Gray Divorce (after 50) & Adult Children: The Fallout for the Family, with Oprah and Leading Experts

Speaker 2 I came downstairs and my husband of 26 years announced that he wanted to get divorced. So it was just like the rug being pulled out from underneath me.

Speaker 5 Hello and a warm welcome to you all.

Speaker 5 Warm.

Speaker 5 Warm welcome.

Speaker 5 We're out of the tea house today and we're in New York City.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And my hope and intention for this podcast is that there are conversations that can be additive to your life. And I want to focus on

Speaker 5 what I see happening in the world and then we can try to make some sense of it together.

Speaker 5 So recently, I started hearing y'all about more and more people who have been married for decades starting to get divorced. Has anybody else heard this? Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 5 And I thought to myself, well, that never used to happen. You know, once people made it past a certain number, like 20 years, you're just in it for life.
Just there.

Speaker 5 You're just going to take yourself all the way to the flat line, you know?

Speaker 5 So then I find out that even though divorce is at a 50-year low here in the United States, the rate of what's being called gray divorce, divorce, that's divorce over 50, is actually soaring through the roof.

Speaker 5 And listen to this, the divorce rate for people over age 50 has doubled, and for people over 65, divorce rate has tripled.

Speaker 5 I thought that would shock you. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 5 That never, never used to happen. So what is going on? Dr.

Speaker 5 Susan Brown is the distinguished professor of sociology and co-director of the National Center Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Speaker 5 And she has been researching divorce now for more than 15 years and helped coin this phrase that we're going to be talking about today called gray divorce through her multiple studies on this phenomenon.

Speaker 5 So Dr. Brown, tell us what you found.
What is going on?

Speaker 7 Well, I think it's fair to say that...

Speaker 7 Back in 1990, older people really didn't get divorced. Only 8% of people divorcing that year were over the age of 50.

Speaker 7 But today, 40% of people who are divorcing in the United States are 50 or older, and 10% are 65 or above.

Speaker 7 And, you know, what got me interested in this topic was when Alan Tippergore announced back in 2010 that they were calling it quits after more than 40 years of marriage.

Speaker 7 And my colleague and I were chatting about that and trying to figure out, you know, is this some kind of celebrity phenomenon or is this actually happening to everyday Americans?

Speaker 7 And so we decided we were going to crunch the numbers and we were really floored to find out that the rate of divorce for people over age 50 had doubled since 1990.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 5 And the reason is...

Speaker 7 Well, I think there are a number of reasons.

Speaker 7 I mean, one thing that we can point to is that the norm of marriage as a lifelong institution is eroding because now what we're doing is turning to our marriages for self-fulfillment.

Speaker 7 And when we're unsatisfied, most Americans, including older adults, see divorce as an acceptable solution. We can also point to the rising rate of female labor force participation.

Speaker 7 The vast majority of wives are working now, and so they can afford to get divorced. They're no longer economically dependent on their husbands.

Speaker 7 And we can also point to the gains that we've made in health and longevity. Those have changed the calculus.

Speaker 7 If you survive to age 65 these days, you can expect to live another 20 years, which is a long long time to spend with someone you're not that into anymore.

Speaker 5 And that's why people are coming to you. Yes.
Susan Guthrie was a top family law attorney and mediator for more than 30 years. And six years ago, Susan started the popular podcast, Divorce and Beyond.

Speaker 5 And I just, I really love that title because there is a beyond, and it's forward-thinking.

Speaker 5 So, Susan, you have worked with just hundreds of people, right, who have gone through this this great divorce. And what do you see happening?

Speaker 3 You know, it's such a good question because I have to say 30 years ago,

Speaker 9 like my colleague said, Dr. Brown, we didn't see great divorce.
We saw people, you know, in the early stages of divorce splitting up.

Speaker 10 But then, I would say probably

Speaker 9 20, 15 years ago, I still remember my first 40-plus year divorce.

Speaker 3 And it was so unusual that it still stays in my mind 30 years ago.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 9 later you know it was it was a tale that may sound more familiar these days it was a couple who had met in their late teens

Speaker 9 he was a

Speaker 9 public servant and he worked day shift she worked night shift he retired after 42 years and yes i see right yeah he retired He was home all day when she was home all day,

Speaker 9 and they were in attorney's offices within three months.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 9 Within three months.

Speaker 5 Wow, y'all.

Speaker 5 So it worked as long as he was out.

Speaker 9 They never saw, I mean, they did have four children, so they saw each other at some point.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 9 when they had to spend those days together, they truly found, and this is what I think I've seen a lot with the Great Divorces, is two people who 40 years in had nothing in common with each other anymore.

Speaker 5 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And now

Speaker 5 women who are filing more so than men, right?

Speaker 5 Women feel like I have another 10, 15, 20 years. Why should I stay in a relationship when there's nothing?

Speaker 9 When it's not serving me.

Speaker 5 When it's not serving me. Yeah.
Well, you all know Lori Godlieb. She's a psychotherapist and New York Times, best-selling author of, I love this.
Maybe you should talk to someone.

Speaker 5 That's the name of the book. Maybe you should talk to someone.

Speaker 5 She also writes the Ask the Therapist Advice column for the New York Times. So hi again, Laurie.
Hello. Great to see you again.

Speaker 5 Help us understand what it is women are actually navigating emotionally when they go through this great divorce. Yeah.

Speaker 10 So it's interesting, you know, we've been talking about the idea that you have so much time left and you really want to think about how do I want to spend that time.

