.  Long-Married couples or empty-nesters who haven't once considered wanting 'out'.
2.  Been-at-it-forever partners who haven't once contemplated, "Do I really want to spend the rest of my life with this person?"
3. Married-in-dog-years pairs who haven't once thought, "I need to get out now, or I'll never have another chance."

If you exist, raise your hands, lovers.

Better yet, stand up!

Take a bow!

 

The rest of us Long-Marrieds want to applaud you.

And take your pulse.

We want to know how kids, jobs, finances, stress, parents, monotony, pets, illness, technology, world events, and a myriad of life forces have not bumped, cracked, or frayed your union, just a smidge.

We want to know what kind of vitamins you take.

How you maintain your composure.

How you've teflonized your relationship from LIFE.

Perhaps you've discovered a fountain-of-enduring-love; akin to the fountain-of-youth?

Concocted a secret recipe, potion, spell?

If you have, kindly share with the rest of us Long-Marrieds.

See, our sample size is large, but dwindling.

Research suggests that we work day after day to communicate, keep perspective, forgive, forget, and move forward.   

We hold on to the example of relations and friends who toiled a lifetime to keep their love alive.

We stand in awe of spouses who work their way back to one another, when the path to reconciliation - littered with criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling - seems impossible to cross.

We weep with friends and relations who must accept heart wrenching loss, even after giving their all to honor their vows.

Twenty-something actress Scarlet Johansson was recently asked about the lessons she learned from her failed marriage to actor Ryan Reynolds. "Relationships are complicated," she said, "and being married is a living, breathing process. I think I was not fully aware of the peaks and valleys. I wasn't prepared to hunker down and do the work."

Research suggests that Long-Marrieds are fully aware.

Hunkered down.

Sipping from the fountain-of-enduring-love would be so much simpler.

QUING Hereby Decrees:  V.O.W. = Very Open to Work!