More couples are divorcing after age 50 than ever before. Psychologists are helping them navigate the big changes

Divorce poses a daunting schism at any age, as one of life’s most profound stressors. But for adults who split from their partners later in life, the emotional and practical complexities can further stack up, mirroring their life experience.

While divorce has declined among adults in their 20s and 30s, the rate among adults age 50 and older has surged upward, doubling between 1990 and 2010 before leveling off more recently. Divorce is still more common among younger people, with roughly two-thirds occurring among the under-50 crowd, but the change is nevertheless significant. In 1990, 8.7% of all divorces in the United States occurred among adults 50 and older. By 2019, that percentage had grown to 36% (Brown, S. L., & Lin, I., Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Vol. 77, No. 9, 2022).

The logistics and stakes involved can present unique challenges, according to researchers and psychologists. Adults who separate finances later in life may have more assets involved. If they married when they were young, their mutual social ties may stretch back decades to their religious community, volunteer organizations, and neighborhood friends. Their children—whether youths, teenagers, or adults themselves—will be emotionally impacted in differing ways.

“Getting a divorce is never easy, but it’s going to look a little different in your 50s when you’ve potentially been with someone for a long time,” said Kelly Cichy, PhD, a professor of human development and family science at Kent State University in Ohio. “In some cases, adult children are out of the house; they are more autonomous. But that doesn’t mean that there might not still be very real consequences and renegotiating of relationships or a need for additional support.”

Divorce also can be financially depleting. Women 50 and older experience a 45% decline in their standard of living; for men it’s 21% (Lin, I., & Brown, S. L., Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Vol. 76, No. 10, 2021). Other research, based on interviews with 66 adults who divorced at 50 or older, found that worries about finances and loneliness were the two most pressing concerns expressed. But the adults described positive aspects as well, including an improvement in overall happiness, liberation from their ex-spouses, and a sense of enhanced independence and freedom (Crowley, J. E., Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 40, No. 11, 2019).

Amid this pivotal life transition, psychologists can help their patients foster and maintain the emotional resiliency that middle-age and older adults are more likely to have accrued through a lifetime of weathering prior difficult experiences. They can provide therapeutic support as they navigate related losses, both emotional and literal. Such losses may include grief over the death of a long-planned future with a spouse, as well as the more tangible loss of connections with others, such as extended family and mutual friends.

Psychologists can also work with patients who are contemplating divorce to think through the extent to which their frustrations with a partner are intertwined with broader identity-related challenges that can emerge later in life, said Rowena Gomez, PhD, department chair and a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University. They may have recently retired and lost their job-related identity, she said. They may still have the pressures of younger children or their children may have moved out, altering their sense of being a parent.

“That’s why it’s important for them to figure out who they are and if they can be who they want to be with or without the divorce,” Gomez said. “Sometimes the grass is not always greener if the real issue is with themselves. And hopefully that’s what psychotherapy, if they are going, can help them think through.”

To some extent, the trends in later-life divorce reflect more modern trends, Cichy said. Women are more likely now to have careers and related economic autonomy. Over time, society has placed greater expectations on marital quality, leaving partners more reluctant to settle for what some have described as “empty shell” marriages, particularly after the children leave home, she said. Increased life expectancy may be a possibility, with potentially decades of relatively good health ahead.

“What does that mean for staying in a conflicted or difficult marriage?” Cichy asked. “If you stay married, you are going to continue to have those stressors for more years and maybe additional stressors that come with just normal aging,” she said, such as caregiving, frail health, or managing relationships with adult children.

Divorce poses a daunting schism at any age, as one of life’s most profound stressors. But for adults who split from their partners later in life, the emotional and practical complexities can further stack up, mirroring their life experience.

Some of the reasons for the increase in over-50 divorces include societal trends: More men and women expect marriage to be a partnership of equals, women are more likely to have careers and related economic autonomy, and lowered stigma about divorce reduces social pressure to settle for “empty shell” marriages.

But while these life changes can be influential, demographic research has identified broad similarities for why marriages break down regardless of age, Cichy said. For instance, people who have been divorced once are more likely to divorce again, she said.