Speaker 10 But at the same time, when you go through a divorce later in life,

Speaker 10 you lose that predictability.

Speaker 10 You had this idea, this imagined future of I'm going to be with this person and we're going to do these things and we're going to retire in this way and our financial picture is going to look like this and our kids are going to come back to this house and come visit.

Speaker 10 And all of a sudden, there's this great unknown right in front of you.

Speaker 10 So it can be really disorienting to do this at this time of life when you were so certain that your future was going to look a certain way.

Speaker 13 You were locked in. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And that's why women take more of a financial hit, do they not, Dr. Brown?

Speaker 7 Yes, they do. They experience a larger drop in their standard of living than men do, although for men, they're also taking a hit.
And I would say for both men and women alike,

Speaker 7 their levels of wealth, all of their savings they've amassed over decades, That's dropping by half because, of course, divorce entails the division of assets.

Speaker 7 And at this stage of the life course it's slow going to recover from divorce from a financial perspective.

Speaker 5 It is. You're finding the same thing.

Speaker 9 Absolutely. You know for someone who's divorcing at 50

Speaker 9 they have maybe 10, 15 years to start to recoup the financial, I'll call it losses, right? You know the division of those assets.

Speaker 9 But for someone who's divorcing at say 65, they're there. They're in it.

Speaker 9 They're in that phase where the retirement funds, the planning they did financially to get them through their retirement years was whatever they had amassed for two people.

Speaker 9 And now they have to split that up and carry it forward for two people. And their runway to recoup is almost gone.

Speaker 11 I am so glad you chose to spend your time with me here on the Oprah podcast.

Speaker 11 When we come back, we're going to talk about that terrifying but also clarifying feeling when you begin the process of divorce. Stay with us, listeners.

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Speaker 11 Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. We're talking about the soaring divorce rate for people over 50.
You've probably seen the headlines. It's called Gray Divorce.
Let's get back to the conversation.

Speaker 5 So I want to bring in a different Lori. There's two Susans and two Lori's, okay, in our audience.
Okay, Lori, who is experiencing this in real time. So what happened?

Speaker 13 So I've been with my husband 34 years, married 28, a year and a half ago, basically said he didn't want to be married anymore.

Speaker 13 So this month was a year we've been separated, not legally divorced. So, you know, he just went through something and

Speaker 9 wounded out.

Speaker 5 He went through something.

Speaker 13 His father died three years ago, and when his father died, his was very sudden.

Speaker 13 And he said, you know, I could be dead in 20 years too. So I need to live my life the way I want to live it.

Speaker 5 Okay. All right.

Speaker 5 And that was a surprise to you.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because, you know, when his father died,

Speaker 4 he started to, like, he was going through the grieving process, which I understood.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 I let him go through it. And I thought, you know, he's going through it and he's going to come out of it.
You know, I lost my father. I understand that.

Speaker 3 So do you have a question for me?

Speaker 5 Yes, I'm going to ask you to Susan's.

Speaker 5 So actually for Lori,

Speaker 13 so when I this happened to me, I only really talked about it with my really close friends and family and I didn't really want to share it with a lot of people.

Speaker 13 But when people started to find out and they would approach me, I was very

Speaker 13 like embarrassed by it and like shameful and I felt like they were like jamming me. So

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's like a normal feeling because I still feel like that.

Speaker 13 It's a year later and I still feel like my wife, a friend says to me, oh, somebody approached me about you and your husband.

Speaker 13 And I'm like, my first thing is like, why are they asking like I'm like embarrassed about it and I don't know why because I was an amazing wife and I was you know I did I didn't do anything wrong so why am I embarrassed?

Speaker 10 Right. You know, it's so interesting because when you told this story to us right now, you told the story of strength.
I was in this marriage. I was an amazing wife.
I understood his grieving process.

Speaker 10 He was going through something.

Speaker 10 But somehow now you have this story that when people ask you about it, that you feel like they're saying something was wrong with you or you did something wrong. but nobody's saying that.

Speaker 10 So you're creating this story that doesn't exist. I think when people come up to you, they're saying it because they care about you.
They're saying, hey, I heard.

Speaker 10 And underneath that is maybe, how can I support you? Or you're going through this with such grace and resilience. They might not be saying those other words.

Speaker 5 They may not be and they may, Lori.

Speaker 5 No, honest to goodness.

Speaker 5 I'm thinking when you said that, That person is having some kind of judgment. Isn't that what you're thinking? 100%.

Speaker 13 I was at a funeral not too long ago, and a girl that I haven't seen in years came up to me, and she asked me about me and my daughter, but not my husband. So I knew she knew.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 13 this was exactly how she said it.

Speaker 16 She went, and how are you?

Speaker 13 And it was like pity on her face.

Speaker 4 And I was like, why are you pitying me?

Speaker 13 Because I'm now a single woman in my 50s. What's wrong with that?

Speaker 10 Right. And so I think that that's a projection of how she feels, but it's not your lived experience.
Your lived experience is, this is really painful. I'm going through my own grieving process.

Speaker 10 But you are still saying, I was an amazing wife. I did all these things right.
So this is all about her.

Speaker 10 When people come up to you and they have that judgment or pity, that's their own projection of their own fears. You know, is divorce contagious? Is that going to happen to me?

Speaker 5 Right, right.

Speaker 10 So you have to separate out what this other person feels about herself and not let that be projected onto you.

Speaker 5 Whereas you understand, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I hear that.

