Leaving a Marriage After 60: How to Know When it’s Time to Let Go
Marriages, especially ones that have lasted for decades, take work. Every day will not be a honeymoon. Arguments, compromises, and sacrifices will no doubt be daily currency. While the give and take in a relationship is normal, there are instances when staying married is not a sustainable option.
- You Are in an Abusive Relationship
- You Do Not Get Treated with the Respect You Deserve
- You Justify Your Happiness and Mental Health
- You Feel Nothing Will Change for the better
- You Are Not Being True to Yourself
It can be terrifying to end a decades-long marriage and start over in your 50s, 60s, and 70s. For this reason, many older women stay with their partner, even if it is not in their own best interest.
But how do you know when it is time to leave your marriage, versus staying in it? Every woman’s situation is different, but if you are in any of the following situations, regardless of how long you have been married, it may be time to consider your options.
You Are in an Abusive Relationship
There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s when it comes to abuse. It is wrong, you do not deserve it, and you need to leave that situation as soon as you can.
For years, our culture has told us that running the household and making the marriage work is our duty. As a result, we put this enormous pressure on ourselves to keep the marriage intact, even if it is harmful or dangerous to us.
Whether it is physical, mental, emotional, or sexual abuse, or the threat of abuse, you do not deserve it. There are resources out there to help you leave.
It does not matter how many years you have invested in a relationship. You may have even told yourself, “I may as well stay since I’ve already invested all this time and I’ll learn to cope.” But please, for your sake and for those who love you, do not stay. It’s time to realize you deserve to be safe and respected.
Physical and sexual abuse are easy to identify, but mental and emotional abuse can be more difficult. Gaslighting is a technique frequently used by abusive partners which undermines and makes you question your perception and understanding of reality.
The manipulation often begins slowly and goes unnoticed by yourself and others. Common behaviors include constant lying, deflecting or shifting blame, creating a codependent relationship, twisting conversations, and giving false hope.
Also, narcissists can create volatile environments and make you question your self-worth. They generally don’t have your best interest at heart and don’t really care when they hurt you. Narcissists typically don’t change as it is a personality trait (Narcissistic Personality Disorder).
Don’t stay in an abusive relationship thinking that they will change. Chances are they won’t.
Read THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN A DIVORCE.
You Do Not Get Treated with the Respect You Deserve
Anyone who is married for more than a few years understands that there will be ups and downs. However, if you are not being treated as an equal partner in the relationship, that’s a problem. If your wants and needs are ignored or mocked, that’s a problem. If you are being cheated on, that’s a problem.
These actions are symptoms of a larger problem. They show that your partner is not valuing you in the way that you should be valued. Never forget for a second that you are a queen and that you deserve to be with someone who will love you and respect you and treat you right.
If you find yourself continually justifying your partner’s disrespectful behavior, or, even more alarming, you have become numb to it, it might be time to reconsider the value of that marriage.
Read DIVORCE AND THE MARITAL HOME: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.
You Justify Your Happiness and Mental Health
If you justify, and continue to justify, everything over your own happiness and mental health, there is a problem. You, a woman over 50, are a part of a resilient group. Women of your generation demanded more for themselves. They broke out of what society told them they should be and how they should act.
You have made a lot of sacrifices along the way, especially when it came to balancing the demands of marriage, motherhood, and career. During those years, you probably had dreams of your own deferred.
It’s common for most women to have made that type of sacrifice. However, the red flag starts to wave if keeping your marriage together is at the expense of your own happiness and mental health. If you are continually discouraged from pursuing your own dreams and happiness, it’s time to consider if staying in the marriage has been a reason for that neglect.
Read 10 STRATEGIES TO EMPOWER YOU WHEN DEALING WITH A CONTENTIOUS DIVORCE.
You Feel Nothing Will Change for the Better
Perhaps you feel like nothing will change for the better, and your spouse is unwilling to try. If you are in one of the above situations, where you are mistreated and disrespected, it may be time to stop. This holds true if you continue to justify your spouse’s misbehavior towards you, or continue to prioritize everything over your own mental health and happiness.
You may have the opportunity to work things out with the help of a good counselor or other professional. These types of services can be a godsend for some, but there are times when it’s not a cure-all.
Online websites like Better Help and Talk Space offer individual and couples online therapy to help you go through this difficult period. You may want to talk with someone if you do choose to end the marriage. A therapist can help give you coping skills to navigate through your feelings and emotions.
