The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Divorce After 60
For months, even years, I knew that my marriage was crumbling. Yet, I lied to myself, telling myself a million things that would somehow justify the reasons why I should stay in the marriage. The main one dealt with time.
I have put too much time into this marriage for it to end.
I have sacrificed way too much and invested way too much time into this relationship. I’m not just going to walk away from it.
You may have told yourself the same. But viewing your marriage as a time investment, especially when it is no longer healthy, serves no purpose but to prolong your suffering.
If you are doing the same, embrace these five lessons, so that you can move on and be happy.
Quit Viewing Your Years of Marriage as an Investment
The time you have put into your marriage is not a non-refundable down payment, so do not treat it like one. In a healthy and happy marriage, time spent together is beneficial – you have good memories and a beautiful life. But once the marriage unravels, you cannot invoke those years spent as a justification to stay in a relationship, especially when both partners are no longer invested in it.
Accept that You Deserve Better
Your life and happiness are not a commodity that you can barter. Unless you are practicing the piano or you are an Olympic athlete, erase the idea that time put into something (even a marriage) equals a guaranteed return.
Your life is not a commodity subject to negotiation, and treating it as such will only hurt you.
Those Married Years Taught You a Lot, but They Don’t Owe You Anything
You probably have some good memories, and it is important to acknowledge them. They helped you grow. Yet be cautious of your selective memory. You must also recognize that the years in between those memories – the not-so-good-ones – are not collateral and an excuse to remain in a marriage that is no longer working.
You may have been married 20-40 years and made sacrifices during that time. You may think that you are owed something because of those unhappy years. But to treat those sacrifices and unhappy years as a bargaining tool, thinking it entitles you to happiness, gets you nowhere.
You must think of those married years as experience; you learned about relationships, families, and yourself. Be grateful for those lessons, but do not attempt to use them as a bargaining tool to remain in a marriage that is no longer sustainable. To do so denies you the opportunity to move on.
Don’t Stay in Your Marriage Just Because You Don’t Know How to Start Over
It’s okay to feel scared. Fear is what makes you human, but it’s the courage to give yourself another shot at happiness – even in your 60s – that makes you truly remarkable.
You may feel that the years invested in your marriage, even if you weren’t happy, gave you comfort. Your life, for the most part, was predictable. Moving on can be scary because it ends the vision of the life you had for yourself. You may be afraid to start over, afraid to go “back to the beginning” – whatever that means – because you think you are too old, too financially unstable, or too emotionally distraught to do so.
Give yourself more credit than that – recognize that you are smarter, more organized, more adaptable, and stronger than you even know.
A Long Marriage Does Not Necessarily Equal a Happy Marriage
Marriage is not a vending machine, where, if you put in a certain amount of money, you are guaranteed a certain item. In this case, putting in time does not mean you are necessarily guaranteed security or happiness. But you can find those things on your own, no matter what stage you are in life. It’s okay to move on, okay to start over, and okay to find happiness on your own terms.
As you start or continue to make a new life for yourself, you are given a choice about time. You may choose to spend it angry, bitter, or heartbroken about the end of your marriage, or you may choose to invest time in yourself and your own happiness.
You are not destined to live a life of hurt and misery because you are separating or divorcing. However, you can be destined for greatness and the opportunity to move on and become stronger, more compassionate, and a happier person. And putting your energy into that happiness is time well spent.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Have you, or someone you know, recently gone through a divorce? What did the experience teach you? What advice would you give to someone who is going through a divorce after 60? Please join the conversation.
Tags Divorce After 60
Divorce would be a relief to how I´m living, in limbo, estranged, planning to separate once we´ve sold the family house, and it isn´t even up for sale yet. He´s carrying on as normal one month after the big, final argument, living his life, gradually slipping back into the old ways, putting his washing in the laundry (he said he´d do his own), offloading business problems on me, spending time with his mates in the bar, coming and going as he pleases, and everyone tells me to do the same but it´s not quite as easy for a 61 year old woman who has taken a backseat role in a small community for the past 20 years. What am I waiting for, for him to crawl back begging to start again rather than happily living a carefree life, or escape? I don´t know. I´m either angry as hell or crying. I feel duped, discarded, cheated and exhausted. I want to get to the stage where I´m over it and living in peace.