Speaker 5 I do hear that. That if you're strong in yourself and you know what your reasons are and you know what has actually happened, that when other people's judgment,

Speaker 5 which they will come, and she was judging you, I will say that. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 People will come up to you. That was not a very caring thing to say.
Because that's happened to me, too.

Speaker 5 I remember when I let go of the Oprah show by my own choice, and afterwards I was talking to somebody who was like, How are you?

Speaker 5 Like, are you really, okay, and I could, I could,

Speaker 5 you can feel the judgment, Laurie. You can feel it when it's there.
But I think what you just advise her, you know what the real truth is. And so you understand that's her projection.

Speaker 13 And the first thing a lot of people say to me is, like, are you going to start dating again?

Speaker 16 And I'm like, I don't need to have a man in my life.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm okay being single, at least for now.

Speaker 13 You know, like, that's not my first thing.

Speaker 5 You know?

Speaker 10 I think there's this misconception, too, about the single woman, that there's some pity for the single woman.

Speaker 10 But let me tell you, in my practice, when I see the men who get divorced, they are shocked because they don't realize how much invisible work happened behind the scenes that ran their lives.

Speaker 10 And so they all of a sudden realize it is really hard being alone and they don't have as many close social ties because, you know, when you say, my partner is my best friend, well, for men, sometimes it truly is.

Speaker 10 They confide in you, they talk to you. Women have maybe you thought your partner was your best friend, but you have one, two, three other best friends, right?

Speaker 10 So you are actually, women tend to be more prepared to be on their own than men do.

Speaker 10 So it's interesting that in our culture, we tend to pity the single woman, and yet she's much more prepared to be on her own. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I have a, I have a happy, supportive life with my friends and family, so I don't, I don't need to date anybody, but if I do, it's fine.

Speaker 5 Not right now. Not right now.
Not right now.

Speaker 7 Where's Gabriella?

Speaker 18 Go ahead. So I was married for 19 years, together for 21.

Speaker 18 And about 14 months ago, my husband said that he wanted out. He wanted a divorce.
And I was completely shocked.

Speaker 5 Because you thought the marriage was fine?

Speaker 18 We had some issues, but I thought that we had... been working on them.

Speaker 18 So we've been separated now for about 14 months and

Speaker 18 there was trust broken in the the marriage and

Speaker 18 I feel like I have no choice now but to file for divorce so I'm at the very very very beginning of that stage we have two younger children that are our world they're eight and 14 and so we're all going through this

Speaker 18 horrible time

Speaker 5 does it always have to be horrible

Speaker 9 you know that's such a good question and the first one to ask. And it somewhat goes back to, I think, what Lori was saying with the, how you doing? Yes.

Speaker 9 Because we do live in that society that brings shame to

Speaker 9 the concept of divorce, the idea of divorce.

Speaker 9 Yet so many people find on the other side that it was eventually the right thing or the right thing for that family. It's really a process.
And you just said this.

Speaker 9 And I think it's very brave, if I may say, of you to come and talk about this at a time when you've just filed. I'm so vulnerable.
Yeah, it's a rough, I sit with people in that space all the time.

Speaker 9 So bravo to be able to talk about that. You'll help others who hear it.
But you're in a space with your husband, your children, where you are going to now restructure your family.

Speaker 9 And it's going to be something different on the other side. But it's still your family.
They're your children who are your world.

Speaker 9 And in a lot of ways, if you can approach it instead of the disaster,

Speaker 9 which

Speaker 9 it may feel like, but many times you can find that way to finding a better structure that works better for your family. So part of it is how we view it.

Speaker 9 And again, to what Lori said, how the world views it for us.

Speaker 5 I love that you're saying that it's going to be different because I think so many women and men in this situation, you mourn what was.

Speaker 5 You spend so much time mourning what was, you're mourning the loss, you mourn the way things used to be, you're thinking about what your holidays are going to be like, you're thinking that morning what was.

Speaker 5 And so just that advice is so profound is accept the fact that now things are going to be different.

Speaker 5 What did you want to say, Lori?

Speaker 10 Yeah, and you know, I think that when we're going through it and you're going through it right now, it feels like a deconstruction, but it's actually a reconstruction.

Speaker 10 And a lot of people say, well, I'm starting from zero. And I say, no, you're starting from experience.

Speaker 10 You know so much more now than you did before. So you're not a blank slate.
You have all this experience. And now you can say, what do I want? What's important to me? What matters to me?

Speaker 10 What have I learned from this?

Speaker 10 So you're actually starting from a place of strength, even if at the same time, and I'm a big fan of the both and, of you're going through the pain and you're going through this reconstruction.

Speaker 5 Isn't it also important,

Speaker 5 isn't it also important to, because over the years I've done so many shows or had conversations about this, and it's like a death and there's a grieving that needs to happen with it that I don't think a lot of people allow for themselves.

Speaker 5 We accept the fact that when somebody has actually died in your family, that you are allowed to grieve and process that.

Speaker 5 I don't think people see divorce as a grief and something that needs to be processed.

Speaker 7 Well all family members experience what we call separation distress and it doesn't matter who initiated the divorce.

Speaker 7 It's very much like severing a parent and child bond and it takes a number of years for people to recover and we're finding that among older adults the recovery period is a bit more protracted.

Speaker 7 than what we see for younger people. So it's taking upwards of four to five years to bounce back.
So, you know, giving yourself time.

Speaker 7 Well, I think it's in part because many of them are breaking up these decades-long marriages, right? They've just been much more entrenched and involved.

Speaker 7 They're unraveling much more closely entwined lives than people who have just been married for a couple of years and decide to call it quits.