One analysis scrutinized whether three common turning points after 50—an empty nest, retirement, or poor health—boosted a couple’s likelihood of divorcing (Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Vol. 73, No. 6, 2018). “Those factors remain relevant but they’re not as critical or central as we had initially anticipated,” said Susan L. Brown, PhD, one of the authors, who has conducted extensive demographic research involving gray divorce.

Other factors play a greater role, such as economic stability, said Brown, a professor of sociology and codirector of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Couples who don’t carry debt and own a home are less likely to separate (Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Vol. 73, No. 6, 2018).

Brown has become increasingly convinced that trends in later-life divorce are largely driven by the baby boomer generation, who spawned the initial divorce wave in the 1970s. “Many of them went on to remarry,” Brown said, noting that some are on their second or third marriages, which boosts the likelihood of divorce.

This baby boomer influence, according to Brown, explains why rates of divorce among people ages 50 to 64 have largely stagnated since 2010 after a steep rise beginning in 1990. Divorce rates among adults 65 and older have continued to increase through 2019 as more baby boomers move into that age group (Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Vol. 77, No. 9, 2022). “To me it’s just really striking that 1 in 10 people getting divorced is 65 or older,” Brown said.

For adults who initiate divorce and are in relatively good shape in terms of their health and finances, that move can be “a relatively benign event,” Brown said. “But for other people getting divorced in their 50s, 60s, or beyond, if they are precarious from an economic standpoint, if they are having health issues, or if they didn’t want to get divorced, it can be challenging and difficult. Longer term, we have to consider—what does divorce mean for the experience of aging?” she said, pointing out that Social Security and other benefits are tied to marital status.

Jeff (who requested only his first name be used) recalls a profound sense of loss when he realized several years ago that his marriage of 30-plus years was ending. Gone was the potential for a lifelong love and the opportunity to share with his wife the next stages of parenthood, their adult children’s accomplishments, perhaps even grandchildren one day, the 60-year-old said.

He also struggled with feelings of failure, believing that his broken marriage layered on top of prior failures, such as an earlier decision to give up his pursuit of a professional career as a musician and switch to information technology. At Jeff’s worst, during a pandemic video call with friends in 2020, he acknowledged that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts.

[Related: Talking through practicalities of divorce later in life]

His friends helped Jeff get an appointment with a local therapist. Those meetings, he said, have enabled him to work through his feelings of failure, including those related to the divorce. The therapist also encouraged him to remain open to new possibilities, including possibly a romantic partner—not an easy step to take on the cusp of his sixth decade.

“When I was in my 20s or 30s, there was a whole lifetime ahead; there were people looking for partners,” he said. “It felt like, boy, here I am coming up on 60. Am I going to be alone the rest of my life? I don’t want to be alone. I’m not an alone person. I’m a people person. That was a real concern.”

Social science researchers have compiled a multifaceted picture of the trends that underpin later-life divorce, said Karen Fingerman, PhD, director of the Texas Aging and Longevity Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. But it’s the psychologist’s role to assist these adults on an individual level as they process this life detour so they can recover and move forward, she said. “How do you help an older adult understand what’s happening, what their role was, and what their next step is? How do you do that when something this big has disrupted your life story?”

A common fear is loneliness, given the many years that adults in the second half of life have already committed to various relationships, Fingerman said. One study that she was involved with looked at how much contact adults 65 and older have with social and familial connections and found that only 11% of those relationships had started within the prior decade (The Gerontologist, 2023).

“You will lose in-laws, you will lose some of your friends,” Fingerman said. “And when you do, there’s no replacement. It’s not like when you’re in your 20s and everybody is still making friends, and your oldest friends you met 5 years ago.”

One advantage adults over 50 have is a better perspective, which helps when life throws curveballs their way, said Susan T. Charles, PhD, a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, who developed the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 136, No. 6, 2010). They are more likely to have suffered prior crises than their younger counterparts and can tap into the emotional and behavioral tools that they previously relied upon, Charles said. “The older you get, the more you’ve experienced life (in its good and its bad), the more you can put things into perspective.”

