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For Melanie Wilkinson, ending a marriage after two decades was not about one dramatic breaking point. It was about reaching a moment in her life when she could no longer ignore the feeling that she was unhappy, and realizing she did not want to spend another 10 or 20 years that way.

Wilkinson grew up in rural Canada, and met her husband at a friend’s wedding. She was 30 when they married, and they moved to New York City, where she taught at an inner-city high school and he pursued his acting dreams. After returning to Canada 13 years later, they had a daughter and things fell into a routine. 

As she was approaching 50, Wilkinson said she looked back and felt like she had lost who she was in the marriage. They didn’t have massive fights. No one cheated. She said she looked back and felt like she had lost her entire 40s being someone she didn’t recognize, and didn’t want to continue on that same path. 

“You kind of just go through life, and then you wake up one day and you're like, ‘What the heck? I have been married for 30 years and I'm not happy,’” she said. 

A few years ago Wilkinson started an environmentally focused summer camp, held for two weeks every August, the kind of place where campers make their own charcoal. Now 54, and living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, she describes her life now as “peace, just peace.” 

“What I cry about at night, to be honest with you, is that I should have done it when I was in my 40s,” she says, adding that she grieves for the time she lost when she could have been happier. “Like when I knew that this was bad.” 

Wilkinson has a lot of recently divorced company. Nearly 40% of divorces today occur between people over the age of 50, and the divorce rate for those over 65 has tripled from 1990, according to a 2024 study by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University. 

The research identified several contributing factors to the rising rates—women are more financially independent and remarriages are more likely to end in divorce, according to Susan L. Brown, one of the Bowling Green sociology professors who co-authored the study. She noted in a statement from the university that many of the over 65+ people now getting divorced were part of the divorce revolution in the 1970s, and had since remarried. 

“We know that remarriages are more likely to end in divorce than first marriages, which could be one cause for the increase,” she wrote. 

Other studies support their findings—a 2025 analysis of divorce trends from the Pew Research Center found that while divorce rates overall have declined since the 1980s, divorce among those age 50 and up has increased. About 22% of all divorces happened in couples who had been together for 25 years or longer, they found. 

Many women interviewed for this story mentioned that they wanted the rest of their life to look different from their marriage years, and the increase of life expectancy has had an impact, Brown said. 

“It’s part of what has changed the calculus about getting divorced: people are living longer,” Brown wrote. “The thing I always say is that if you’re 65, you could reasonably expect to live another 20 years, and 20 years is a long time to spend with someone you’re just not into anymore.”

Guiding Others Through The Gray Times

Maryjane Sweet went through her own divorce at 51, and now helps others navigate those changes as “The Gray Divorce Coach.” She said women who might once have stayed in unhappy marriages because of social pressure now face less stigma, and there are many high-profile couples who split at older ages, from Al and Tipper Gore to Bill and Melinda Gates. 

Sweet, now 56, said her own experience taught her the importance of having a wide range of support, because divorce comes with a lot of unexpected challenges, whether learning to handle household finances for the first time or taking on household repairs.

Many women also wait until the children are out of the house, or they are more stable financially, she says. Health experiences can also spur the decision to leave a marriage, Sweet says. 

“Someone will say ‘I had a knee surgery, breast surgery, and I just realized that maybe there was no one there for me after all these years that I've been there for someone else,’” she says. 

Part of the challenge in going through a divorce at an older age and after many decades of marriage, is that it's not just a legal event, but an entire life that needs to be redefined. There is the financial separation, the division of a home and possessions, changes in relationships with children and extended family, and the loss of an identity built around being married. For someone who has spent decades thinking of a spouse as “their person,” becoming two separate people can be disorienting—even years after separating, she says. 

“I've even had people who are 8-to-10 years out of divorce that are still—they would use the word ‘stuck,’—and just need a little help,” Sweet says, adding that her oldest client was 72. “Like how do I just let this go?”

Creating A Space For Yourself

When Elizabeth Nelson first started thinking about divorce at age 62, she didn’t have a plan for the future. She had been married for 31 years, and for most of the time, she says, things were good. They raised three children, and she was a stay-at-home mother for roughly two decades. But time passed and Nelson realized she wanted new adventures, even if they were on her own. 

“There was just that realization that our kids are getting older, and I'm thinking the world needs to get bigger for us,” she said.

Her husband, she said, was increasingly resistant to change. Their social circle became smaller, and he often did not want to go to new places or meet new people. Nelson began making plans with friends without him. 

At one point, her husband and son were in Texas, where the business was based, and she was with her daughters in Colorado, because of their school. She realized she was so much happier, and her life was easier. 

For Nelson, finances were not a factor in filing for divorce. Not because she was wealthy, but because it didn’t matter—in fact, starting over meant taking jobs that paid $13 an hour. 

“I figured I'd rather be poor and divorced and on my own, than beholden to somebody,” she says.

Nelson believes her experience reflects a broader shift among women who have spent decades raising families and managing households. There comes a point where women want to be more independent, and they realize—they can. 

After her divorce, she was in a five-year long-distance relationship, and when that ended, Nelson decided to focus on her community and her friendships. Now 70, Nelson eventually sold the house in Colorado, and used the proceeds to buy a place in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Although she says the transition was difficult, being divorced gave her opportunities that had seemed remote while she was married—traveling to Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico. She is planning to go to Italy for a month next year to visit a friend she met at work.

"I've lived more in the last eight years than I did in maybe the last 20," she said.

That sense of freedom seems to be a thread connecting those who divorce later in life. Sweet, the gray divorce coach, said the process can be slow, but she sees the accumulation of small acts of independence as important.

“Every single woman that I've coached at the end says ‘I cannot believe I feel this happy and this this good and have this sense of freedom that I never have had in decades,’” Sweet says.