Speaker 7 These are people who have been married often for 20, 30, 40 years, and they've got to disentangle all aspects of their lives from their finances to their personal relationship, their children.

Speaker 7 And it's something that takes time, but they do recover.

Speaker 11 I thank you for sharing your time with me here. Up next, we're going to hear from a mother who says her divorce was devastating, but now she's loving her new life.
Her story after the break.

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Speaker 11 Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. We're talking about the sharp rise in the rate of gray divorce.
That is divorce for people over age 50 and beyond.

Speaker 11 If this conversation speaks to you, share the link with a friend.

Speaker 14 They may need to hear it.

Speaker 5 Mary Jane, you want to share your story? Hello.

Speaker 2 Yes, hi. My story is in 2021,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 came downstairs and my husband of 26 years announced that he wanted to get divorced. I was pretty locked in, as you say.

Speaker 2 So it was just like the rug being pulled out from underneath me.

Speaker 2 Everything that you said, your future that you think is going to be there with your family is no longer, and it's just kind of poof gone in one conversation.

Speaker 2 We raised two daughters, one sitting next to me, Kayla, and it was just devastating. It was devastating, and kind of felt like I was drowning and didn't know which way, how to get air.

Speaker 2 So I think you lose a lot of power when this happens in yourself and your own agency because it's not your decision, but a lot of decisions are going to be dominoing from this decision that you didn't make.

Speaker 2 So the first first thing that I did, just

Speaker 8 because, was to just set the intention.

Speaker 2 I did have power over the intention through which I was going to get divorced.

Speaker 5 You did?

Speaker 8 I did.

Speaker 2 I did. And that intention was my daughter.

Speaker 5 Jane, how did you come up with that?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 2 I've done a lot of well-being things in my life.

Speaker 8 I've taught a lot.

Speaker 3 So, it was within my wheelhouse.

Speaker 2 I learned a lot from you through the years.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 2 So, intention was really important. And I knew that my daughters were going to be watching and it was an opportunity for them to watch me suffer and be sad and

Speaker 3 really just navigate this. And so I wanted to see, I wanted them to see me with hope.

Speaker 2 I wanted them to see me with resiliency and to always be choosing the high road whenever I got an opportunity.

Speaker 5 So how long ago was this? How old were your daughters?

Speaker 10 It was four years ago. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I didn't want the divorce, but I sit here right now and I just can't even, I mean, I can't, I could have never imagined how happy I would be.

Speaker 8 I am so happy. I get to spend time with.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I get to spend time with my daughters.

Speaker 10 I have work that I absolutely love.

Speaker 2 I have people that surround me that I love.

Speaker 5 But you were where Gabrielle is. I was where you are.

Speaker 8 Yes, I think very much so.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's true. For me, it's not a new chapter.

Speaker 8 It's really just an entirely new book.

Speaker 2 It's a whole new book of my life.

Speaker 5 And you didn't want it.

Speaker 3 I didn't want it.

Speaker 5 You didn't think it was going to happen. You were 26 years in, locked in.
Locked in.

Speaker 8 Locked in.

Speaker 20 So

Speaker 3 I'm trying to walk every footstep right now in this new book.

Speaker 5 Did you grieve? Did you grieve? As we were just talking about, you grieved.

Speaker 2 And there's so much grieving because it's not only just the loss of your husband, the domino is enormous.

Speaker 3 Like you lose, it was tough to get a credit card and I didn't have like just the ability to go buy something.

Speaker 6 I couldn't.

Speaker 8 Like that was a loss.

Speaker 2 I mean the smallest thing, the name that I had, you lose and what does that mean?

Speaker 3 Well then you don't really exist anymore on the internet.

Speaker 2 Like it's just it's just so much bigger and so many little losses that the grief's pretty big.

Speaker 5 But you, Kayla, saw your mom go through this, right? I did, yes. And,

Speaker 16 I mean, it was devastating at first. I think we were all shocked, and unfortunately, that seems to be a common experience amongst the women of the front row.

Speaker 10 But it was beautiful.

Speaker 16 In another odd way, I think the biggest silver lining was watching my mom

Speaker 16 actually walk the talk that you were talking about. And you were such a role model and found so much joy.
And now we like laugh way more than we ever did.

Speaker 6 We have the best time,

Speaker 10 including coming here today and being on the Oprah podcast.

Speaker 6 That's a huge silver lining. Thanks, Dad.

Speaker 16 But yeah, I would say now we are closer than we've ever been, and

Speaker 6 there's just so much grace that I've seen you exhibit. It's

Speaker 3 saintly, honestly.

Speaker 6 It's amazing.

Speaker 5 So is it because you were at an age where she could have a conversation? Because your kids are how old, did you say? 14 and 8. 14 and 8.

Speaker 5 So you can't have the same conversations with a 14-year-old and an eight-year-old as she would be having with you four years ago.

Speaker 5 So is it because you were older and you were able to talk about it and cry about it and all those things?

Speaker 2 I definitely didn't want to hide my emotions. So that was really important that I could say, hey, you're seeing me cry and I'm going to be okay.

Speaker 8 I have to work through this process and

Speaker 2 I'm going to come out of this on the other side.

Speaker 17 And so I think we were in it

Speaker 2 somewhat together. And I didn't hide anything, but I also always tried to say,

Speaker 3 this is what it looks like to go through a hard thing.

Speaker 10 You don't just bury it. You got to work through it.

