Somewhere, on the memory card of a lost and long outmoded smartphone, or maybe even in an envelope of prints, still sticky from their high street chemist developing process, is a group photograph of six, apparently happy, married couples. All friends of ours. (Friends of my then-wife and me, that is.)
It was snapped on New Year’s Eve around 15 years ago; 12 people, spouses next to one another, arm-in-arm and smiling, raising their glasses to toast the future, looking forward to probably more kids to add to the 14 we’d already produced between us, and many more, raucous ‘friends forever’ get-togethers like this.
All six couples in the photo are now divorced.
In the ensuing years since that festive, flashbulb moment, every single one of those men and women, while still in their 40s and early 50s, made a big decision.
My wife and I were the first of the six to go. We seemed to set off a chain reaction, writes Simon Mills
It was inspired by either a blinding marital epiphany, a slow burn of disappointments and mounting failures, the gradual fading of happiness, prosperity and harmony, a breakdown of intimacy, maybe even a stray towards infidelity.
But coolly – individually or collectively – they assessed the situation and, despite the kids, the shared mortgage, the annual mediterranean holidays, second homes, school fees, and the comfort of extended bank holiday weekends with in-laws, nephews and cousins, they decided it was best to go their separate ways.
Mostly, it was the women who instigated the uncouplings.
Writing in this newspaper recently, the author and broadcaster Sam Baker revealed she’d canvassed 50 women aged approximately 40 to 60 and barely needed two hands to count the number who were in a long-term relationship and happy with the balance of labour, power and responsibility. One respondent, Stephanie, 49, who had been with her husband since their late teens, was in despair at their diverging levels of ambition.
‘Bless him for wanting a simple life – a s**g, two bottles of wine, kung pao prawns and golf most days, stopping off for three pints on the way home – but that’s his dream life. It’s not mine,’ she said. ‘I’m bored with it. I constantly wonder, is this it?’
Why did it go so wrong for the guys? If you’d asked the women, they would tell you that the men were grumpy, taciturn, immature, moody, shouty and occasionally wayward. We didn’t pull our weight at home or share responsibilities and duties regarding the children. (Pretty much all those apply to me).
In one or two cases there was a power struggle at play, one side of the marriage more successful in her career, the other a mopey, drunken stay-at-home who watched telly while his wife travelled the world and brought home the money.
So what do us men think? Obviously, we never sit down and talk about our relationships and marriages with one another – men never do – but snatched nuggets of conversation touched on a general feeling of not being valued or understood. Emasculation, restriction and reduced sexual activity. The feeling that life was running away from us and that we may have made the wrong choices and committed too early.
My wife and I, married for almost 20 years, were the first of the six to go. We seemed to set off a chain reaction. Soon, all couples in that picture were lawyered up, rehoused, unhitched, emotionally and financially divided. And that was the end of the marriages – and the fun New Year’s Eve parties.
More and more, especially with the young and unhappily spliced, this is what happens. Of all the seemingly well-matched young couples I have known during the past 20 years or so, I’d say 80 per cent of them have now either annulled their union, are in a state of messy divorce or have moved on to second-life, autumnal relations with new partners.
It’s an unstoppable, runaway train of uncoupling, a break-up epidemic, and sometimes it can seem as if everyone is either divorced or getting divorced.
In 2022, the median duration of marriages that ended in divorce was 12.9 years for opposite-sex couples – with the average (wedding day) age of married couples being in the mid to late 30s (38.1 years for men; 35.8 years for women). Which means that there is a huge swathe of, suddenly single, 50-year-old men, and 48-ish year-old women out there.
Mostly, my male friends never saw their break-ups coming.
On the face of it, at social events and during communal holidays, a couple might seem content, congenial and emotionally consistent. And then very suddenly . . . very much concluded.
Often, their wives will have planned their break-ups for months, discussing plans and strategies with friends. The man being ‘the last to know’ sounds like a cliche, but, in my experience, this is often what happens.