I am totally with you Alex, I feel the same way after a nearly 20 year marriage at 61 years old. It’s a rollercoaster for sure. One day I am angry the next hour I am crying. There is a fine line between love and hate, isn’t there? He says he knows what is right for me, so he left me. Rejection is the hardest part. I want to get to that place where I am over it too but I don’t know when that will happen. My therapist says that I can’t get over a 20 year marriage in 8 months. Sadly I agree. Seems he has.
In hindsight, there are many aspects of life I should have moved away from more quickly. It is easy to stay put, instead of embracing the future, be that ending a relationship or friendship, finding a new job, changing locations, learning new skills, or even reinventing oneself. Life goes by in the blink of an eye. So, wasting time is not an option.
That said, my mother was married to my father for more than sixty years. She used to tell me, “Never get married!” For most of my life, I considered that a rather negative comment on the institution of marriage. At a very young age she won a scholarship to a highly prestigious unversity, but was unable to make use of it, because her father died at a very young age, and she needed to go to become a teacher to support her mother and siblings, because there were no Social Programmes in those days. She saw marriage as a constraint, that involved a great deal of sacrifice with few rewards. Albeit, a commitment she felt unable to break.
After living most of my life alone, the very idea of being in a relationship seems totally foreign. Resilience is a quality I hold dear, it tops all other values. Long ago, I learned that compromise, almost always means that I am the one expected to give up who I am in order to satisfy the other person. How can one become the person one is meant to be, if that is the case? In an ideal world, marriage would be an arrangement where both parties help each other be their best by providing mutual support. Sadly, that is not always the case.
Being single is often seen as some kind of bad luck, a failure, when, in fact, it allows us to be unemcumbered, and comes with the freedom to be our authentic selves. That alone should be cause for celebration, and seen as a source of happiness. One does not require another to be complete! Do I enjoy masculine company? Of course, sometimes I delight in it, just as I relish spending time by myself. Such moments make me feel more of a woman, more feminine. Being single means I nolonger suffer the heartbreak of love lost, or trust issues. Emotional highs and lows nolonger intrude upon my serenity. There is something to be said for living on an even keel!
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The kids were grown, the dogs had passed on, the big house was sold and I found myself alone in our downsized condo with my husband of 35 years that was about to retire who spent his weekends watching lifetime movies and football. We had nothing left to say to each other besides awkward meaningless small talk. We had lost passion years before and I knew it was either get out now or this would be my life from now until dead. So at 63 I filed for divorce and at 64 I was divorced. Now Im 65 and have lived the happiest, most peaceful year of my life. Yes it was scary to make the break, yes I live on tighter budget. And my newfound joy is worth it. My advice is just do it and see what life has for you around the corner bcs you will find yourself positive and hopeful again that life is indeed good.
Congratulations, Patty- on making the big leap. I am in the process of divorce. My husband wants to live his life alone, in the woods, where there is no traffic or people.He is moving out of state and doesn’t want me with him. I need people and we have come to the agreement to divorce and split assets equally. I am done crying and now looking forward to living life strictly for me. So, yes, I am hopeful of the newfound joy you have found and becoming a strong, independent woman again. Thank you for posting.
I’m contemplating now the fork in the road…what’s worth what…am 71 and unwell…without connections in life…some things work…are pleasant…some just not…but I too remember how hard, lonely living alone can be.
And with further aging, illness, deathing…a friend by my side can be comforting…but…weighing the price…conundrums…
I understand so well what your concerns are. But believe this – life alone is not hard and lonely, it’s amazingly uplifting and free of “learned dependence”. Women of our age (I’m now 79 and have been free for 5 years) gave up our independence, self-worth, sense of self when we married. The end of a marriage can be the beginning of a very happy life.
My biggest hurdle was my thoughts. Going over everything time and time again, trying to understand why of it all.
But – they’re just “thoughts”. These thoughts are full of pain and anger and fear of the future. So change the thoughts! I have what I called my “safe” word – just a silly word. When my thoughts strayed into past or worrysome future I said the word out loud. It made me laugh then return to the present.
Now I live in today. So very happy with myself. I like the me I have become – the young me I used to be.
Have faith in yourself – you are stronger than you realize. You must love you!
I am less fearful, less lonely, less angry since my 3 year separation and divorce yesterday! I am more confident, more optimistic and excited for my future. If I live as long as my mother – still alive at 100, I have another 23 years to cram full of all the things my husband and I were going to do as a couple and yet never did. I realised this is not a dress rehearsal, this IS life, and I had to grab it, hang on and only take advice from people I was sure were truly on my team, including myself. My inner voice had been drowned out by pessimism and negativity. I am learning to listen to that little voice in my head!