Speaker 5 Do you find that it's a different reaction depending on how old the children are, Susan?

Speaker 3 I really do.

Speaker 9 I think it's a very

Speaker 9 different

Speaker 9 experience for younger children. They are minors.

Speaker 9 The entire system is built to try and protect them from what the conflict that might be going on between their parents.

Speaker 9 There tends to be, and I'm certainly not talking about what happened here because this is beautiful, what you were at, the gift you were able to give your daughters.

Speaker 9 But for many of the older adults that I've seen going through divorce with adult children, I've seen the tendency to treat the children as peers,

Speaker 9 to hear what's going on down in the nitty-gritty,

Speaker 9 as opposed to how we might shelter children from that, younger children.

Speaker 5 Well, I heard you did a podcast episode titled Divorce Triage, right? Yep. And that was about how to just get your way through

Speaker 5 these

Speaker 5 first days and months of divorce. What's your advice for those days,

Speaker 5 which have got to be terrifying?

Speaker 9 You know, I've heard from many clients and been through it myself, and

Speaker 9 some days it's just hard to get out of bed, but you have to, especially if you have children, right?

Speaker 10 And that's actually a gift.

Speaker 9 It gives you something to get out of bed for.

Speaker 9 And reminding you, I love that you said, you know, you knew your daughters were watching. And so they were going to see how you experience this.

Speaker 9 But what I talked about in that episode is if you have the gift of time in the beginning of your process, and I hope that everyone does, because most people treat it like, oh, wait, we've got to start the divorce immediately.

Speaker 9 You didn't. It sounds like you haven't.
You know, that's a gift in itself because it gives you that time to get the emotional content a little bit.

Speaker 9 under control so that it's not that emergency triage situation.

Speaker 9 And then start looking at what your situation might need as it comes to to support.

Speaker 9 Divorce is, I will say, you know, having been in the industry for so many years, decades, it has changed from a very litigious adversarial process to something now that can be very collaborative, very supportive, and a process that helps the family work their way through that restructuring.

Speaker 9 So that's the episode was about how to pull those people together.

Speaker 5 So it doesn't have to be contentious and hard. Exactly.
Okay. I want to hear from Joanne.
Joanne?

Speaker 16 Hello, everyone. Hi.

Speaker 10 So I am 54 years old.

Speaker 21 I was married for 30 years and

Speaker 21 got divorced in February. And my

Speaker 21 mom, this past February. Mine was not all of a sudden.
I would say probably year 10. I started to say,

Speaker 21 this doesn't really feel as loving as I thought it was going to feel.

Speaker 21 But I stayed in the relationship because I have two children and both of us were from single single-parent households.

Speaker 21 And we wanted to make sure that our children were raised in a two-parent household. And so stayed in the marriage.
And then I got to age 50. And I said, hey, kids are grown.

Speaker 21 You know, I think it's time for me to, you know, move on. I have more years, you know, behind me than I do ahead of me.
And so for me, it was that decision that I wanted to be happy.

Speaker 21 My grandmother lived to 102. my mother lived to 96, so I have longevity in my family.

Speaker 21 I want to be happy. And so, I had a job that brought me back to the Northeast where I'm from, and that was like the beginning of our one-year separation.

Speaker 21 And he didn't come after me, and I didn't want to go back. And so, I started the divorce process and

Speaker 21 reconnected in the meantime with my old boyfriend who I hadn't seen.

Speaker 21 I hadn't seen him in 33 years, and we've been together now, and we're very, very happy. So there's life on the other side.

Speaker 5 Well, thank you for sharing that. Are you seeing more people like

Speaker 5 that?

Speaker 10 You, Laurie? Yes, definitely. And I think it's hard when you're in the beginning of it to imagine, you know, you never thought like, I'm going to be with,

Speaker 10 when I'm 50, when I'm 60, I'm going to be with a new person and live in a new city and like do I have a new job and, you know, have this new community. You can't imagine it.

Speaker 10 And yet what people say is, and I'm so happy and I'm so much more fulfilled in this second part of my life than I ever imagined, even though this wasn't the story that I had written.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I know Gabriella's still not there yet. So, but you're hearing it.

Speaker 5 You're hearing it. So Addison.
Addison is an editor at Women's Health, and she wrote a piece earlier this year called, My Parents Got Divorced When I Was an Adult.

Speaker 5 Why do I feel so weird now that they've moved on? Addison, what was it like for you?

Speaker 17 Hi, yes. I still feel very weird about it.

Speaker 17 But yeah, basically, my parents sat my siblings and myself down. I'm the youngest when I was in my late teen years.

Speaker 17 And they started saying that they were going to be separated. They were waiting to be officially divorced until I moved moved out of the house.

Speaker 17 So it was probably a few years later that they officially divorced.

Speaker 17 But initially, I was really upset and I was shocked, but looking back at it, I know it was the best decision for everyone because they really didn't seem that in love or affectionate growing up.

Speaker 17 I know something my mom has always said is that she feels bad that she couldn't give us an example of a really in-love couple.

Speaker 17 So of course they both moved on, but something I really held on to was the fact that they both said they were never going to get remarried.

Speaker 17 And yeah, you guys know what happened. And so

Speaker 17 they both moved on with one other person after the divorce.

Speaker 17 Fast forward, they both, my mom ended up marrying the man that she moved on with, and my dad is now engaged to marry the woman that he moved on with later this month.

Speaker 17 And so While I am really happy for them, it has been hard grappling with this conflicting identity of being an adult, but also being a child of divorce, because I feel like my grief is somehow invalid.

