Grey divorce

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0:30us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

0:51Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC OS Conversations, we bring people together from around the globe to share their experiences. This time, it's the impact of late-life separation.

1:12Breaking up a long marriage when you're older, so-called grey divorce, is life-changing, as we'll hear from three people who've gone through it. Two women whose parents got divorced also tell us what it's like for adult children. And we'll discuss the challenges of starting a new relationship later in life. It has taken time to rebuild that kind of trust that's on the emotional level. And then, you know, taking your clothes off at 60 is different than taking your clothes off at 45. I'm just going to say it.

1:53The evidence that older people around the world are getting divorced in greater numbers is largely anecdotal. There's chat about it on social media, but no reliable figures. But where some research has been done, such as in America, it does seem to be a trend. And so that's what we're starting with, with our first conversation by my colleague Luke Jones. Laura is 65 and lives in Richmond, Virginia and hosts a podcast about dating when grey. Stephen is a 68-year-old writer in North Carolina and the first voice you'll hear is 75-year-old Edith in Massachusetts. She begins by explaining when she knew her marriage of almost 30 years was over.

2:36We were both artists, designers. We did a lot of work together, really fine work projects. Yet I just found myself in a time of emotional loneliness. Can you remember when you realised it was over? For me, it was we had worked on a book project. I designed and illustrated for Bert and I. And he said, you're just the illustrator. And I remember just my heart just broke. And I realised that he didn't respect me. And you were 56 when that happened. Yes. Did you instigate divorce proceedings? I think I just withdrew more and more and then he did. He really knew how to divorce. I wasn't his first wife and so he knew how to do it.

3:22I didn't. Laura, how about you? Well, I have the traditional gray divorce story. I got married very young. My now ex-husband and I, we were not even 23 years old and we were married for almost 30 years. And I just naturally assumed once you get married, you know, you're married for life unless there's something really horrible going on. and for my ex, this is terrible, but divorce is kind of like a family tradition in his family. I now say I'm grateful that he wanted to end the marriage because I would have soldiered on forever. I'm grateful for the so-called divorce wings, but there wasn't any kind of one moment that I knew it was over.

4:06It just was one of those awful, long, dragging out kind of things where, where we went to counselling and I just tried everything I could to try to save the marriage. And I think looking back, it was because I was afraid of being on my own. Was it you who said, I would like a divorce? It was he who said it, but he didn't use his words. What did he say? I mean, it was just his behaviour. I mean, he didn't want to be married. He was doing all kinds of things that people don't do when they want to stay married. What kind of thing? I think, well, you know, he just wasn't into the marriage. He wasn't committed to me.

4:47Understood. Yeah. Stephen, tell us about you. You know, when I first got the email about this, I thought it said gay divorce. So I'm actually qualifying here for grey and gay divorce. Two for the price of one. Yes. But like many gay people, I never thought that marriage was a possibility growing up. My ex and I, we became partners in 2006 and started living together and had a house together and had pets together. And then when same-sex marriage became legal in the United States, shortly after that, we did get married. So that was, I believe, in 2013 for us in California. That's actually where we got married.

5:26And we had a marriage that was good. It was political. We felt it was important to be visible as a same-sex married couple. and we were the first in our North Carolina town. When did it all come to an end? At one point, about a year before we separated, I learned that my father had had pretty much a lifelong mistress. And I asked him at a certain point, you know, if you loved her so much, how come you didn't divorce mom? And he said, well, I never found the right time. And that really spoke to me because at that point, I knew I was in an unhappy marriage, but I had all these fears. Laura mentioned the fear of being alone, but, you know, financial fears, you know, all of that.

6:06And I was kind of stuck, but I did not want to become my dad and, you know, be 80 and have had an extra marital affair for all this time. The final determination was we had this terrible row and he called me pretty much every name in the book. And instead of being like the Jack Russell Terrier that we had and sort of biting back, I took a couple of breaths and I wound up saying to him, well, if you feel that way, we shouldn't be married anymore. Then things unfolded from there in pretty rapid succession. Did that feel like a relief saying that? Oh my gosh, yes. Such a relief. Yeah. What did he say in reply?

