Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen

193: It's been Labeled "Gray Divorce": Why People Over 50 are Choosing to Divorce more than anytime in History?

• Jennifer Townsend • Season 5 • Episode 193

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“I don’t want something new. I want something true.” That line becomes a compass as we unpack the rise of gray divorce and the very real reasons so many couples over 50 are choosing to end long marriages. We look beyond headlines and into the lived dynamics: years of emotional neglect, unresolved betrayals, the caretaker trap, and the quiet identity loss that can hide under busy family life. Once the house empties and the calendar clears, the state of the relationship stands in sharper focus—and for many, the choice becomes about integrity, safety, and being deeply known.

We talk candidly about trauma responses after discovering an affair, why women often initiate midlife splits, and how longevity, retirement, and changing cultural norms reshuffle the equation. Emotional safety isn’t a luxury; it’s the floor. When stability asks you to abandon yourself, the cost becomes too high. You’ll hear practical ways to get clear on your why, assess whether you like your reasons, and decide between repair and release. If repair is possible, it requires accountability, full honesty, and new patterns of connection. If leaving is right, you’re not “starting over”—you’re starting from wisdom, with new boundaries, better tools, and a stronger voice.

This conversation offers grounded guidance for anyone navigating divorce after 50: how to handle grief and relief living side by side, how to rebuild identity and community, and how to make peace with dreams that need a rewrite. We also get real about dating later in life, financial confidence, and the shift from caretaking to true partnership. If betrayal, gaslighting, or long-standing disconnection have left you walking on eggshells, consider this your permission to choose truth and design a second half built on peace, purpose, and emotional intimacy.

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe for more real talk about healing after betrayal, and leave a review so others can find the show. When you’re ready for deeper support, visit lifecoachgen.com—your happily even after starts today.

Please follow me on instagram and facebook @happilyevenaftercoach and if you want to see what coaching is all about I offer a free 45 min. clarity call via zoom.

Email me: hello@lifecoachjen.com for any comments or questions.

Thanks for listening, please like and review as well as share with your family and friends.