Speaker 17 Like I can't be sad because I'm an adult. I'm not a kid anymore.
But

Speaker 5 this is your parents and this is their life and they should be allowed to have their life. Exactly.
All those things. Exactly.

Speaker 17 Because I do want them to be happy.

Speaker 10 But yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 17 The more therapy I've gone to and conversations that I've had with them, I've realized that My feelings do matter just because I'm an adult.

Speaker 3 I'm allowed to be sad, even though I am an adult child divorce.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 5 Kayla, did you experience any of that? Take the bike. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Most definitely.

Speaker 6 It feels so good to hear somebody else say that.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's just so disorienting.

Speaker 16 I don't know what your experience was like exactly, but I felt that our family was like the centerpiece of so much of my life, all of our lives.

Speaker 16 And it was the place that you go from and come back to and like the springing board for me and my sister. I think we were like 19 and 22 when the divorce happened.
And to have that just

Speaker 16 all of a sudden, it's like we were talking earlier this morning at breakfast. I was like, I felt like Sandra Bullock from gravity.

Speaker 10 And I'm the, and I'm the adult child.

Speaker 6 Like I, I don't know if I get to have big feelings about this, but I did.

Speaker 17 And I was just like floating out there.

Speaker 16 Like.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think, I think, Dr.

Speaker 5 Brown, we need to talk about that because I think that People think that because you're older, they think everybody's worried about, as you were saying, Susan, earlier, the younger children.

Speaker 5 But when you're older, they think you should just be okay with it because that's their lives and you're an adult and you understand. And there's actually a name for this.
What's it called?

Speaker 7 It's called family boundary ambiguity. And it's important to note that it doesn't matter what age you are as a child of divorce, it has

Speaker 5 so prevalent that it has a name. Yes, and

Speaker 7 it's this notion of divorce is disruptive to the family system. And it causes us to question who's in and who's out of the family now.

Speaker 7 Those boundaries become a little bit fuzzy and we've got to redefine our roles and relationships and then when our parents repartner, that's yet another transition that we have to respond to and once again renegotiate how are we going to do family now?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Who's a family member, who's not.

Speaker 5 And all of that needs to be acknowledged, does it not? Because as you were saying, it's your identity, it's your, for a lot of people, it's their finances,

Speaker 5 it's a lot, right?

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 10 And then especially like in this case, when new partners come in and you didn't choose those partners, and you may not really want to spend a lot of time with those partners, or you might not bond with those partners.

Speaker 10 And also, there's a sense when your parents move on with other partners, there's that, you know, when there's a divorce, there's this grieving process.

Speaker 10 But when they move on with other partners, there's a finality to it almost that, wow, our family really is different.

Speaker 10 You can have all the fantasies in the world about who your family is, and then they're married to other people now. And you as an adult are expected to, you know,

Speaker 10 they have their lives and you have your life. But I think in a lot of ways, because you imagine the future too, as being,

Speaker 10 we're this one family. This is the home I'm going to go home to.
I'm going to have one house. The holidays are going to be with both parents.

Speaker 10 It feels very different and people think because you're an adult, we wait until they're adults so that they won't have problems with the divorce, but there are so many issues that come up, but nobody pays attention.

Speaker 10 When kids are little, people are really worried about the kids. They pay a lot of attention to, you know, how are the kids doing? How are they adjusting? How are they feeling about it?

Speaker 10 The kids get to talk about it. And people just don't ask adult children how they're feeling about it.

Speaker 5 And there's a real role reversal here.

Speaker 7 I mean, when you're the young adult, you think you're the one who's going to be forming a family, finding a partner, maybe getting married.

Speaker 7 And instead, you're watching your parents date, which is going to be a little painful for a lot of people, right?

Speaker 7 Like the roles are reversed, and they're trying to understand from you: well, how does this online dating thing work? I haven't been out there in 30-some years.

Speaker 7 So I think that can be challenging.

Speaker 10 I have a lot of therapy patients who say, My mom wants me or my dad wants me to help them with their online dating profile.

Speaker 16 And they're like, ick.

Speaker 10 I don't want to do that.

Speaker 5 I think that's scary, though, for couples, is it not? This whole online dating, yes.

Speaker 9 I mean, that is, it's funny because you say that, you know, both your parents said, I'm never getting married again.

Speaker 9 Okay, I will tell you, it's a rare client who has ever walked into my office saying, can't wait to do that again. You know, so people going through divorce often say

Speaker 5 they won't do it again. Yes, yes.

Speaker 9 But soon after that, the next question is, when can I start dating?

Speaker 9 And I think there's an aspect of going through the discomfort of divorce that it's such an uncomfortable experience that there are people who think I could settle some of this discomfort with finding a new relationship.

Speaker 9 I could settle, I'll still have to deal with, you know, all of that, but the future will suddenly look like something that's recognizable and all that.

Speaker 9 So jumping back into dating tends to be one of the first questions and one of the things that people, whether it's an earlier in life divorce, but definitely a later in life divorce, like, what will dating look like for me and how do I get back out and do it?

Speaker 9 Not many people have the attitude that you do, like, I don't need this right now. I like my life how it is, which that's wonderful.

Speaker 5 That's wonderful. And also, not many people have the attitude.
Did you immediately think that, oh my, I'm going to turn this into a wonderful experience and I'm going to. No,

Speaker 5 okay. I'm just wondering, did

Speaker 5 first you cried. First I cried.
I cried for a year. Oh, okay.
At least, yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, it took a while to get it back together and be and see like, oh, there's possibility here. And I was really someone that liked to live in possibility.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 2 I woke up. I literally woke up every morning for the first three months and wrote 100 gratitudes every morning just because I had to get my brain going in like a more positive direction.

