Grey divorces

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gray divorced don't have kids in college generally.

I have always felt that there shouldn't be marriage or divorce after 60. Don't marry anyone and don't divorce. But they can have a limited divorce or paperwork outlining everything. Marriage is a business, the estate gets too complicated to split really. Health insurance is impossible, pension issues, everything. Just live your lives socially separately.

I agree with you regarding no marriage after 60, but divorce? There are many reasons described in just this thread as to why people would divorce after 60.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's considered gray divorce until you're over 60. Divorce with high school kids is just divorce.

You can be over 60 and have HS kids.

Not common. And if so, it isn't likely that the couple have been together that long, 25 years or less. Or Dad married a younger woman. So, still not really a gray divorce by definition. It's a divorce.

I suppose this one merits it's own marker - the marker when the younger woman realizes she screwed up and her husband is now just old to her, and she doesn't want to be old before her time nor does she want to be his caretaker while also raising her kids, and maybe she's finally fed up with all the crap one puts up with in a blended family and she is finally just done. It's a half grey divorce for the 60-year-old who is losing a chunk of his assets for the second time and will never be able to retire because he can't afford to after two divorces and two sets of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gray divorced don't have kids in college generally.

I have always felt that there shouldn't be marriage or divorce after 60. Don't marry anyone and don't divorce. But they can have a limited divorce or paperwork outlining everything. Marriage is a business, the estate gets too complicated to split really. Health insurance is impossible, pension issues, everything. Just live your lives socially separately.

I agree with you regarding no marriage after 60, but divorce? There are many reasons described in just this thread as to why people would divorce after 60.

It becomes too harf financially for both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gray divorced don't have kids in college generally.

I have always felt that there shouldn't be marriage or divorce after 60. Don't marry anyone and don't divorce. But they can have a limited divorce or paperwork outlining everything. Marriage is a business, the estate gets too complicated to split really. Health insurance is impossible, pension issues, everything. Just live your lives socially separately.

I agree with you regarding no marriage after 60, but divorce? There are many reasons described in just this thread as to why people would divorce after 60.

It becomes too harf financially for both.

** hard.
Especially for health insurance . Now there isn't likely to be health insurance for one .

[Anonymous]

The grey divorces I know of are where one kid is off to college, the others in HS/MS. Husband had multi-year affairs, ignored by the wife until he got lazy about covering his tracks. Repeated patterns of this in my area. Waiting until kids are out of elementary is the norm.

[Anonymous]

I also think sometimes couples just have very different needs and perceptions of whether a marriage is "happy" or not. I have friends who are now getting divorced who were married for three decades. She thinks they were happy and is baffled. He thinks he's been unhappy for at least two of the last three decades and stayed because of the kids. They both agree marriage was mostly sexless. She thought that was fine and they were both okay with it. He thought it was not fine and he was lonely. She thought he was easygoing because he always let her get her way. He thought she was controlling because she got pissed off when he did not do what she wanted.

I think both of them have crappy communication skills and took each other for granted: it's like they never actually sat down and had a conversation about what they each wanted and needed, what was working, what was not. Maybe they could have made it a good and enduring marriage if they had talked about those things decades ago. They're both decent people. I don't think either of them hates the other or behaved abusively or badly. I think they just somehow managed to go through decades of marriage without actually talking about what they wanted. Which is mind-blowing.

So now she is shocked and mad and he is relieved to be out but wracked by guilt. I suspect they will both get over it and they will each find someone better suited. I just hope they have both become learned some lessons during the process. I definitely don't think they should have stayed together, though: the marriage was built on a set of mutual false assumptions.

[Anonymous]

My DH and I had a fairly high conflict marriage for years and I certainly would have divorced him had we not had kids or maybe if we had a lot more money. Splitting up into two households was not economically feasible at the time without a serious downgrading of the kids’ lifestyles and we still would have been yoked together by parenthood and had to deal with each other so divorce did not seem to solve a lot.

More lately—kids in high school/college—I had a long think about how I want to spend my remaining years. I can totally see getting divorced at this point. But I decided instead to stay and plan to live out our years together. We could now afford two households but are still better off economically togethe. We get along much much better than we used to, we support each other with stuff like walking the dog and doing errands when the other one is sick or super busy, doing half of the household chores. We are pretty good companions for a certain number of things. The empty nest is less empty with someone to eat dinner with, watch a movie with, etc. And we still have a homebase that’s fun for the kids to come home to for holidays and summers.

Overall, seems worth staying together in a relationship of companionship and mutual support. And yes, we still have sex sometimes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's considered gray divorce until you're over 60. Divorce with high school kids is just divorce.

It’s defined as 50 and over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's considered gray divorce until you're over 60. Divorce with high school kids is just divorce.

It’s defined as 50 and over.

Yes. 20+ years of marriage p

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s “worrisome” about this?