My website is www.lifecoachjen.com



SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen, the podcast where we don't sugarcoat betrayal, we transform it. If your heart is shattered, your nervous system is buzzing, and your future feels uncertain, you're in the right place. Here we rebuild identity, confidence, and peace. One brave episode at a time. Hey friends, welcome to today's episode. So this month, talking about some different divorce things that are happening. And there's a new term called gray divorce. And Oprah has been talking about this a lot lately. And so I was kind of curious. And I'm like, wait, gray divorce. And what it is is the statistics are showing a lot more people in this period of their life are getting divorced than like the younger generation, which is very fascinating. And divorce after 20 or 30 or even 40 years of marriage. It's divorced after kids are grown, divorced in your 50s, 60s, or beyond. And I just think it's a phenomenon that's happening. And I myself was 51 years old. So I fit in the category of gray divorce, even though I don't plan on ever having gray hair. I plan on which I think it's like people's hairs going gray, but I am like, well, I don't totally fit in that category. But it is fascinating, right? So I just want to talk about it. I want to talk about why this is happening. If this, and a lot of my clients are 50 and older, and not all of them, some of them are younger, but I do have a majority of my clientele that are in this age range where they're not necessarily getting divorced, but they're realizing like, oh, my spouse had an affair 20 years ago, and I clearly never dealt with it because now it's coming out in full force. Like I'm reeling from the affair 20 years later, which happens a lot. Okay. So what it's referring to, if you ever hear this term, is someone that is 50 or older getting divorced. And divorce rates have doubled since the 90s in this category and tripled for 65 years or older. So very fascinating, right? So I just I'm going to talk about why the people in the world that keep track of stuff like this, why they think this. And it really makes sense. It really resonates. And the thing is, when people are getting divorced in older, it's rarely impulsive, although sometimes it is. I think for sure it's this trauma response. If you find out your spouse is having an affair, a lot of people, if your trauma response is flight, people will just automatically file for divorce, right? And so sometimes it is a reaction, but not always. And it's not necessarily as dramatic as when you're getting divorced and you have younger kids. And it's usually a decision that has been years in the making, right? It's not something on a whim. They thought, you know, we just aren't really getting along. Let's get divorced. They've been considering it for a long time. So we're going to talk about why people in midlife, right, that they decide, I want to get divorced. And so some of the reasons are they have years of emotional neglect. And one thing I just want to encourage everyone, the more emotionally connected you can be, the more beautiful all your relationships will be. So the more in tune you are with your emotions is going to bless your life as well as everyone else in your life. So if you feel uncomfortable or if you're like, I don't really know if I have a lot of emotions, right? That you do. You just are not practiced in feeling them or listening to them or understanding them. A lot of disconnection, um, repeated betrayal or broken trust. That was for sure why I got divorced in my 50s. Because my spouse continued having affairs and refused to take accountability. And ultimately, he didn't want to be married to me. He wanted to be done. He was like, I'm moving on. Found someone else, found someone a lot younger, moving on. Patterns that are never addressed, right? Financial imbalance, silence, loneliness inside of a marriage. That's very common. Oprah said, people don't leave a marriage because they want something new. They leave because they want something true. And I think that's such a good point, right? We want to be truly connected with someone to really know us. And I mean, honestly, like dating in your 50s is like the worst. I've only attempted it once, but I'm gonna try to be more brave this year and go on more dates. But I mean, I don't, I'm not, it's hard to be attracted to a man that's like old and wrinkly, right? Like I just, I don't know. That's very like superficial of me to say, but it's true. And so I don't know. I I just getting older is hard. And then trying to date someone that's older is harder. Okay, for women, I think women a lot of times initiate a lot of these divorces are initiated by them because they've been trying, they've been trying to tell their spouse. Now, this isn't always the case because there are totally, you know, women that have no idea what they're feeling, their emotions, they're having the affair, right? So this it's both sexes, but oftentimes women are the more emotionally mature people in the marriage, and they just finally are done with it. They don't want to deal with their spouse. They don't want to, I mean, be a caretaker, right? I there are men that advertise on their dating site. They want a trad wife, a traditional wife. Basically, they want someone to take care of them. And I'm like, okay, that is not me. I am not going to be doing that. So I must be missing out on a few, a few of those men out there, right? Like, I just, I'm like women, we want someone that can make themselves dinner and wash their clothes or do a million other things, right? And sometimes, of course, it's nice to take care of someone. Like, I love doing laundry, so I'll do laundry for my kids or anyone else for that matter. I like it. But I don't want to have to do it. And I don't want to do it because you don't know how to do it. Okay. People are living longer, right? They're living into their 80s and 90s. And so people are like 50 and thinking, oh my gosh, 30 more years of living next to you and being married to you. That feels hard, right? Empty nest, when your kids leave your nest, people have lots of crises going on after they have empty nests. First of all, women don't know who they are. They haven't been fulfilling their needs or meeting their needs. And so it's confusing. And then their spouse, it's like they've just disconnected. So unless you can figure out a way to reconnect with yourself and your spouse, you're like basically living separate lives and there's no emotional intimacy. And oftentimes, if there's been betrayal, they've never recovered from it and they don't even know how to do that, right? So women also are more financially independent nowadays. Now, that wasn't my situation, right? I was very financially dependent on my husband, and that terrified me. But a lot of women these days have careers and have their own retirement savings. They understand finances. That's one thing gift I did give myself. I knew how to pay bills, I knew how to manage money, I understood stocks, I understood a lot about money. So I don't think I was completely terrified about the money, but it was something I was definitely resistant in. Another thing that Oprah really highlighted, she said, women today are rewriting what freedom looks like at every age. And I think that's so true. And it's not that we think we're better than the men, right? It's like, but no, we need the men to step up a little bit. And or the women, right? It could go both ways. So I'm not trying to be sexist here, but oftentimes, and I have several clients that unresolved betrayals come to light. So whether they kept it a secret for 20 plus years and they never told, and then now we're saying it after you know they're empty nesting or retiring, or they just didn't deal with it because life felt too hard to deal with it, and there really weren't resources in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s for betrayal. So they have a lot of unresolved feelings and emotions from affairs, pornography issues, emotional abandonment, gaslighting, minimizing psychological abuse. And so women, as they start getting older and healing and feel more safer, that they can take care of themselves, they're like, I'm done. I'm not gonna put up with any of this behavior anymore. And so they want to get divorced. There's a cultural shift, I think, towards mental health and