Speaker 6 Lovely.

Speaker 5 Lovely.

Speaker 20 And so I did a lot of that.

Speaker 5 All that spiritual work paid off. It did.
Yeah, it did.

Speaker 2 It was all meant.

Speaker 8 I mean, you know, I just kind of trust in how how life unfolds.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I put those practices to the test and they work.

Speaker 20 So.

Speaker 11 Time for a quick break. Next, even if divorce happens after the kids are grown, it still has an impact on them.
Sometimes even more so than when they were younger.

Speaker 11 We'll meet a man who says his mother's gray divorce caused him to have a panic attack. We'll be right back with more of our conversation.

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Speaker 11 Hey, I appreciate you listening and sticking around with us. Let's get back to our conversation about gray divorce.

Speaker 5 Where's Tremaine? Tremaine, is that you? Okay.

Speaker 22 Yeah, so my mother and my stepfather have been together for over 20 years. Yeah.

Speaker 22 So arguably the majority of my life. He's been the father figure at my home.

Speaker 22 And just this past year, as we were talking about grief as well, we had the unexpected loss of my grandmother.

Speaker 22 So already in navigating that and my mother growing closely together, our connection grew and our communication grew. And she let me in that she was working towards leaving my stepfather,

Speaker 22 which threw me for a loop, especially as an adult child. I've just turned 34.
I had a panic attack for the first time ever in my life.

Speaker 22 I never knew really what that felt like because I think I was living in this space of

Speaker 22 almost a liberation. I think as me as a child,

Speaker 22 watching a marriage that never always made the most sense to me and never seeing in a household the love that I thought a household deserved and what my mother deserved.

Speaker 22 I think I lived in this space of working through acceptance that that was what that marriage was going to look like and that was what the dynamics were going to be.

Speaker 22 And so when it happened, it kind of threw me for a loop that that was happening.

Speaker 22 But immediately I also knew, as we talk about emotionally, spiritually, financially, what that was also going to do for my mother. So I made the decision this year.

Speaker 22 And by this year, just last month, I moved from Seattle, Washington, which I've been living for the last few years, to move back to the East Coast so that a mother could live with me to Napoleon.

Speaker 22 Thank you.

Speaker 5 Good son.

Speaker 22 Thank you.

Speaker 5 Good son. I mean, you're not going to be there forever for her.

Speaker 22 No, we've had that conversation as well.

Speaker 5 Mom, let me bring you from.

Speaker 22 Boundaries.

Speaker 5 I have a life coach.

Speaker 22 I have a therapist. We have talked around our boundaries.

Speaker 22 But as someone who was raised by a single mother before she met my stepfather, right, I've watched her be a very resilient woman for so long.

Speaker 22 And so this was my opportunity to come back home and help build that resilience. So not once have I had a regret about it.
I'm really excited for what that will do for her.

Speaker 22 My mother's also still younger, right? She had me younger. She'll be 56 this month.
I probably won't be helping her on apps. I'm not there yet.

Speaker 22 But she's actively moving in with me this month and next month. So we are.

Speaker 5 Do you have a question for one of our extra? I do.

Speaker 22 Lori, I think, especially for me,

Speaker 22 navigating a lot of newness for us, right? And for so long, being the child, right? And now we are shifting dynamics. The child is now the provider, right? She's living with me.

Speaker 22 I'm covering a lot of things financially so that she can stabilize to where she needs to be. That also shifts our dynamics a lot right now.

Speaker 22 And so I think for me, as I'm navigating this, I want to 100%, as I continue to learn who she is as a woman and not just my mother, how do I continue to navigate those boundaries with her and support her in a way that she continues to still have that autonomy and she can still grow while she's also being supported and led a lot by me right now?

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's such a great question because your roles are reversed right now. So now you're almost like the parent taking care of the child.

Speaker 10 And it's one thing, you know, as a parent, your goal is to have your kids become independent. Like you don't want your kids living in your basement, right?

Speaker 10 You don't want your kids living there forever. And you're saying the same thing about with your mom, that this is a temporary situation.

Speaker 10 I want to help her build the skills and create the support and the community in the adult sphere, and I mean her age group, adult sphere, so that she can thrive.

Speaker 10 And you are also doing something great, which is taking care of yourself.

Speaker 10 You're saying, I've got a coach, I've got a therapist, I'm thinking about boundaries, I'm thinking about the time limitedness of this. So you're not doing this blindly.

Speaker 10 And I think it's a beautiful gesture that you're doing, but I think you want to be very on target about how long is this going to go on, what specifically does she need in place in terms of infrastructure, whether that's finances, community,

Speaker 10 mental health support, whatever she needs, and wean her as a parent does

Speaker 10 because you don't want her to become dependent on you.

Speaker 10 So, and you said, you know, I'm getting to know her as a woman, but she's still your mom and you're still her son, and that hierarchy still exists, and you don't want to dissolve that completely.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 Susan, Dr. Brown, and Lori, can you give us your

Speaker 5 final analysis, your thoughts on this?

Speaker 9 You know, I would say this is the time, and this may help your mom. So I'll say this.

