Couples split after decades of marriage – 04/15/2023 – Equilibrium

Mexican Aída Sedano became a celebrity on TikTok. This 76-year-old woman doesn’t do fashionable dances or sing, but videos of her — in which she tells, for example, what it’s like to go shopping without her husband — have surpassed 3.5 million views.

Mother of three daughters and grandmother of six grandchildren, Sedano separated from her American husband nine years ago, after four decades of marriage.

“When the relationship is no longer working, let the wind blow and take the remains of your way. And live. And start living”, told BBC News Mundo, BBC Spanish news service, the owner of the account @aidasedanolaabuela , which has more than 115,000 followers on the social network.

Her phrase sums up the thoughts of many people at a time when, in general, people live longer and arrive in better physical and mental health conditions at ages that years ago were seen as advanced.

The trend is so popular that it has led American researchers like Susan L. Brown to coin a term for the phenomenon: “gray divorce.”

The term usually refers to the divorce of people aged 50 and over who decide to leave their partners after many years of marriage.

“Divorce is no longer seen as something as stigmatized as it could have been in the beginning, it seems much more normal”, explains psychologist and writer Silvia Congost.

“As divorce is more normalized, it is also more present at these ages.”

“In addition, life expectancy is increasing. By the time we reach 65, we have an average of two decades of life ahead of us, and if someone isn’t happy, they don’t want to settle for that anymore. They know they have more options.”

According to a study by Susan L. Brown, who co-directs a marriage and family research center at Bowling Green State University in the US, the number of gray divorces doubled between 1990 and 2010 in the country.

A generation ago, less than 10% of divorces involved spouses over 50. Today, more than 25% of divorcees are over 50 years old.

In Brazil, in 2021, 25.9% of people who had divorce confirmed in the first instance of Justice or via deed were over 50 years old, according to a BBC survey based on data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

In 2019, the percentage was slightly lower —25.2%. The report was unable to access data from previous years using the same methodology.

Still according to an IBGE report, in 2021, on the date of divorce, men were on average 43.6 years old and women, 40.6 years old.

Meanwhile, in 2010, the average time between the date of marriage and the date of the divorce judgment or deed was around 16 years. In 2021, this interval has decreased to 13.6 years.

In Mexico, the number of people over 50 who got divorced has increased in ten years, from 10,531 divorces registered in 2011 to 28,272 in 2021, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

In Spain, another example of this trend, 34,449 people over 50 were divorced in 2021, compared to the 24,894 registered in 2013, according to official data.

‘In the time I have left, I don’t want any problems’

“When retirement comes, more and more couples no longer want to be together”, analyzes Sacramento Barbas, mediator and psychologist at the ATYME foundation, a pioneer in the implementation of mediation techniques in Spain.

Some phrases that she and her colleagues hear the most include: “I don’t want to get into trouble for the time I have left of my life” and “I don’t recognize my partner, it’s like he’s someone else.”

But, according to the psychologist, “sometimes it’s the adult children who put obstacles in place, because they don’t want their parents to separate”.

Beatriz Goldberg, an Argentine psychologist who specializes in individual crises, says that people who go through gray divorces often enter new relationships with different expectations.

“There are people who feel that the new partner is more to enjoy, and the other was to build a family”, says Goldberg, author of the book “Me separé y ahora qué” (“I broke up, and now?”, in free translation).

Midlife is marked by important life transitions. Children grow up and leave home, while careers can fall behind with retirement.

Without the daily routine of childcare and long hours at work, spouses may find they have little in common.

Gray divorce does not usually occur because of a specific event, but is the result of distancing, experts explain.

In addition to the normalization of divorce, today we also have the appreciation of women’s independence.

“We women realize that we don’t have to tolerate certain things that our grandmothers tolerated. That family model in which one supports the other is no longer so necessary”, explains Silvia Congost.

“If you’re not happy, you know you don’t have to take it anymore. The tolerance level in some cases is lower.”

Divorce at age 65

Aída Sedano got married at the age of 24, but soon realized that marriage wasn’t what she thought it was.

Locked in her Tijuana home all day with her daughters and forced to stop working as a rural teacher, a profession she loved, she watched the years pass.

“I talked to my aunts and said that I didn’t like that relationship, that he didn’t come home, that he drank, that he spent a lot. And everyone told me: You have a good house, you have good furniture, you dress well. Nothing is missing,” she tells BBC News Mundo.

When Sedano finally moved to San Diego with her husband, she managed to go back to college to study pedagogy at the age of 45.

“It was when I went back to university that I started to learn that we women had rights, that the world had changed.”

Finally, at the age of 65, she decided to leave her husband – which she acknowledges was a “very difficult” path.

“The pain reaches the bone marrow.”

“I’m a normal lady who has suffered and who found in videos a way to connect, to have friends,” she says of her TikTok account.

This text was originally published here.