by Karen and Erica

Baby Boomers are divorcing. The rate of divorce for those over fifty has doubled over the last twenty years, and has multiplied even faster for those over sixty five. It’s even got a name: gray divorce.

Why? Many reasons have been offered. Boomers on their second or third marriages are less likely to stay married; Boomers in a long marriage stayed together only for the children and now they are grown; financial pressures or retirement have made life together impossible; marriage takes work and the parties forgot to do it. And, divorce has lost its stigma.

We’re sure all of these reasons play a role, but we also suspect that the rate of divorce for those who have been married a long time is yet another piece of evidence that we are a new breed. Especially we women.

First, because a lot of people live longer now, marriage til death do us part seems ambitious. The death do us part language originated sometime in the sixteenth century. People then generally married in their mid-twenties. If they survived their thirties and forties, they might well live to their seventies, but a lot of them did not get that far. Baby Boomers are healthier, fitter, and better educated than prior generations. Now in their sixties and seventies, Boomers have a long runway ahead. Many will see their eighties, and quite a few their nineties, especially women. If they were first married in their twenties, and are still married to the same person, they have been married fifty to seventy years. People change over so many decades.

Second, the financial incentives are crucially different. The Boomer generation includes the first large group of women to work at careers until retirement, careers that provided them with concomitant financial independence. These women do not need their husbands for financial support. And their husbands likely feel less pressure to support them than those who married on the understanding their wives would never work. Staying together for financial reason may no longer be a potent argument.

Third, for those who worked, long before death comes retirement, a life changing event if ever there were one. What if one person wants to continue to work and one wants companionship traveling, or puttering in the garden? For thirty years? These are modern stresses ands strains on marriage.

Finally, the usual suspect in any changing circumstances—the Internet. Now Boomers have dating services available art the touch of a finger. Travel options too. And curated vacation sites if they do decide to divorce.

So it seems unsurprising that some Boomers will think about switching life partners after the first few decades. It’s perhaps more surprising that many do not.

Does it matter? We’re pretty opinionated, but we don’t really think we have the right to pontificate about whether a particular person should or should not get divorced, or whether having a partner for sixty years is a good or a bad thing.

But we do think that everything about our post-career, post-sixty, lives needs to be reexamined. Should we think differently about a seventy year marriage? Should the assets of any couple married for more than thirty years be considered jointly owned in any separation? Should we invent new living arrangements that give long term spouses some space?

It’s all on the table. What do you think? Comment below.