Why now Bill and Melinda?
Here’s why.
When Bill and Melinda announced they were divorcing, all I heard was a chorus of “why now”?!? After putting in 27 years of “work” why would you divorce now, won’t the next 27 be smooth sailing from here?
Having been the person who walked away from a 30 year of marriage, I understand why they have called it quits. In fact, it's made really clear from the press release, and it's about two things.
- The amount of work they have had to do to stay together (i.e. remain happy with their relationship)
- The children, or what I like to think of as a “common cause”
Many people stay together for a common cause. Mostly it's the children and it was very much that way for me. I had thought about leaving my marriage when my eldest child was 5 years old and we were 7 years in, but the thought of what that might do to that little girl made me dive into the “hard work” of the relationship and keep going. But I was never truly happy, and the constant trips to the marriage counselor every 3–5 years proved that. It was constant work and there were always areas of my relationship that couldn’t ever meet my needs. Growing together during my marriage was all about learning how to be better parents. It was focused on our common cause and that's how we managed to stick it out and bring up 3 amazing kids together.
Life stages are important inflection points in our journey to lifelong fulfillment and happiness. One key life stage is when the children become adults and “fly the nest”. Many people can settle into the steady-state that is the comfortable relationship you have developed with your spouse/partner. But what about if you find all the things that have kept you together were really related to your common cause. With that now diminished (or in some cases removed), you are left looking at “what's left”. When I was in this situation and looking at what was left, I felt exactly like Bill and Melinda. I couldn’t see a relationship growing from what remained. The kids were gone and I was still not able to get my key needs met in this partnership. So I decided to leave, which seems to be something a growing number of 50+-year-olds are choosing to do.
As our average age of death gets higher each year, we are increasingly looking at the value of our lives in what I like to call, the fourth quarter (for those who like sports analogies). We spend 20–30 years raising our children and building a career and then we hit 55 or 60 and think, what about the next 20? Or 30 even! Am I going to be content to sit back on the sofa and be with this person, without our common cause, and will I be happy?
According to a 2017 Pew Research Centre report, the divorce rate in America has roughly doubled since the 1990s among adults aged 50 and over. In Australia in 1980 and 1990, 20 percent of divorces were couples who had been married for 20 years — this increased to 28 percent in 2010 and 27 percent in 2017.
This increase shows that more people in the 50+ age group are saying, no, I want to go, I haven’t been happy and I don’t want to spend another 20–30 years being unhappy. So they move forward with divorce. It's what I did and it is what I would do again — it was the right decision for me and I’m happier than I ever remember. I wish I could have remained friends with my partner, given how much we shared together, but that has been her decision. I know most people can remain friends if the split is approached maturely and when they both determine that they want more from their lives in the final quarter.
Please don’t think I’m encouraging you to leave your partner, that's not what I’m doing. But what am saying is that if you are not happy, and you have not been happy for a long time, there is nothing wrong with sitting down and working out with your partner if you would both be happier apart than together.