wholeness. People want a purpose, people want connection, people want to feel peace. And really hard to do this when you're walking on eggshells all the time. I think retirement forces a lifestyle reality check. A lot of people, they work, work, work, work, work, and they're forgetting about hobbies and things they like. So they retire and they have nothing to do. And then they look at their spouse and they think, I don't want to sit here with you anymore. And so they choose divorce. And I'm not can I'm not saying this is a good thing, right? This is just something going on in our society right now. I don't think there's as much of a stigma. And I think, especially when your kids are adults, now, divorce is really hard. But if your kids are already married and have their own grandkids, yeah, they might be upset. Like they're probably everyone will react differently regardless of their age, but they're more secure. And so it's not so devastating. I mean, there's always the worry about the birthday party or the Christmas or the play or whatever. But generally, I think they're already, your adult kids are already established. And so it's just not as hard for them. So some experts have said divorce at 50 is often about identity, not conflict. So it's not like they had been fighting, right? They're just like, I don't want to be married to you anymore. I think women want emotional connection more than men. Now, that's not necessarily men want it too. They just maybe don't have all the tools. That's why I really encourage you to learn how to be more emotionally connected because anyone can become more emotionally connected. You just have to figure out how your unique nervous system and how you process emotions, you just have to become more in tune with yourself. Women are no longer willing to be emotionally starved in exchange for stability. So it used to be where the man was the provider, right? And then, so that that was my, I was a very traditional marriage. And so that felt safer to me, right? But then it's like, wait, emotional, you I don't know what price you can put on emotional stability. It's it may be priceless, right? Because I've experienced it now, and you couldn't put a price on it. And so that is very important too. And I think in gray divorces, when your spouse, it might come as a surprise to your husband. They're like, wait, I thought everything was fine, right? I like coming home every night at six and having dinner at the table or whatever, right? All my laundry just magically shows up in my drawers folded and it smells good. And I don't ever have to hang up my clothes because you do it for me. And so there's some discomfort, right? Some surprise, some shock. It can be really devastating. Divorce later in life can be a beginning, not an ending. So I think I always tell people when they get divorced, you get to write your new story. And it's just you closed a chapter when you get divorced, and now you get to write the new version. What's next? Your story isn't over. You still have a lot of years left. So I think really keeping your mindset on that. I think there's a lot of emotions when you divorce as you're older, right? There's a lot of grief. There might be relief, some fear, confusion, empowerment, right? So there's lots of negative emotions and positive emotions, some freedom, anger, hope. I can relate to every one of these emotions that I just read off. It's normal to feel all of these things. And you are grieving because you invested years into this marriage, and the version of you that you were in this marriage, the dream you had, right? We all have this dream and idea of what our family and what our life is going to look like. And when it doesn't happen that way, it's really hard to shift that and dream a different dream. The life you thought you were building, the future you imagined with your family together. Like I've said this before, but I always imagined like my kids having babies and I'm being a grandma, and me and their dad are like doing grandkid camp and taking our kids on fun vacations with the whole family. Like, I just have to reinvent my dream because that's not going to be possible. It's going to be different now. And just remember, you didn't fail. You just have evolved and changed, and your marriage wasn't working anymore, especially if betrayal is an underlying thing that's been happening in your marriage. For me, like I'm very pro-marriage. So if it's like, oh, we just can't get along. But the thing is, if your spouse is refusing to get help, I hate when I read my spouse refuses to talk to anyone. I'm like, really? Like you're willing to like not get help for yourself or anyone else or your marriage and get divorced, right? Like, I don't know. I just think that's pretty pathetic. That says a lot about that person if they're not willing to reach out and get help. But I mean, I guess if they aren't, then maybe it is better that you move on. So if you are considering, you know, getting a divorce after your 50s, just figure out your why. Do you like your reasons? What would you tell your daughter or your best friend if they were experiencing the same marriage that you are experiencing? I think that I always like this question because, and it's funny because we always give our daughter like leave immediately. And then when we can't give that same advice to ourselves when we're experiencing betrayal. And it it makes sense because we can't, you know, that's just pretend land, right? It's not reality. Reality is different. But figure out like, are you abandoning yourself to stay in this relationship? I for sure was doing that. And I'm so glad I don't have to do that anymore. I just needed to get stronger and get better support for myself. So just pay attention to, you know, why you are considering divorce, why you're considering divorce in your 50s or 60s. Remember, just because you get divorced, it doesn't mean you're broken. It doesn't mean that you're starting over, right? Like people are like, oh, I'm starting over. Well, you're not really starting over. You're just starting at a different point in your life. You're maybe starting fresh. You have a fresh new start. But starting over means something like you've fallen behind. What if your second half of life can be the most grounded, joyful, peaceful, intentional chapter you've ever lived? I totally believe this could be true. So many people say, and I feel this way, that I feel more myself today than I ever did in my marriage. And that feels really like sad, but true to me. Right. So if you are considering getting divorced in your 50s, just know that's actually really normal. And there's a lot of people also considering this. And for me, I don't think I would have considered it had betrayal not been a factor. So to me, that feels like a very factor that matters. But there probably is other factors, right? Like especially any kind of abuse in a marriage. You've got to decide that. No one can decide that for you. What reason is okay to get divorced? Really, it can be any reason if you decide and want that to be. So, anyways, hopefully that was interesting to you. I I found it very fascinating that this has become a phenomenon right now in our society that more divorces are happening for older, the older generation, I guess, for us that are over 50 than for the younger generation. And maybe because they're getting married later. I don't know. Or they have more information. They're making better marriage decisions. They're not getting married. Now, I didn't get married. I was 25 when I got married, but a lot of people, they're 20. My parents got married at 19, I think. 19 or 20. They were babies. They were young. I have 20 year olds, and I think they could never be married. They would not, it would not go well if they got married when they were 20. Anyways, hopefully this helped. If you liked this podcast and want to share it with your family and friends, or leave me a review, I'd really appreciate it so other people can find it. And follow along. Anyways, have a beautiful day and I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. If this episode helped you breathe deeper or see your next step more clearly, share it with someone who needs it. And when you're ready for real support in your healing, you know where to find me. At lifecoachgen.com. That's Jen with one N. Your happily even after is possible. And it starts today.