But if the husband is behind the split, it might be the sudden realisation of a mismatch, an un-attraction, a mounting sensation of revulsion, irritation and general un-belonging.
During the long and drawn-out process of the split, there will be rage, despair and poignancy. Definitely sadness.
‘I wonder if the sad I’d be without you…’ Matthew Macfadyen’s character Tom Wambsgans muses to wayward wife Shiv Roy in the final season of hit TV drama Succession, ‘ . . .would be less than the sad I get from being with you.’
Increasingly, the call will be made with a definite plan B in mind. On the rare occasions it’s the man’s choice, there might be thoughts of a new girlfriend. A place to go may have been organised.
And, also, particularly for the male divorcees, a growing realisation of finite time-on-earth. I have one life. If I am lucky, I am only halfway through it. Do I really think that I want to spend the rest of it, maybe up to 50 years or so, with someone who annoys the hell out of me, doesn’t share any of my interests, has no profound feelings for me and criticises pretty much everything I do, makes me feel generally unloved and uncared for?
Of all the seemingly well-matched young couples I have known during the past 20 years or so, I’d say 80 per cent of them have now either annulled their union, are in a state of messy divorce
With our parents’ generation the answer was often… yes. Stick it out, grin and bear it, keep calm-ish and carry on.
Do the right thing and see the marriage through, just as they had promised at the altar five, ten or 15 years previously. Before the affairs began and the doubts set in.
But in the 21st century there is the tempting idea of another chance. That life doesn’t have to end with a divorce. That a second pop, a Viagra boost for the sex life, a mid-50s success story, can begin after a sadly failed marriage.
I spoke to both my married and divorced male friends about this.
The still-wed ones all complained about their dwindling sex lives, a lack of shared interests and common ground with their spouses, of not being heard or valued. A general repetition and flatlining of habits and boring rituals. Work falling away and children leaving the home and a sense of ‘what now?’ pervading the long weekends.
The divorced ones split into two categories: Those who had broken up because they had found a new partner to be with (happy); and the ones who had split because either their wives had found new love (sad) or their marriages had simply come to the end of the road (even sadder). The second-lifers – one aged 58 with three, new-wife-sired children under 12, were much more upbeat.
‘Never underestimate how difficult divorce will be,’ one told me. ‘There will be repercussions – emotional, financial and logistical – for many years to come. But there is a way to find love.
‘You don’t need to hang out at the disco or be the oldest man at the cocktail bar any more. Internet dating has changed all that.’
‘You may have spent the last ten years being told by your wife how useless and awful you are… then after you break up, you discover that there are hundreds of women out there who might well think the opposite. This is a revelation.’
The plan doesn’t work out happy for everyone. ‘If you think that you felt alone during your marriage,’ one of my less successful second-life friends warned, ‘prepare to feel alone again – much more alone, even – when you eventually split up.’
And from another: ‘Ever heard people say that a man is living in reduced circumstances after a divorce? Well, that’s what happened to me. My bank balance was reduced, the square footage of my living space was reduced, my friendship circle, confidence levels, company and social landscape all reduced to pretty much nothing.’
A noted London divorce lawyer once told me that she could never take a post-yuletide winter holiday in the Caribbean or on the Alpine slopes because January was always her busiest and most profitable period.
Her theory being that married couples, who may have been suffering for months, years, decades even, styling out their failing marriages, suddenly find themselves, once again, in the awkward, claustrophobic jollity of forced familial togetherness (often for ten to 14 days at a stretch) and realise, over the turkey dinner, that they actually can’t stand each other for a moment longer.
My legal contact confided that it was usually the wives that would come to her (63.1 per cent of divorces are petitioned by women), all but banging down the office door on the day after the New Year bank holiday, demanding to get papers drawn up and arrangements made as soon as possible.
The divorce industry even has a name for this key diary date – ‘Divorce Day’, the first Monday after January 1.
Divorce Day neatly falling then on the very next day after that fateful, aforementioned photo of us six, seemingly happily married couples, was snapped. Not that, true to form, one of us men saw it coming.
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