It takes both partners to make a relationship work. Perhaps you do not want to leave and have done everything you can to try to make the relationship work. Yet if your spouse is still unwilling to work on it, he is sending you the message that you may not want to hear – you deserve better.
Ending a marriage is a messy and complicated process. It can be terrifying to take that leap – the one where you go from having a predictable but unhappy existence to one that is full of uncertainty and stress. But remember that there is a whole new chapter of your life that awaits you if you decide to do so.
Read OVER 50 AND READY TO LET GO OF UNMET EXPECTATIONS AFTER DIVORCE? HERE’S HOW TO TAKE ACTION!
Recognizing that you deserve to feel safe and free from abuse and harm, that you deserve to be treated with respect regardless of how long you have been married is important.
Knowing that you deserve to have your own independence and happiness despite years of sacrificing for others, can be the motivation that gives you the courage to leave a relationship that is no longer healthy for you – even after age 50.
You Are Not Being True to Yourself
Do you find yourself easily agitated and frustrated most of the time? If you find that your personality changed over the years and you are mostly angry with your partner, then it’s possible that the environment has become toxic and it’s time to make a change. Sometimes the change means leaving the relationship.
Sometimes it’s neither abuse nor flagrant disrespect but little things that your partner does that annoy you and that are not conducive to a healthy and loving relationship. You have the right to be happy and to live in a nurturing environment that promotes your happiness and unique personality.
It used to be that women who left relationships in their 50’s and 60’s usually felt lonely, isolated, and stigmatized. Nowadays, more and more single women over 50 are living their absolute best lives – traveling, moving abroad, taking on new hobbies, starting businesses, and meeting new people. You can search Facebook groups, meetups, travel websites, and social events that gather older women together to do activities.
Read UNEXPECTED FRIENDSHIPS ARE EVERYWHERE, WAITING TO BE FOUND.
Also, KEEPING SCORE IS FOR GAMES AND SPORTS NOT RELATIONSHIPS
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Has your marriage ended? How did you know it was time to leave? What advice would you give other women who are struggling with the decision to stay or go? Let’s have a conversation and support each other!
Tags Divorce After 60
My husband has been diagnosed with cognitive impairment, since then he is not the man I married! Every day is a struggle! He is insufferable. Today was his birthday and I made a toast and said that he has been my best friend and he laughed in front of my daughters and grandchildren and friends!! It broke my heart to pieces!
Yes
March 2020 my husband retired so we started retirement at the same time the Covid Pandemic scare began. We have always been a great pair in a crisis. We had sold our forever home, as planned, in 2021 and moved to be close to our grown children. The move opened my eyes. The man who I had excused from being involved because he worked so hard outside the home, and worked so hard on weekends to maintain our home, now was home. He chose to retire and just walked into my daily life like he won a war and made life comfortable for him. 45 years of being a housewife and working part-time outside the house only when the extra income was needed to do major home repair. No vacations never he made our country yard his paradise over the years. I never noticed, or perhaps just never asked for him to make time for “us” because I saw how busy he was with what he needed to get done. I waited for retirement with the idea “we’d” be together then and share a romantic loving life when he retired. Instead he just sat down and grabbed the remote, or made a drink and relaxed in the hot tub, or he whatever he wanted to do when he wanted to do it and the rest of the time I was to sit with him and watch TV like we did in the evenings when he was working. Now TV was ALL day long when he wanted to watch it. Because of COVID we were sheltering in place… Retirement started when COVID started. We moved to our dream retirement community that had all kinds of community events and clubs all closed because of COVID. Even more in 2023, the senior clubs are still closed because the community is not interested in group living anymore. New York State really destroyed all the fun with the fright the government created to keep us safe. So now I’m living isolated with a man who has no want of doing anything together. Just living in the same house is together enough. We haven’t been physically involved in 20 years because he suffered from ED that I believe was his way of doing everything for himself including that. He puts no effort into anything but his own self and his own quality of life. I’m on my own, alone, with no friends, and only my children to enjoy. Now that I look back, I see that this is the man I married. He is and always had been all about him and doing what he wants to do when he wants to do it. It’s sad but I invented a storybook hope of what our end of days would be like. Long talks, wine and snacks while relaxing, and fun projects or mini vacations, and he doesn’t, not did he ever want that. And the possibilities or chances of a social life is make for myself died when COVID took it all away. I’m living so alone with friends I never get to physically see or be with. Than the Lord for my children because without them, I might have thought of ending this enjoy life. There’s not enough money for him to support me and I’m visually unable to drive myself. I’m still looking for the open door and when it opens I’m out of here. Yes I love him deeply, but I want to live a life that’s alive and full of meaning.
