Somewhere, on the memory card of a long-lost and obsolete smartphone, or maybe even in an envelope of photos, still sticky from the development process at a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, there is a group photograph of six seemingly happy married couples. All friends of ours. (Friends of my then-wife and mine, that is.)
It was taken on New Year’s Eve about 15 years ago; 12 people, spouses side by side, arm in arm and smiling, raising their glasses to toast the future, probably hoping for more children to add to the 14 we had already produced between us, and many more raucous “friends forever” gatherings like this one.
The six couples in the photo are now divorced.
In the years that followed that memorable, festive moment, each of those men and women, while still in their 40s and 50s, made a big decision.
My wife and I were the first of the six to leave. We seemed to set off a chain reaction, writes Simon Mills
It was inspired by a blinding marital epiphany, by a slow succession of mounting disappointments and failures, by the gradual fading of happiness, prosperity and harmony, by a breakdown in intimacy, perhaps even a detour into infidelity.
But they calmly assessed the situation – individually or collectively – and despite the children, the shared mortgage, the annual holidays in the Mediterranean, the second homes, the school fees and the comfort of long holiday weekends with their in-laws, nephews and cousins, they decided that it was best to go their separate ways.
In most cases, it was women who instigated the separations.
In an article recently published in this newspaper, author and broadcaster Sam Baker revealed that she had interviewed 50 women aged between 40 and 60 and that she barely needed two hands to count the number of those who were in long-term relationships and were happy with the balance of work, power and responsibility. One respondent, Stephanie, 49, who had been with her husband since they were teenagers, was despairing at their differing levels of ambition.
“Bless him for wanting a simple life – bum, two bottles of wine, kung pao prawns and golf most days, stopping 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’m constantly asking myself: is this all?”
Why did men do so poorly? If you had asked women, they would have told you that men were grumpy, morose, immature, moody, loud, and sometimes disobedient. We didn’t do our part at home or share responsibilities and obligations regarding the children (pretty much all of that applies to me).
In one or two cases, there was a power struggle at play: one side of the marriage was more successful in their careers and the other was a depressed, drunken housewife who watched TV while his wife traveled the world and brought home the money.
So what do we men think? Obviously, we never sit down and talk about our relationships and marriages with other people – men never do – but some of the conversational fragments I have been able to find have referred to a general feeling of not being valued or understood. Emasculation, restriction and reduction of sexual activity. A sense that life is passing us by and that perhaps we have made the wrong choices and committed ourselves too soon.
My wife and I, married for almost 20 years, were the first of the six to leave. We seemed to set off a chain reaction. Before long, all the couples in the photo had hired lawyers, found new homes, broken up, were emotionally and financially divided. And that was the end of the marriages — and the fun New Year’s Eve parties.
It is increasingly the case, especially with young people who are not happy with their partner, that this is what happens. Of all the apparently compatible young couples I have met over the past 20 years, I would say that 80 percent of them have either called off their union, are in a messy divorce situation, or have moved on to a second life, an autumn relationship with new partners.
It’s a runaway, unstoppable train of disengagement, an epidemic of breakups, and at times it can seem as if everyone is divorced or in the process of getting divorced.
In 2022, the median duration of marriages that ended in divorce was 12.9 years for heterosexual couples, and the median age (on wedding day) of married couples was between 35 and 40 years (38.1 years for men; 35.8 years for women). This means that there is a huge swathe of 50-year-old men and 48-year-old women who have suddenly become single.
Most of my male friends never saw their breakups coming.
At first glance, at social events and during community parties, a couple may seem happy, pleasant and emotionally coherent. And suddenly… they are very determined.
Often, their wives have been planning the breakup for months, discussing plans and strategies with their friends. The whole man being the “last to know” thing sounds cliché, but in my experience, that’s what usually happens.
But if the husband is responsible for the separation, it may be due to a sudden realization of a lack of compatibility, a lack of attraction, a growing feeling of repulsion, irritation and general discontent.
During the long, drawn-out process of separation, there will be anger, despair, and pain. Definitely, sadness.
“I wonder if the sadness I’d feel without you…” muses Matthew Macfadyen’s character Tom Wambsgans to his wayward wife Shiv Roy in the final season of the hit TV drama Succession, “…would be less than the sadness I’d feel being with you.”
Increasingly, the call will be made with a definite plan B in mind. On the rare occasion when the choice is the man’s, a new girlfriend may be in the cards. A place to go may have been arranged.
And then, especially for divorced men, a growing awareness that time on Earth is finite. I have only one life. If I’m lucky, I’m only halfway through. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life, maybe even 50 years, with someone who annoys me to no end, who shares none of my interests, who has no deep feelings for me, who criticizes virtually everything I do, and who makes me feel, in general, unloved and neglected?
Of all the seemingly well-matched young couples I have known over the past 20 years, I would say that 80 percent of them have either annulled their union or are in a messy divorce state.
In our parents’ generation, the answer was often… yes. You just have to suck it up, grin and bear it, keep calm and carry on.
Do the right thing and go through with the marriage, just as you had promised at the altar five, ten, or fifteen years before, before the affairs began and the doubts arose.
But in the 21st century there is the tantalizing idea of a new chance. That life need not end with a divorce. That it can begin a second dose, a sex drive with Viagra, a success story in the mid-50s after a sadly failed marriage.
I talked about this with my married and divorced male friends.
Those who were still married complained of their dwindling sex lives, a lack of shared interests and common ground with their spouses, of not being heard or valued, of a general repetition and stagnation of habits and boring rituals, of declining work, of children leaving, and of a sense of “what now?” that permeated long weekends.
The divorcees were divided into two categories: those who had broken up because they had found a new partner (happy) and those who had separated because their wives had found a new love (sad) or because their marriages had simply come to an end (even sadder). Those who had given their second life (one of them aged 58 and with three children under 12, fathered by his new wife) were much more optimistic.
“Never underestimate how difficult divorce will be,” one of them told me. “There will be repercussions (emotional, financial and logistical) for many years to come. But there is a way to find love.
“You no longer have to hang out at the club or be the oldest guy at the bar. Online dating has changed all that.”
‘You may have spent the last ten years listening to your wife tell you how worthless and horrible you are… and then, after breaking up with her, you discover that there are hundreds of women who might think the opposite. This is an eye-opener.’
The plan doesn’t work well for everyone. “If you think you were lonely during your marriage,” one of my less successful second-life friends warned me, “be prepared to feel lonely again—much lonelier, even—when you finally separate.”
And another person: “Have you ever heard people say that a man lives in worse conditions after a divorce? Well, that’s what happened to me. My bank balance shrank, the square footage of my living space shrank, my circle of friends, my confidence levels, my company and my social environment dwindled to almost nothing.”
A well-known London divorce lawyer once told me that she could never take a winter holiday to the Caribbean or the foothills of the Alps after Christmas because January was always her busiest and most profitable period.
His theory is that married couples, who may have been agonizing for months, years, even decades, over their failing marriages, suddenly find themselves, once again, in the uncomfortable, claustrophobic joy of forced family togetherness (often for ten to fourteen days at a time) and realize, over turkey dinner, that they really can’t stand each other for another moment.
My legal contact confided that it was usually wives who came to her (63.1 percent of divorces are filed by women), practically knocking on the office door the day after the New Year bank holiday, demanding that paperwork be prepared and arrangements made as soon as possible.
The divorce industry even has a name for this key date on the calendar: “Divorce Day,” the first Monday after January 1.
The day of the divorce happened to be the day after the aforementioned fateful photograph of the six of us, seemingly happily married couples. Not that, as expected, any of us saw it coming.