More people divorcing in midlife – some of them are happier than ever

To some, the end of a marriage feels like failure. To others it's pure freedom. Niki Bezzant reports on the rise of the midlife divorce.

There’s a reckoning that comes in midlife. It might be tied to the realisation that we’re (at least) half way through our lives; here we are at 45 or 50 or 55, and the thoughts can hit: wow, that went fast. Is this my life now? Is that it?

That’s how it was for me at 46; it’s what led me to upend my life and leave both my marriage and my job. It wasn’t a crisis, exactly – both decisions were the result of long and serious reflection – but it felt at the time like something I couldn’t not do.

The old cliché might be dated – a man; vaguely ridiculous; taking up mountain biking or marathon running or sports-car driving and “trading in” his partner for a younger version – but the drivers for the "midlife crisis" are still there, just playing out a bit differently now. And it’s not reserved for men.

Data released last month by Statistics New Zealand and reported in the NZ Herald revealed that Kiwis are both marrying and divorcing later. Last year, the median age at which New Zealanders ended their marriages and civil unions was 48.1 for men and 45.5 for women; while 20 years earlier in 2003 it was 42.5 for men and 40.1 for women.

Clinical Psychologist Kirstin Bouse, who works a lot with midlifers, makes a compelling case for midlife as its own distinct psychological developmental stage. She sees it – especially for women – as akin to the struggles we can have in puberty.

In the midlife women she sees there’s “the strong desire to establish an identity that isn't in relation to someone else. We have these identities: I'm a wife, I'm a partner, I'm a daughter, I'm a mother, I'm a sister… And what I hear a lot of is: ‘I just want to be me’. There's that really strong desire to focus on who I am and what I enjoy doing and what I'm interested in, and how I want to be in the world independent of these other roles.”

They’re the same themes as those seen in adolescence.

“[Women are] trying to work out who we are. We're trying to work out what's important to us. We have to go through a process of, hopefully, coming to terms with our changing bodies. We are fiercely driven for independence and autonomy and separateness. And they are also the well-known, well-researched developmental tasks of adolescence. You hear and see these threads in the research around midlife women.”

The neuroendocrine event that is perimenopause and menopause may play a role in women’s changing sense of self, too.

“With oestrogen being that hormone of accommodation and servitude, and with the decline of that; we are not wanting to accommodate as much," Bouse reckons. “We are not wanting to serve others to the degree that perhaps we were biologically previously prepared to do.”

All of that can be confronting for male partners. For men, Bouse thinks the midlife struggle is not quite the same.

“There's a lot of regret that I hear when I hear midlife men talk,” she reflects. “I hear more things like: I thought I'd be further in my career… now I'm too old, it's not gonna happen. I thought I'd be more financially stable. Or I always wanted to do a marathon, or something really physical, and now I'm feeling too old to even start.”

Women, on the other hand, are “I want this. And I just need to find my way out of this system to be able to get it.”

Some couples can navigate all that change – and a potential mismatch in what each other wants from life – and others can’t. Hence the uptick in separations when we hit our 40s and 50s. Looking at the data, while the total divorce rate has been tracking down over the past 20 years or more (it’s down more than a third since 2000) the divorce rate has gone up in those aged over 55 and stayed steady for the 50- to 54-year-olds.

While we don’t have data on who’s initiating divorces in New Zealand, overseas reports show that in older age groups it's more like to be the woman in a heterosexual couple who heads for the door. Bouse sees this in her practice, too.

The reasons are many. Weaknesses in relationships can become obvious now.

Bouse explains: “It is a time when if there's any cracks in a relationship, they're going to become chasms. If you've got health issues, they're going to become more pronounced. If you've had a burning desire to change jobs, careers, pursue something new – this is when this happens. And I think that's the driver. It really is about the social system, the family system. If you have a system around you that can support you to pursue those things, then you are probably going to be able to stay.”

There’s a vast difference between the sexes when it comes to reflecting on and unpacking feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Women are introspective and tend to talk more to their friends about their loss of identity or relationship challenges.

On the other hand, Bouse reckons, “a lot of the 45-plus men just don't think about this stuff at all”.

This might be why male partners are often blindsided by a woman’s decision to leave.

Joanna Dugdale – who at 56, ended her second marriage of 12 years – says this was the case in her separation. Her husband was “totally surprised”, she remembers, even though she had been unhappy for years and had signaled the fact many times.

Dugdale, who works in financial services in Auckland, has had had the experience of separation twice. The first time she was in her 30s with a young baby – and the separation was not what she wanted – the second was in midlife when, she says, she realised she had to be the one to leave.

“I think doing it in my fifties, I was doing it for me," she says. “At that age, I suddenly thought I was worth fighting for. I was not putting up with this anymore.”

When it comes to navigating being single in midlife, Bouse says it’s important to re-frame the end of your old relationship. It’s not a failure, she stresses. “There are those who will find [being single] scary but liberating. And then there are those who still have that strong sense of failure. I think really challenging the idea, the unhelpful beliefs around the ending of the relationship is the first step.”

Support yourself in the grieving process. And give yourself permission to experiment with how you might like your life to be now. “I find we all get paralysed by this idea that the next step we make has to be the right one," she says. "The only way you're going to learn who you are is if you give yourself the permission to experiment, to see: who am I? Do I like that? Do I not like that? Who do I want to spend my time with? What am I good at? How do I want to live?”

Dugdale – who’s now happily re-partnered – says she treasures the hard-earned freedom she gained from her separation.

“Freedom is one of those most important values," she says. “When you feel that you have freedom of thought and decisions, it feels a little bit like power. You've got the power to decide how you want to live your life.”

This resonates strongly for me. Though not an easy journey, I adore the place I’ve got to, too. It’s a place of independence; something I never had as a young woman. I don’t believe my 18-year relationship failed; I believe it ended. That’s something that needed to happen for me to find myself. And here I am: stronger and happier, I've created the life that suits me. Recently, as I finished my latest book, I was able to hermit myself away and let the dishes pile up so I could get on a roll with my thoughts. I didn’t have to worry about what anyone, including myself, was having for dinner. On the flipside, if I feel like hosting some drinks I can fill my apartment with friends – and it's just the people that I want to be with; there’s no obligation to invite people that I don’t care for. (And if I want those drinks to be them to be retro themed with deviled eggs and an '80s cheese board, that's my call too).

Bouse understands this well. “Separation is an ending, but it's a beginning. And it can be a great beginning. Even if it feels hard and scary. It really is an opportunity to build a life completely on your terms. And I think that's the really cool thing about it.”

Niki Bezzant is the author of two books about midlife: This Changes Everything (about perimenopause and menopause), 2022; and The Everything Guide, 2024, both published by Penguin Random House NZ.

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