6:40He didn't say anything, but the next day he left. So I guess that says plenty. Two of you now have mentioned the idea that at that stage of life, you'd be worried about loneliness, about financial security. Edith, is that something that you worried about? You were just 56 when you got divorced. Well, I've lived my life as a professional artist and designer. I was always kind of on the edge financially anyway. I had a faith in my own skill that I would be okay. My son was 18, and so it was a good time to set out on my own again. But I was not consumed by fear. For me, it was more survival. I just did not want to live with this sense of emotional loneliness.

7:25I needed to survive and thrive. Yeah. Can I also say this is Laura? It wasn't just a fear of being alone. For me, it was also a complete loss of my sense of identity. I had lived as a married woman. I had my ex-husband's last name longer than I had my own name. I was a mother. I worked part-time and freelanced, but I basically was part of this family unit. and my divorce coincided or the separation coincided, you know, with my kids launching. And so it was like, OK, who am I now, really? I was 59 at the time. And my real fear was what was going to be my so-called old age plan, because I had always assumed that we would be together and we would be there to take care of each other when that time came.

8:17And then without that as a backstop, I kind of panicked. And that led me very quickly to review some continuing care communities here in North Carolina and to make a choice so that I had a plan B, which now was my plan A. And all of you managed to stay in the places where you were living. There wasn't that immediate upheaval. Is that fair? Long story short, we had this wonderful offer that we would have been fools to refuse. And so I thought, OK, this is great. We can sell the house, kind of retreat in some sort of rental, get to know each other again and sort of just figure everything out. And my ex was like, no, let's just split the proceeds and go on our merry ways.

8:59After I sold that house, I was in an apartment for two and a half years, which I now look back and I think it was nice having that kind of transition space while I figured out who I was and how I was going to earn a living, that kind of thing. My life really changed. I mean, I had been living in a lovely house. You know, financially, I did not come out of that marriage well. I wound up living in a factory building where I had my art studio. So I really just went into a bohemian life while I regrouped after doing that for about a year and just getting my feet under me, getting my son off to college.

9:40I moved in with a girlfriend who was also divorced. We lived together for almost five years. And then afterward, I got an apartment of my own. Finally, now I'm in a lovely senior housing, beautiful place. And what's so wonderful is that my rent is based on my income. So I feel secure and I have a very nice life. We did have a forced house sale. I think it was only 90 days before I was out of that house and I was in a new house in the same town, which I later came to know is known as the divorce house because many divorcees have landed in this lovely cottage. So now I've been here, though, eight years and I think it's home.

10:25I think it's now just it's just my place. I also, within those first months, began to feel like I was having the opportunity to recreate my life and to rebuild my life, both in terms of the house, but then in terms of how I spent my time. You know, many people who become single at our age, there's a real freedom that comes also that is quite liberating, I found. Yeah, I agree with you, Stephen. But the freedom for me didn't come until I was more secure. And so for me, that was going through the legal paperwork, taking back my maiden name, finding a full-time job with benefits and sort of managing the whole grown kid aspect of it, trying to make sure their worlds weren't overly rocked, which can often happen.

11:13Laura, Stephen and Edith in the United States, and we'll hear more from them in just a moment. I'm Rahul Tandon and you're listening to BBC OS Conversations from the BBC World Service.

11:41Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Burch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.

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12:25Just now, we heard Laura talking about the impact of divorce on her grown-up children. Our next conversation is with two women who were already adults when their parents split up. They're Luna, who's 37, from South Africa, who spoke to us from the United Arab Emirates, and 33-year-old Kate, who's from Malaysia and lives in London. My parents, when they actually did get divorced, had actually been separated for a few years, lots of arguments. So before the actual divorce, you know, we kind of accepted it was over. So it must have been quite a relief then when the actual divorce came. I mean, obviously it was very complicated emotionally as well.

13:03But yeah, it did come not as a surprise and you're right, as a relief. Tell us about the emotional complication. As much as it was a relief, it was also the end of your family as you know it. There's a lot of questioning, sort of. Your childhood is like, oh, were my parents really happy when I was a kid? Were they ever happy? Were our family ever a thing? And then I think you have to really try and detangle those emotions because, yeah, at some point your family was your family. They did love each other. And then along the way, you know, feelings change, things happen. Luna, tell us about you.