I am SO SORRY you’re having to go through this in what should be your golden years.
When you said that he wants you to sit with him all day and just watch tv I know how you feel. My husband thinks I’m his “play date”. It’s my job to entertain him and the weekends are the worst. If I don’t get up and get ready early in the morning then run all over town with him all day he will pout and sulk. If I don’t stop what I’m doing when he gets home he gets angry. He thinks I’M responsible for him being happy yet not one single time in our 27 year marriage has he ever thought about me. Supporting me, standing up for me, considered how his actions affect me. Nothing. It causes such resentment it kills all love for him.
He STILL doesn’t get it. And I’m done with all of it. I’m currently saving money without him knowing to get the hell away from him. It’s taking a while but it will all be worth it.
I’ll be praying for you.
I can only imagine how difficult it must be leaving a toxic marriage, but I believe in you and your ability to create a better life for yourself.
I’m 56 years old and still completely in love wirh my husband of 37 years. We started dating when I was 15. We’ve had issues, including my extremely brief affair 26 years ago (2-3 times because hubby rejected me for 9 months along with other abandonment issues). I came clean and begged forgiveness and was willing to do Anything to make up for it. He swore he was completely innocent and never had betrayed me, which I found out a couple of years ago was a lie. The answer to My betrayal was to have an additional person in our bedroom, which I felt gave a huge part of me away, but he felt “saved our marriage”. Afterwards, we became Christians and, althought I knew we were forgiven and thought we forgave one another, I was haunted by the past.
A little more than 4 years ago, while dealing with my daddy dying, I confirmed he was having an affair (with a woman I thought was my friend for 20 years). I was told it had ended but have been reinjured several times since by learning they either rekindled their affair or maybe it never ended. I have been in counseling, Celebrate Recovery, etc since. I feel unloved, unwanted, discarded, rejected, abandoned, etc. My mental health, because on continued lies and deceit, has become very fragile. I now question everything and my future security is questionable. He has also not been intimate with me in over a year now, regardless of my efforts to express my love, etc. He acts like he doesn’t care but says he loves me. I question, because of things he has said, if he has lied to me for 26 years. He throws all fault at me, has been emotionally and verbally abusive to me, and now I’m learning about manipulation, gaslighting, and possible narcissitic behaviors. I’ve continued to give chance after chance, trusted and then crushed again and again. I’m afraid of throwing in the towel too soon but also believe I’m in denial. The most recent lie, he told me he was doing home makeover work for guy he works with, but I found him at her house doing work and swearing it’s just work. Even if it is, he broke his promise to have nothing to do with her and lied to me again. He has be3n back on the couch since. I don’t know if I can believe anything he says.
Linda, I allowed my husband, and my entire birth family who betrayed me for no reason, to define my worth for ages. NEVER let ANYONE else decide your worth. HE knows you are incredible which is why he works so hard to make you feel worthless. Because HE knows he doesn’t deserve you and if you stop thinking about how worthless you are, you will begin to see it’s NOT you, it’s HIM! No matter what he says or what he does he is projecting his horrible treatment if you on you. If you can, take the emotion out of it and just listen to the words or watch his treatment of you. I GUARANTEE he is talking about himself.
And remember, his affair with your long time friend wasn’t just her, HE is JUST as responsible as she is. Don’t you think you deserve better than all the crumbs he is giving you. Only YOU can allow him to treat you in such horrible ways. Only YOU can allow him to make you feel. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. I know. I had to look back at how horrible my family and my husband treated me and made me feel so horribly worthless. I had to OWN my part. Which was I allowed them to use and abuse me. I let that happen because I was so intimidated by all of them that I never stood up to them. When they used and abused me I would try even harder to be kind so they would love me. I finally realized that I don’t have to be nice or feel guilty about not treating them nice. Why I’m earth would I put in that much energy for someone to like me when they continuously abused me. Deep down I loathed all of them and was inwardly humiliated by how I allowed so much abuse.
Today, I couldn’t care less about ANYONE who tries to make me feel less than or thinks they have the right to abuse me.
I have two people I now care about how they see me, God and myself. Truly, that is all that matters.
Please leave that mess so you can see how incredible you truly are!!
Take care of YOU!