Women Divorcing at an Increasing Rate over Fifty

I promise to be more up on marriage in future blog posts!!!  However, I came across an article about an increasing number of women getting divorced over fifty and that sixty-six percent off divorces over fifty are initiated by women.

However, before I discuss and link to the article, I would like to discuss why I bring women “choosing” to be single in a web site that is trying to help many women to get married.   For both genders marriage is more work than being single.   A good relationship requires a lot of work.   However, the statistics show that while most men are happier in marriage then in single life, the statistics are less clear-cut for women.    For women, there seems to be more of a range of happiness among married women depending on the quality of the marriage.     Of courses it is my female bias that the reason men as a group are happier in marriage then women is that is that in marriage the man is clearly benefiting from the women’s caregiving and nurturing while the woman is worker harder because she has a man who will require some attention.

Here is the link to article about the increasing number of women of women divorcing over fifty.   As in my previous post about women single by choice, many of the same factors are at work.   Women are more financially independent than they used to be and no longer “need” to be married then like they had to be in previous times.   

I know some women who either are divorced or contemplating divorce over who are over fifty.   These women fall into two groups.

One group is women who are initiating the divorce because of the bad behavior of the husband (I.e. drinking, gambling, abusive behavior).     Often time the man has had affairs but does not want to leave his wife.   Often these marriages were bad all along and perhaps with the children grown there is a feeling that there is no need to stay together anymore.  

Another group may be the female version of the mid-life crisis.    I have heard that women have higher expectations of marital happiness then men.   Some women get restless and wonder if there is something/someone better out there.