I was blindsided when my wife divorced me then the same happened to all my male friends. This is the real reason EVERYONE middle-aged is divorcing… and why your marriage is at risk

Somewhere, on the memory card of a lost and long-obsolete smartphone, or perhaps even in an envelope of printouts, still sticky from their high street chemist development process, is a group photo of six seemingly happy married couples. All friends of ours. (Friends of my then wife and me, mind you.)

The photo was taken on New Year’s Eve, about 15 years ago. Twelve people, their partners, standing side by side, arm in arm, laughing, raising their glasses to toast the future. They were looking forward to probably more children, in addition to the 14 we had already had, and to many more exuberant ‘friends forever’ gatherings like this one.

All six couples in the photo have since divorced.

In the years since that celebratory moment, each of those men and women, when they were only 40 or early 50, made an important decision.

It was inspired by a blinding marital revelation, a slow accumulation of disappointments and mounting failures, the gradual disappearance of happiness, prosperity and harmony, a breakdown of intimacy, or perhaps even a tendency towards infidelity.

But calmly – individually and collectively – they assessed the situation and despite the children, the shared mortgage, the annual Mediterranean holidays, second homes, school fees and the comfort of long bank holiday weekends with in-laws, nephews and nieces, they decided it was best to go their separate ways.

Usually it was the women who initiated the disconnections.

In a recent article in this newspaper, author and presenter Sam Baker revealed that she had interviewed 50 women aged between 40 and 60 and could count with two hands the number 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 their late teens, was despondent about their differing levels of ambition.

‘God bless him for wanting a simple life – as**g, 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 it?’

Why did it go so wrong for the boys? If you asked the women, they would tell you that the men were grumpy, silent, immature, moody, shouty, and occasionally headstrong. We didn’t try hard at home and didn’t share responsibilities and duties with the kids. (Almost all of those things apply to me).

In one or two cases there was a power struggle: one side of the marriage was more successful in its career, the other was a gloomy, drunken stay-at-home dad who watched television while his wife traveled the world and brought in the money.

So what do we men think? Of course we never sit down and talk about our relationships and marriages with each other – men never do that – but fragmented conversations touched on a general sense of not being appreciated or understood. Castration, restriction and reduced sexual activity. A sense that life was passing us by and that perhaps we had 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. Soon, all the couples in that photo were lawyered up, moved away, separated, emotionally and financially divided. And that was the end of the marriages – and the fun New Year’s Eve parties.

More and more, especially among the young and unhappy couples, this is happening. Of all the seemingly well-matched young couples I have known in the past 20 years, I would say that 80 percent of them have now dissolved their union, are in a state of messy divorce, or have moved on to second-life, autumnal relationships with new partners.

It’s an unstoppable, runaway train of disconnection, an epidemic of breakups. Sometimes it seems like everyone is divorced or getting divorced.

In 2022, the median length of marriages that ended in divorce was 12.9 years for heterosexual couples, with the average (wedding day) age of married couples being in their mid- to late 30s (38.1 for men; 35.8 for women). That means there’s a huge group of suddenly single 50-year-old men and 48-year-old women.

Most of my male friends didn’t see their breakups coming.

At first glance, a couple seems content, sociable, and emotionally consistent at social events and shared holidays. And then suddenly… very private.

Often their wives have been planning their breakup for months, discussing plans and strategies with friends. The husband being “the last to know” sounds like a cliché, but in my experience, this is often what happens.

But if the spouse is behind the breakup, he may suddenly realize that something is not right for him, that he is no longer attracted to each other, that there is an increasing sense of resentment, irritation and a general feeling of detachment.

During the long and drawn out process of the split there will be anger, despair and emotion. Absolute sadness.

“I wonder if the sadness I would feel without you…”, muses the character Tom Wambsgans, played by Matthew Macfadyen, to his headstrong wife Shiv Roy in the final season of the hit TV drama Succession, “…would be less than the sadness I feel when I’m with you.”

More and more often the call is made with a clear plan B in mind. In the rare cases where it is the man’s choice, a new girlfriend may be considered. There may be a place to go.

And, also, especially for the male divorcees, a growing awareness of the finiteness of time on earth. I have one life. If I’m lucky, I’m only halfway through it. Do I really think I want to spend the rest of my life, maybe 50 years or so, with someone who irritates me to no end, shares none of my interests, has no deep feelings for me, criticizes pretty much everything I do, makes me feel generally unloved and uncared for?

In our parents’ generation, the answer was often… yes. Hang in there, grin and bear it, keep calm and carry on.

Do the right thing and continue the marriage, as they had promised at the altar five, ten, or fifteen years earlier. Before the affairs started and doubts crept in.

But in the 21st century, there’s the seductive idea of ​​a second chance. That life doesn’t have to end in divorce. That a second doll, a Viagra boost to the sex life, a mid-50s success story, can begin after a miserably failed marriage.

I’ve talked about this with both my married and divorced male friends.

The still-married couples all complained of their declining sex lives, a lack of shared interests and common ground with their partners, of not being heard or valued. A general repetition and flattening of habits and boring rituals. Jobs dropping out and children leaving home and a sense of ‘what now?’ pervading the long weekends.

The divorcees fell into two categories: those who had split because they had found new partners to be with (happy); and those who had split because their wives had found new love (sad) or because their marriages had simply ended (even sadder). Those who had a second life – one of 58 with three children under the age of 12, fathered by a new wife – were much more optimistic.

“Never underestimate how hard a divorce will be,” someone told me. “There will be repercussions for years to come — emotionally, financially, logistically. But there is a way to find love.

“You don’t have to hang out at the disco or be the oldest man in the cocktail bar anymore. Internet dating has changed all that.”

“You may have spent the last ten years hearing from your wife how useless and horrible you are… and then, after you break up, you discover that there are hundreds of women who may feel the opposite. It’s a revelation.”

The plan doesn’t work equally well for everyone. “If you think you felt alone during your marriage,” warned one of my less successful second-life friends, “be prepared to feel alone again—much lonelier, in fact—when you finally do break up.”

And from another: ‘Have you ever heard people say that a man lives in worse circumstances after a divorce? Well, that’s what happened to me. My bank balance got smaller, my living space got smaller, my circle of friends, my self-confidence, my companionship and my social landscape all got reduced to almost nothing.’

A well-known divorce lawyer from London once told me that she could never go on a winter holiday to the Caribbean or the Alps after Christmas, because January was always her busiest and most profitable period.

Her theory is that couples who have been suffering for months, years, or even decades from their failed marriages suddenly find themselves back in the uncomfortable, claustrophobic bliss of forced family togetherness (often for ten to fourteen days at a time) and realize over turkey that they can’t stand each other for a moment longer.

My legal contact confided that it was mostly women who came to her (63.1 percent of divorces are filed by women), practically knocking down her office door the day after the New Year’s holiday, demanding that paperwork be filed and arrangements made as soon as possible.

The divorce industry even has a name for this important date in the calendar: “Divorce Day,” the first Monday after January 1.

The day of the divorce fell neatly on the day after that fateful, aforementioned photo of the six of us, seemingly happily married couples, was taken. Not that, as usual, any of us men saw it coming.