OP here. We know these couples for a long time and to us they looked average (some of them even happy), not in deep troubles so we were very surprised at first.
At least in my circle, after divorce some of them shared they are struggling financially while others have very obvious mental health issues (not sure if new issues or if issues were there before and spiraled after divorce)

Two in our circle the wives were both cheaters, serial ones, and finally got caught.

[Anonymous]

Too bad they don't make people take real knowledge tests to get marriage licenses like they do when you want a driver's license. Honestly, people go into marriages with the most insane expectations and such poor communications and problem solving skills. I wish someone had sat down with me and made me and my ex have some hard conversations before we got married. I think we'd have gotten married anyway, but maybe we'd have made less of a hash of it. We were both young and stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^interesting guy*

I feel sorry for your dad. You obviously don't like him and never did.

He's an alcoholic, held a gun to his head for over an hour in front of me when I was 17 and said he was going to blow his brains all over me while I was shaking like a maniac trying to talk him out of it, and cheated on my mom many times. So yep, you're right on PP.

NP. I am so sorry. Some men shouldn’t be fathers. There’s always a reason when adult women have a profound dislike of their fathers. It’s never just small things that any parent could do wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also think sometimes couples just have very different needs and perceptions of whether a marriage is "happy" or not. I have friends who are now getting divorced who were married for three decades. She thinks they were happy and is baffled. He thinks he's been unhappy for at least two of the last three decades and stayed because of the kids. They both agree marriage was mostly sexless. She thought that was fine and they were both okay with it. He thought it was not fine and he was lonely. She thought he was easygoing because he always let her get her way. He thought she was controlling because she got pissed off when he did not do what she wanted.

I think both of them have crappy communication skills and took each other for granted: it's like they never actually sat down and had a conversation about what they each wanted and needed, what was working, what was not. Maybe they could have made it a good and enduring marriage if they had talked about those things decades ago. They're both decent people. I don't think either of them hates the other or behaved abusively or badly. I think they just somehow managed to go through decades of marriage without actually talking about what they wanted. Which is mind-blowing.

So now she is shocked and mad and he is relieved to be out but wracked by guilt. I suspect they will both get over it and they will each find someone better suited. I just hope they have both become learned some lessons during the process. I definitely don't think they should have stayed together, though: the marriage was built on a set of mutual false assumptions.

Obviously you know these people and I don’t, but I think women who never have sex with a willing husband are either extremely stupid or don’t care about their husband’s happiness and then express “confusion” to their friends as a cover when their husbands leave. Have these women never met a man? Why on earth do they think their husbands would be happy with no sex? They actually don’t care about the person they are living with or are too stupid to be married.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's common except the stuggle part.

The gray divorces I know (at least the women) are all financially secure and more than happy being single.

I think they ones that would face financial and emotion struggle are just white knuckling it and staying.

Or like my STBX who refused to work for 12 years while I killed my self at biglaw and in-house and now he feels entitled to half the assets. On forgot - he didn’t even raise the kids or cook/clean. I did that too.


- Women (often) get alimony and 50% of "marital assets", even if husband killed himself in big law while she was at the club (and au pair was shuttling the kids). Less provocatively, he was the primary earner in a stressful job while she enjoyed lower paying but more relaxed employment, yet...
- he loses half his net worth and -- critically -- retirement $$ at 60+, with little time to claw it back
- women are typically more social and have broader friend / support networks
- when good men marry, they (should) "grow up" and focus on family, and on work to provide for them. They lose track of partying friends and rely on work relationships that end at retirement. They may chat with their wife's friends' husbands, but that ends with divorce.
- Today's culture says "you go girl! you don't need the no stinkin' patrimony"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's common except the stuggle part.

The gray divorces I know (at least the women) are all financially secure and more than happy being single.

I think they ones that would face financial and emotion struggle are just white knuckling it and staying.

Or like my STBX who refused to work for 12 years while I killed my self at biglaw and in-house and now he feels entitled to half the assets. On forgot - he didn’t even raise the kids or cook/clean. I did that too.


- Women (often) get alimony and 50% of "marital assets", even if husband killed himself in big law while she was at the club (and au pair was shuttling the kids). Less provocatively, he was the primary earner in a stressful job while she enjoyed lower paying but more relaxed employment, yet...
- he loses half his net worth and -- critically -- retirement $$ at 60+, with little time to claw it back
- women are typically more social and have broader friend / support networks
- when good men marry, they (should) "grow up" and focus on family, and on work to provide for them. They lose track of partying friends and rely on work relationships that end at retirement. They may chat with their wife's friends' husbands, but that ends with divorce.
- Today's culture says "you go girl! you don't need the no stinkin' patrimony"

Or like my STBX who refused to work for 12 years while I killed my self at biglaw and in-house and now he feels entitled to half the assets. On forgot - he didn’t even raise the kids or cook/clean. I did that too.