Moreover, as people age, they have a heightened awareness that they have fewer years before them, Charles said. “Which makes them focus more on the here and now, the right now, as opposed to the future,” which can ease worrying and bolster emotional resilience, she said.

A traumatic event such as a divorce will surely cause a notable uptick in emotional distress, Charles said. But there’s some evidence that older adults, amid the emotional tumult of a divorce, may be able to better handle the smaller daily stressors that arise in its wake, such as the strain of assuming tasks previously handled by the ex-spouse. She cited a recent study in which younger adults and older adults were given a cognitively difficult anagram task, and their emotional responses were subsequently assessed. While both groups were negatively impacted by the cognitive stressor, the recovery of the older adults surpassed that of the younger adults (Minton, A. R., et al., Psychology and Aging, Vol. 38, No. 6, 2023).

As psychologists work with these adults, they should strive to unpack to what extent a marital separation has eroded the patient’s connections with others as well as, generally, their sense of belonging to a broader community, Charles said. Given the vital importance of connections to emotional health, psychologists can help patients think through ways to build new social bonds, whether that’s joining a bowling league or volunteering for a political organization, she said.

Divorce may stress parental ties with their adult children as well, even if they’re not surprised by the separation, said Carol Hughes, PhD, a Laguna Hills, California, psychotherapist and coauthor of Home Will Never Be the Same Again: A Guide for Adult Children of Gray Divorce. In some cases, divorce can shatter an adult child’s sense of their own backstory, Hughes said. For example, adult children of later-life divorce often say, “We seemed like a happy family. How long ago were they not happy? Was my whole childhood smoke and mirrors, like a facade at Disneyland?”

Amid the grief surrounding a divorce, therapists should remain aware that not everyone in the family is necessarily on the same timeline, Hughes said. One parent may have quickly moved on, including finding a new partner, and wants the children—whether they’ve left home or are still living with one of their parents—to embrace their newfound happiness, she said.

“And so sometimes if the parent is happy and the child isn’t, then the child feels guilty,” Hughes said. Psychologists can work with the child, validating that it’s OK to be on a different timeline, she said. “And that grieving takes time, just like healing takes time, and grieving is part of healing.”

For children in their teens or even younger, divorce can hit at a key developmental time, when they are still forming their identity as an individual and as part of a larger family, Hughes said. In situations when the children are already adults, often just launching into their own lives, they may fret about their parents’ mental health, and especially if one of the parents didn’t want the separation, Hughes said. “It’s like a role reversal,” she said. “They feel like they should help their parents. But they don’t have the tools and skills to do so.”

Another major complication is inheritance rights and next-of-kin relationships for medical decision-making in the wake of a later-life divorce (see sidebar page 63). Within the first decade, 37% of men either remarry or cohabit with a new partner, as well as 22% of women (Brown, S. L., et al., Demography, Vol. 56, No. 2, 2019). Other adults keep the romance but maintain separate residences, a phenomenon dubbed living apart together, according to Deborah Carr, PhD, a sociology professor at Boston University who coauthored a review article looking at later-life families (Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 82, No. 1, 2020). “You essentially go steady, but you have your separate home,” she said.

Jeff describes a good relationship with his adult children, as well as amiable communication with his ex-wife. The divorce also led to some changes in his daily life, such as achieving a long-desired dream to move to a rural area, purchasing property with a pond that’s richly populated by birds. He gave up on online dating and subsequently met “a wonderful woman” introduced to him by a mutual friend.

And he continues to seek counseling. “This therapist has been really a staunch and encouraging support, just an extremely positive influence, helping me get through some of the past issues,” he said.

Living through a divorce after 50 can force individuals to revisit and knit back together their own life story, something they can hopefully achieve with the support of the therapeutic process, Fingerman said.

“You’re at a stage of your life where you’re reflecting more on your life and where it’s gone, and where it’s taken you,” she said. “How do you understand your life in a way that gives you that sense of integrity when something fell apart that was such a fundamental part of that life?”