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Dear Doctor Love,
My fifty-seven year old wife just filed for divorce and I am floored. I don’t beat her or cheat on her. She has had an easy life of raising our two children and being provided for in every respect. We should be able to sit and relax for the rest of our lives. Instead she wants to become this modern couple who learns to sail and do yoga and goes on trips to Mexico or Belize and such. This isn’t a new thing for her. It’s been brewing since the kids left home.
About ten years ago she started going on about wanting more “adventure” in our lives. Every Saturday started with, “Come on, let’s go to…” and she’d name some place we should see. She just couldn’t understand that I’m happy hanging out in my hammock or in my easy chair watching television.
Since I retired it’s almost every day she wants us to do something. I don’t care about going places or meeting people but I never stop her from going on her own.
Now she says she is too young to get old. It’s not about another man or finding a new relationship—she figures if she has to do so many things alone, she may a well be single and have the liberties of a single women. She says we aren’t married anymore, we just co-exist.
How do I get her to be reasonable and stop this nonsense?
/s/ Silver Out-Foxed
Dear Out-Foxed,
So far you have belittled her role in the raising of your two children. You’ve patted yourself on the back for not beating her or cheating. You made her find her own happiness without the benefit of your company and you have deemed her needs unreasonable nonsense.
She gave you a decade of warning signs and she was open about what she needed and what was lacking in her life. She is not ready for the recliner and television.
She tried to include you as she explored the world around her and you resisted. You missed the signs, maybe because you couldn’t see them, but likely because you chose to ignore them and gave them no merit.
Fifty years and older is the only age group where divorce is on the rise, and it is women who are deciding to end their marriages, many for this very reason. If you are to have a chance, you must be open to change. Your best possible recourse will be couple’s counseling. Find a relationship advisor with experience with this problem and you may save your marriage.