Speaker 9 This is the time if you're going into a later life divorce where there are so many things going on,

Speaker 9 but having a strategy for that beyond, for that future that we've heard people talk about, having a plan of how you're going to get there, that is probably the single most important aspect so that you can put in place what Lori was just talking about, the financial that you need, the emotional support that she needs, so that your mom's able to move forward in a better way.

Speaker 5 Strategy.

Speaker 5 And overall, everybody needs their own strategy. You're also saying.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, everybody thinks they fall back on what the law says should happen.

Speaker 5 And so yeah, the number one thing you would would tell somebody if they were coming into your office today would be.

Speaker 9 Is know where you're going and what you want that future to look like, or at least start to think about it. It sounds like you both have done that, right?

Speaker 9 And started to think about what the beyond should look like.

Speaker 9 And then, when you're going through the divorce, when you're negotiating your settlement, as you're making very major decisions about your future, you're making them with that goal in sight to move you forward with your strategy toward that goal.

Speaker 9 I think that's incredibly important.

Speaker 5 Yeah, for all families.

Speaker 12 All families. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Not just you, Tremaine. No, no, I should.

Speaker 5 For all families. Everyone here.
Dr. Brown, as I was saying earlier, you helped coin this phrase, gray divorce.

Speaker 7 So what are your final words here?

Speaker 7 I would say that, you know, divorce is a process and adjustment takes time. Even though divorce can be stressful, letting go and moving on can be very freeing.

Speaker 5 Yes, as we've seen here.

Speaker 3 As we've seen here today.

Speaker 5 As we've seen here.

Speaker 5 And as we're going to see in the future. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 We're with you.

Speaker 5 Gabriella, we're with you.

Speaker 5 All right, Miss, maybe you should talk to somebody.

Speaker 10 Well, I think that people going through divorce should talk to somebody. I think it's really important.
A lot of people feel like, oh, people don't want to hear this, or I've talked about it so much.

Speaker 10 But people do, you know, find your, pick your audience well. So, you know, whether that's a therapist or whether that's a trusted family member, whoever it is, you do need to talk about it.

Speaker 10 Also, I think this idea of having a plan, action begets action.

Speaker 10 So sometimes you feel so paralyzed in the unknown, the new story, the different path that you just, you don't know what direction to go in. Every small little step.
So it's these tiny steps.

Speaker 10 What can you do today, something small, that might bring you joy?

Speaker 10 It could be, I'm going to call a friend, I'm going to take a walk, I'm going to talk to my attorney because that will make me feel more settled.

Speaker 10 Is there one small action that you can take every day, the tiniest thing?

Speaker 5 Today it was, I'm going to the Oprah podcast.

Speaker 10 Today it's, I'm going to the Oprah podcast, right?

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 not only am I going to the Oprah podcast, but I am going to meet other people who have been through it and have come out the other side. And that's very eye-opening.

Speaker 10 So these small actions and intentions and asking yourself, what can I do now that I couldn't do before, I think is really helpful too.

Speaker 10 You don't have to have the answers yet, but what was this passion that I kind of put on the back burner? What was this thing that I wanted to do? Am I happy in my career? Do I like where I live?

Speaker 10 You know, what are the things that bring me joy? And thinking about how can I bring more of that, again, small doses into my life.

Speaker 10 You have to combine that with, yes, you're in pain, nobody wants to ignore the pain, but you can do, again, the both and.

Speaker 5 Is there a,

Speaker 5 well, I know everybody experiences the grief and the pain differently, but that how do you know when you've wallowed in it too long?

Speaker 5 I mean, I thought what you were saying earlier about being able to get out of bed, you know, having children is actually a reason to get out of bed.

Speaker 5 And for some people who don't, it's hard to get out of bed. How do you know when it's now it's time? Girl, get up out of bed.

Speaker 10 The thing about grief and divorce is that, yes, it feels like a death, but the difference is that the person is still around.

Speaker 5 That's right. You can run into them at the Safeway.

Speaker 10 You might run into them. You might see them on social media.
You still will hear about them through your adult children. I'm going to.

Speaker 10 You know, they're still there, like being haunted by a ghost. And so there's a feeling of, you know, I should be through this, this grief.
And the grief, it comes in waves. You know, I think.

Speaker 5 I'm looking at all the people going, yes,

Speaker 5 been through that, yes.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 10 And so people think, you know, it was doing so well, and then I was at the Safeway, and I ran into this person in the produce section, and that really ruined my day, right?

Speaker 5 No, and the person said, how are you?

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 5 And how are you? Exactly.

Speaker 10 And so you might have a moment where, okay, you're back there, but you don't have to drown in it. It was like, that was a moment, and now I'm going to move forward in my day.

Speaker 10 So it's okay to kind of go back and forth with the feelings just because you still, it might be two years later and you have a bad experience.

Speaker 5 It's like real grief. It's like grief when you're grieving the loss of someone who's

Speaker 10 to know that that's normal and expected, and just because you feel it in one moment doesn't mean you're going to feel it the next.

Speaker 10 I like to say feelings are like weather systems: they blow in, they blow out, it's rainy, it's stormy, it's sunny. That's what grief is like.

Speaker 5 Wow, wow, thank you so much. Thank all of you for your advice.

Speaker 5 Dr. Brown's research can be found at bgsu.edu, and you can find Susan Guthrie's podcast, Divorce and Beyond, something you should start listening to

Speaker 5 wherever you podcast. And Lori Gottlieb's book, of course, is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
It's available wherever books are sold. Audience, thank you for sharing your experiences with us.

Speaker 5 Thank you. See you next week.
Thank you.

Speaker 5 You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week.
Thanks, everybody.