13:36When you were growing up, did your parents seem happy? Did they seem like they had a good relationship going? I don't know if it was ever really happy. I think they were a bad match to begin with. Why did you say that? They never had the same interests. They lived not separate lives, but very different lives. And I think it was just, you know, keeping the family together for most of my childhood. Can you remember when they said, Luna, we're getting a divorce? Yes. I was in my early 30s, as I still am. my mum called me one Saturday just telling me that it's over and she's going to leave my dad and she already had this plan worked out from what she's going to do, where she's going to go and I'm like okay well this sounds a little bit pre-planned but okay and then I was just like, I was happy I felt relief and I told her it's something that should have happened a very long time ago already.

14:30And actually the complicating factor is that you are yourself a divorce lawyer, were you giving tips? Yes, but It's a little bit more difficult when it's your dad or your mum coming to you rather than a client. It's very close to home and it's very personal. So you don't actually want to be involved, but you still want to be there for them and you still want to, you know, support. So you answer questions that you don't necessarily want to answer. I imagine how hard that must have been. It was crazy. Even couples who have split quite amicably can then get quite angry with each other because of the difficulties of actually dividing assets or responsibilities for children, if that's still the case.

15:13Kate, how is the actual divorce process for your parents? Was it smooth or did that bring some anger with it? when they had separated it was a legal separation but my dad had agreed to give my mom money every month even though you know we're all adult children i think it was because she basically had been a housewife for many many years she didn't actually have any income of her own and he was to give her some of his pension but then he came to a point where he was like i can't actually afford this anymore like i think a divorce would be the cleanest way to stop and obviously that brought up a lot of anger for her because she was like right where am i supposed to live on, etc.

15:48You know, you marry someone thinking that you're going to look after each other for the rest of your lives. And for better of course, you've got that taken away. So it was very ugly. That's all I can say. And did they drag you into that? It wasn't so much like dragged into the legal part of it, but it was a lot of emotional, like being made to choose sides, being made to communicate between the two of them. Like, you tell your dad this or you tell your mom that. So that was very difficult. I haven't had contact with my mom in four years, so she chose sides for me. It was just me, my brother, my dad, and my mom left and she moved very far away.

16:23So none of us really had that much contact with her other than all the court documents. When it comes to the money point, my mom was fighting tooth and nail for whatever she could get. I don't even think she was angry with my dad. I think she hated him and he was very hurt. So he was angry. It was a good example of a divorce from what not to do. I'm glad it's over. Well, I can imagine. I understand why your mum might have had issue with your dad if they were divorcing, but why is it the case that you haven't spoken? Do you mind me asking about how that deteriorated? Before the divorce, me and my dad didn't have a very good relationship, and me and my mum were very, very close.

17:01And then after my dad was the one reaching out to us, coming to visit us, apologizing for his behavior during the marriage, apologizing for the way he treated my mom, really trying to forge a new relationship with us. So my dad was the one reaching out and my mom moved away closer to where her brother lives. And she was just completely the opposite of my dad. I tried reaching out to her, having multiple conversations with her because during this time, my brother got married and I reached out to my mom and I'm like, listen, and it's going to be so awkward at the wedding. Can we all just be on a good foot?

17:38And then she would continue for two hours to tell me what a bad child I am because I have a relationship with my dad now. And then a year later, my brother and his wife expected their first child and I reached out to my mom again and I'm like, listen, same story. She didn't want to fix anything or to navigate this with us. So you know that book of She's Just Not That Into You, it's the same thing, but only with my mom. Well, that sounds tough. I'm sorry. No, it's fine. I mean, therapy helps. Kate, what was your experience post-divorce with either side? I'm very close to both of them. Also me living on the other side of the world kind of, I think, helped me set a boundary because they used to really badmouth each other.

