London - Sue Lawrence’s late-life divorce wasn’t triggered by rows or infidelity. Instead, it was the corrosive resentment that ate away at her husband as she re-invented herself.
When they married, she was a secretary and he was an academic. But as her self-confidence flourished, she took on fresh challenges and forged an exciting new career. And as she grew out of her old, subservient role, her husband’s rancour festered.
Sue, 66, now a life coach and author, who lives in Guildford, Surrey, explains: “When I took a university degree in human resources he felt it was a waste of time and money. He also seemed threatened when I started a new job in human resources and met new people, and tried to undermine my confidence.
“My opinion seemed irrelevant to him. He didn’t listen to me. We began leading parallel lives, but whenever I told him I was unhappy he said I was being ridiculous.”
Six years ago, however, when Sue found the courage to seek a divorce, the shock to her husband, then 70, was profound.
“Frankly, he was petrified,” she says. “He would never have initiated the separation as our lives together were so comfortable and secure. But, like so many women today, I wanted more out of a relationship than boring routine. It was as if all the fun had leached out of our marriage.”
Sue and her ex-husband duly joined the only group of divorcees in Britain that is growing in number. The UK is witnessing an unprecedented rise in divorces among the over-60s, or “silver separations” as the phenomenon has been dubbed.
Meanwhile, the incidence of divorce in every other age group is falling. Newly-released statistics reveal that more than 11,500 over-60s were granted a divorce in 2009; a rise of 4 per cent in two years. In contrast, divorce rates for all other age groups fell by more than 11 percent.
So what accounts for this alarming upward trajectory?
Relationship coach Francine Kaye observes that many of her male clients reach retirement age and find themselves propelled unwillingly into divorces because they have failed to heed the warning signals as their once deferential, stay-at-home wives seek new autonomy and fulfilment.
“These men have bought one kind of wife off the shelf - the shorthand typist and home-maker - and the deal was that she wasn’t supposed to change,” says Francine. “But people do change and couples are not recognising the signs and implications until it’s too late.
“The husband has often been working really hard to provide for his family and he feels unappreciated when he reaches the end of his career to discover his wife has found a fresh sense of fulfilment and an identity separate from her old one as a wife and mum. There is a phrase for it: ‘Women who walk and men who don’t see it coming.’”
Certainly, for Sue’s husband, the news that she was actually prepared to divorce him was shattering and shocking. “I really had to screw up my courage to tell him it was over for good,” she says.
“I’d made threats before and I know he thought I was bluffing again, but this time I really meant it. In past generations, women would have put up with a mediocre marriage - but now our expectations are higher.”
Instead of confronting and discussing their problems, Sue and her husband had retreated into impenetrable silence.
“We would just sit, night after night, mutely watching television together,” she recalls. “When we did go out for a meal we simply had nothing to say to each other, so we’d just stare at each other wordlessly. My husband was a decent man. There was nothing inherently wrong with him. We had just reached the point where we were merely co-existing.”
She feels liberated by her divorce and - although she and her husband chose not to have children - she says her busy social life, and the freedom she now has to meet friends and go out at will, guard against loneliness. She tried internet dating but found it unsatisfactory, and although she’d like to meet someone through friends or work she has no “desperate” urge to remarry.
Shirley Sandford, 75, who divorced her husband of 35 years when she was in her early 60s, is even more emphatic about her intention to remain unattached: “I’d never marry again. I’m not even bothered about dating. I’m much happier on my own,” she says.
Shirley still has a job she loves, with a London diamond merchant, and her interests are those traditionally associated with much younger women. “I love fashion, shopping, going to the theatre, socialising and dining out. I have a wonderful life,” says Shirley.
“It is so much more full and interesting than it ever was when I was married. I’m in charge of my own destiny now and it makes me feel young again.”
Shirley and her husband had five children and she is now grandmother to 11 and has five great grandchildren. Like many mothers, she waited until all her children were independent before taking the decision to divorce.
“It took a lot of courage to leave my marriage,” she says. “I grew up in an era when you stood by your husband through thick and thin. Years ago, women stayed in unhappy marriages largely because they couldn’t afford to leave, but I have always had my own career.
“I took the final decision to leave on the morning of my youngest son’s wedding. I looked in the mirror and thought: ‘I can’t do this any more.’ My ex-husband ran his own window cleaning business, but he only used to work in the mornings. And while he sat in front of the television every afternoon, I came home from work to a schedule of domestic drudgery.
“I took care of the children and did all the cooking, cleaning and washing. Previous generations of women would have put up with it, but I just snapped. I wanted the rest of my life back before I got too old to enjoy it. I am so much happier now I am on my own, and I don’t have any contact with my ex at all.”
A similar desire for self-fulfilment propelled Rita Whitfield-Coups, 64, an executive assistant in a management consultancy, into divorcing her husband Mark, 70, a retired ICT programmer, and father to her two grown-up children.
There was no rancour, just a sense on Rita’s part that her own identity had been subjugated during her marriage. She explains: “I was typical of my generation: I met Mark through work and married young. By the time I reached the menopause I’d had enough of being a wife and mother, and by the age of 60 I was divorced.
“I wanted to discover a life just for me. My children no longer needed me in the same way and I saw divorce as a new beginning and a chance to explore fresh challenges.”
