It's Over

I looked on with curiosity as the tourist paced back and forth in front of the hotel, towing his rolling suitcase. A bellman often sees some strange behavior in Las Vegas, so it didn’t make a big impression. Then I remembered the envelope the pretty woman gave me no more than a half hour ago.

“Excuse me sir. Is your name Donald?” I asked the man. His forehead was sweaty and he appeared to be very nervous.

“Yes, yes. My name is Donald. Do you know where my wife is? She was supposed to meet me here a half hour ago. She wanted to try her luck at poker table one more time. I’m getting scared that something has happened to her. It’s not like her to be late.”

“She told me I might see you here and that I should give you this envelope.”

Donald tore the envelope open and read the note inside. After the minute it took to read it, he let it fall to the ground, walked over to the taxi stand. He opened the door for himself, threw the suitcase on the seat and followed it into the cab. The vehicle shot out of the driveway and onto the Strip.

I picked up the discarded envelope and note and saw that it was written in a bold cursive style that read as follows:

“Donald, I’m sorry if my disappearance caused any panic on your part, but I felt as though there was no other way out. I needed to escape our marriage and going home with you to discuss it would have only prolonged the inevitable end. You would have tried to save a lost cause with suggestions that we get counseling or try some other hopeless intervention. I’ve cashed in the airline ticket and will be flying to another destination – not home. You will find that my sister has removed all my personal belongings from the house. My lawyer will be in touch to begin divorce proceedings. I presume that all of this comes as a great shock to you, but that is really the whole point. You never seemed to grasp what I was feeling or what I was looking for in our marriage, so I took this drastic action as a last resort – the only way for me to make a clean break and a clean start. You should see it as an opportunity to do the same. Patricia.”

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Gray What?

You know it’s trouble when they have a catchy name for it. I’m talking about “gray divorce” and that means over-50 marital splits. Apparently, divorce among the 50 and over crowd has doubled from 1990 to 2010. Must have been a rough decade. But the trend continues.

What accounts for this development? Get in line to spout your own theory: boomer self-centeredness? Sick and tired of your spouse? Endured a bad marriage long enough? Hanging on to your youthfulness? Whatever the reason, divorced boomers face an upside and a downside. The upside is the opportunity to stake out a new life, create new friendships, pursue new hobbies and interests, etc. The downside is when you split all the assets, someone gets the short end of the stick and both have less retirement income that can be shared. Being partnerless can make health issues more challenging as well.

And despite the fact that they often come out on the short end of the stick asset-wise, boomer women are more apt to initiate divorce than boomer men. The easy assumption there is that the men don’t want to give up an arrangement where someone cooks and cleans for them. But the truth may be that women are much less tolerant of an unfulfilling/bad relationship.

Some have speculated that boomers are divorce prone because we continue to invent ourselves and thus reinvent the institution of marriage. We changed premarital sex, we changed birth control, we expanded our sexual repertoire, and we made divorce acceptable, so it stands to reason we’re reinventing late-life marital options, and divorce is on top of that list.

It has also been said that our sense of duty (in sickness and in health, til death do us part?) and confidence in the sanctity of marriage is just not the same as what our parents expectations were. To that we say, whatever!

So in the end, the choice is self-fulfillment or loyalty. Tough choice. Especially when you were raised to think anything is possible and when you see something you want, go for it. If I were a demographer, I would be betting that we will be seeing a lot more single baby boomers in our future.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Breaking Up Is Not So Hard To Do

Boomer break-ups in the news have most likely given many boomers pause. What causes boomers to go splitsville after 25, 30 or more years? Who wasn’t a little shocked to hear that Al and Tipper threw in the towel after 40 years?

Maria and Arnold? That’s easy. He was known as a serial groper and she must have been in denial about that from day one. But Al and Tipper dated in college and represented the quintessential couple that lasts---until they didn’t any longer. Did they really come to that place where they wanted to go in different directions? They just had enough of each other and thought it was time they went their separate ways to pursue separate ambitions? If it could happen to them....

The conventional wisdom is that boomers are used to getting do-overs and second chances, so there’s no reason not to go for it and pursue their dreams in life’s second half. A Pew Research Center study found that baby boomers were less inclined to remain in an unhappy marriage than their adult children-- by a 66% to 54% margin.

We’re reinventing retirement, so it should come as no surprise that we are taking another look at how to achieve the happiness we want later in life. Not ones to drag our carcasses over the finish line, just to prove that we could do it, boomers apparently have something better in mind. Some observers see a parallel to the way boomers led the way into a sexual revolution.

Who’s at risk here? College-educated couples who married young head the list, followed by unhappy couples who strived to produce happy kids. Then there are the “what-happened” couples who don’t know where the love went. Just behind them are really old people who are plain fed up. Last, but definitely not least demographically, are the trophy hunters-- men and women who just think they can do better than what they’ve got.

Married couples have most likely always been challenged by the “grown apart” phenomenom. The only difference now is that many baby boomers are clearly not going to accept this as the status quo. Once each partner is less vested in the other, boomers are more inclined to break the chain and seek the happiness they feel they deserve.

As I’ve said many times before (thank you Harvey Fierstein), “Is that so wrong?”

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.