18:23That was very hard to navigate. It's been about three years since the actual divorce happened and three years since they completely cut off contact with each other. So I think that's actually helped a lot for both of them to sort of move on a little bit. I mean, some paths are really hard because obviously if I go home to see them, I now have to divide my time between them. I have to be really mindful about whether I'm spending enough time with both of them. And that can be a bit tricky. When it comes to occasions like Chinese New Year or Christmas, to be honest, I avoid going home during that time so I don't have to, you know, divide the time between the two families.

19:01It's just a little too complicated, I think. I'm not ready to deal with that just yet. Kate in London and Luna in the UAE. There is another challenge for older divorcees, and that's the prospect of dating again, often for the first time in years. Let's hear again from Edith, Laura and Stephen. I was on the cusp of 60 when I found myself separated, and I had been with him for 14 years at that point. We had met through a matchmaker, and now the world was just full of apps and apps that had acronyms and language and rules and etiquette that were completely overwhelming and, frankly, kind of scary.

19:41So there was that aspect. And then intimacy itself, it has taken time to rebuild that kind of trust that's on the emotional level. And then taking your clothes off at 60 is different than taking your clothes off at 45. I'm just going to say it. Amen, brother. I'm a journalist, and I focus on older adult relationships because when I got separated and then divorced, my now ex, we actually started going to school together in the sixth grade. We didn't date until college. And so I really had no experience with dating. And then when I got divorced, it was like, okay, are people our age even interested in dating?

20:27And if they are, how are they finding partners? It wasn't just dating apps. It was things like class reunions and having friends set them up. But then I realized once you do couple up at this age, then there are so many different things that we did not have to deal with when we were younger. Not everybody is looking for the one, but some people do want to, you know, spend the rest of their lives with another special someone. If that's the case, you know, how do we find that person? And then how do we go forward so we're not necessarily repeating mistakes and so it can be a more fulfilling union?

21:04I have to say about Stephen, I totally understand what he's saying. But the one thing that has been really gratifying for me is hearing about people, their sexual reawakening, that they thought it was over. A lot of us have not had good sex or not have had any sex in a while before our marriages break up. And then we realize, oh my gosh, I can be attracted to another person. Another person can be attracted to me. Yes, we look a lot different sometimes than we did, but that doesn't necessarily matter anymore. This is one of the ways that I think gay and straight are very much the same. Our sex life had really diminished, and it was kind of amazing to realize I was still alive.

21:51Edith, how about you? I went on to have another serious relationship. We did not live together. I spent weekends with him and he was kind of a mountain man and we skied together. He was very different than my husband. And we had a really good time. And fortunately, I mean, he wound up with Parkinson's and dementia and just recently passed about half a year ago. So I'm learning again to stand on my own feet emotionally. I'm fine. I know how to carry on. I have no regrets. I just keep moving forward and transitioning and trusting that I will attract the next right situation. I hear everything Edith is saying, but for me, who really fought kicking and screaming, I did not want to end my marriage.

22:42I don't want to sound like a cheerleader for divorce, especially for gray divorce, because you have all that history. But we don't have to soldier on in unfulfilling marriages. So if people aren't happy, I say work on your marriage. But if you can't make it work, don't just stick with it just to say that you didn't get divorced. Is life good now? Is it better than the alternative might have been? Instead of it gets better, it gets good. It's not that I'm happier or glad that I went through it. This was something that happened to me and I did get through it. And I think it's really important for people to not dwell in the past and not have bitterness and resentment and just look forward to today and tomorrow.

23:25Let's take good care of ourselves so that if we do find a special someone, we've got many vibrant years ahead of us. Absolutely. I consider myself an adventurer. I'm having a great life. I'm moving forward in every direction creatively. I've got an excellent part-time job as a park manager. I'm outdoors. I meet people. I'm creating beauty. I couldn't be happier. I'm definitely happier, but I'm also just a little bit cautious in sort of presenting my story as kind of went from this low point to this high point. I'm single still at this point, having had some shorter relationships in between. And I miss waking up with someone in the bed regularly, that kind of touch.

24:12So there are definitely aspects that I miss. I feel like I'm a whole person again, and I had lost part of myself during that marriage. and friends have commented that he came back and I didn't even know that he was gone. So it's kind of amazing. Stephen, Laura and Edith, thank you for sharing those experiences and for being so honest about them too. I'm Rahul Tandon and you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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