Rita, who lives in South London, adds: “The irony is that men of this age are slowing down and looking forward to retirement, whereas women want to scale mountains and re-establish their careers. We are the equal opportunities generation and we’re not going to settle for the pipe-and-slipper routine of men our age.”
Chartered psychologist Dr Gary Wood, however, posits a different view. He points out that while stay-at-home moms invariably see their role as the sacrificial one - they have forfeited self-fulfilment to raise the children - their husbands have also compromised to be providers.
“What is often overlooked is the sacrifice men make,” he says. “We fail to focus on the fact that fathers forgo time at home because they are working long hours to support their families.
“When they retire, they are looking forward to spending time with their wives, but they find they are strangers in their own homes. They are encroaching on the woman’s domain and become an annoyance. They are upsetting the equilibrium of the household.”
He counsels couples, as they approach their 60s, to circumvent problems by actively planning their retirement together.
“A lot of couples labour under the illusion that retirement will take care of itself, but marriages stand a better chance if you plan ahead. Otherwise you face the awful prospect of frittering away endless hours watching daytime TV together.
“So there should be an effort to build in time to spend together once the children have flown the nest, so you retain a connection with the person you first met.
“It takes time, but not necessarily money. Having holidays together is an obvious solution, but couples should also think about what interests they share and develop them together.
“It is important, too, to redistribute the household chores. Women do traditionally take on many more of them than men and it is a question of renegotiating them.
“Men should recognise, before it’s too late, that it isn’t the loo fairy who cleans the bathroom. Otherwise what happens is that men stop working and put their feet up - and the women Hoover under them.”
It was, indeed, a sense that she had lost sight of the man she first fell in love with that pushed Rita towards divorce. “Gradually, we grew apart and I was looking at two different people - the man I had married and the man Mark had become,” she says.
It is now widely recognised that middle-class women like Rita, liberated by financial independence and good health, see their seventh decade as the start of a new phase of adventure and excitement, rather than the start of a slide into sedentary old age.
“My career is more fulfilling now, in my mid-60s, than it ever was before,” says Rita. The simple fact is we don’t need a man as previous generations of women did, and we won’t put up with a second-class marriage because we have the financial independence to leave.
“Although I worked part-time when the children were little, collecting bric-a-brac and selling it at an antiques market, my main role was still a domestic one. I was responsible for the children and the home.
“Mark was the provider; my income was regarded as ‘pin money’ and was used to pay for treats and holidays. I felt I was not an equal partner in the marriage and I resented that.”
Ros Altmann, director general of the over-50s group Saga, says the rise in late-life divorce is evidence of a social revolution. “The over-60s are no longer ‘old’ as previous generations were,” she says. “Improved fitness means that new horizons open to them: they can trek in the Himalayas, visit far-flung destinations or take up the sports they never had a chance to try when they were younger.”
However, although old age may be postponed, it will arrive eventually, and - as women live longer than men - will we not see a new generation of female pensioners ruing the absence of support and companionship from a spouse as they approach their 80s?
Francine Kaye says: “Divorce is not glamorous. It is upsetting and it leads to the breakdown of social structures and the dispersal of friendship groups. There will be a lot of lonely people if they don’t join up and support each other.
“I see huge potential for two or three elderly women to buy a home together to share with a resident carer. Women don’t necessarily need to be with a man as they grow old, but they do need companionship.”
And what of the men who are casualties of the rise in late-life divorces? While in 2007, 11,040 people over 60 divorced, this figure had risen to 11,507 by 2009 and, because, traditionally, men marry women who are slightly younger than themselves, the male “silver splitters” facing old age alone are inevitably older than the women.
Some, says Francine, gravitate towards much younger partners and become second-time-around fathers. “I have had a spate of 60-year-old clients who have taken up with women in their 30s and it is a stupid thing to do. They become dads again at a time when they are financially vulnerable because they have just divided half their assets with their first wives.
“They do it for the simple reason that they want to prove they are still virile,” she says.
Others, like Brian Goodwin, 63, from Bognor Regis, West Sussex, remain alone - reluctantly and unhappily cut adrift from their old lives. Brian, who has been divorced for two years from Mary, 59, confesses: “I didn’t want to divorce - but Mary insisted on it. I would have very happily muddled on.
“The divorce has disrupted my life so much, we have had to sell the four-bedroom family home with its nice big garden and now I live in a one-bedroom flat.
“There is something very humiliating about my situation and all my male friends feel sorry for me. You also feel such a spare part - I’m always the ‘extra man’. At parties I feel I stick out like a sore thumb.”
Brian, who sells classic cars, has three grown-up children and two grandchildren. He finds the idea of dating daunting and irksome.
What hair he has left is turning grey; he regrets the ebbing away of his looks, the growth of his paunch and the awful upheaval, physical and financial, his divorce has involved.
“I suppose we didn’t have much conversation left, but then who has, after almost 40 years of marriage?” he says sadly. “I thought we were comfortable and settled.
“What really hurts is that Mary is entitled to half my pension. I can’t imagine I’m ever going to be able to retire now.
“It’s awful to contemplate spending your remaining years alone, and I’d love to turn the clock back, but now it’s too late. We’re divorced. I feel as if the rug has been pulled from under me.”
For every vibrant and fulfilled silver divorcee there is, it seems, a lost, lonely and reluctant singleton like Brian.
Could his tragedy have been averted? According to Dr Wood it might have been - if only he and his ex-wife had invested some time in the simple art of talking to one another. - Daily Mail
* Some names have been changed.