Latest / The Conscious Divorce / Is Divorce after 50 worth it? (The Gray Divorce Explained)
Transcript
- Justin: Welcome to the Conscious Divorce Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Milrad. I'm a certified divorce coach, financial planner, and I hold an MBA from Emory University and have spent years working alongside some of the most respected professionals in the legal, financial, and mental health spaces who work with people going through divorces every single day. Beyond all that, I have lived this personally. I know what it feels like to sit in the middle of a life that is being completely restructured. at the core of everything we talk about on this show. But before we get into today's episode, here's a quick and important disclaimer. I'm not an attorney. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a financial advisor. Nothing on this podcast should be taken as legal, therapeutic, or financial advice. What I am is a guide. My job is to help you think more clearly, move more strategically, and build something better on the other side of this. All right. Now that we have that out of the way, let me ask you a question. I want you to really sit with it. Imagine you're 58 years old, your kids are grown, your marriage of 30 years is over. You wake up in a house that feels too quiet. Your retirement account just got cut in half and you're staring at an identity that was built almost entirely around being part of a couple. Who are you now? Where do you even begin? Or maybe you're a 34 year old listening to this and just got a phone call from your mom telling you that she and your dad are separating after 36 years and you don't know whether to be shocked or whether some part of you saw it coming. And you have no idea what this means for the holidays, for the grandkids, for the family you thought you understood. If either of those scenarios hit close to home, this episode is for you. Today we're going deep on one of the fastest growing and least understood trends in American family life, the gray divorce, the dissolution of marriages among people 50 and older. We're gonna look at the data, including some numbers that are more complicated than you might expect. We're gonna talk about why the gray divorce requires a completely different playbook than divorcing at 35. We're gonna go deep into the financial stakes, including a financial move that most people in gray divorce never think about. and we're gonna talk at length about people who rarely get a seat at this table, the adult children, the grandchildren, and the social ecosystem that gets caught in the middle. This is a conscious divorce podcast, whether you're 52 or 68 or 74 or whether you love someone who is, you still have a next chapter. Let's build it with intention. Let's start with the numbers. And I want to be honest with you here because the story is more nuanced than the simple headline you usually hear. You may have heard that the divorce rate in America has been declining. And that is technically true in some ways. The crude divorce rate, which measures divorces per thousand population, has dropped from four per thousand in 2000 down to about 2.4 per thousand in 2023. On the surface, that looks like good news. But here's what the numbers don't tell you. The primary reason divorce numbers look lower is that fewer people are getting married in the first place. If the pool of married people is shrinking, fewer divorces is the natural result. That is not the same as marriages becoming more stable. The marriage rate has dropped alongside the divorce rate. Fewer entries into marriage means fewer exits. On top of that, divorce is expensive, it's hard, it's emotionally draining, and some people feel like it's better for the kids to stay married. Well, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, but that's why the numbers are what the numbers are. When researchers at Bowling Green University account for this by measuring what they call the refined divorce rate, meaning divorces per thousand married women rather than per thousand population, the picture shifts. By that measure, the rate peaked at 22.8 in 1980, declined to 20.5 in 2008, and has continued falling. But here's what's notable. Between 2022 and 2023, the refined rate ticked back up slightly. and in absolute numbers, nearly 1 million women divorced in 2023, about 1.8 Americans total. That is not a small number. is going down, the honest answer is it's complicated. The rate per total population is down. Rate per married person has also declined overall, but may be beginning to stabilize or tick upwards. And the actual number of people going through divorce each year remains very high. And then of course, think of those who stay together for financial reasons and for the kids. Now here's where it gets unambiguous. For people 50 and older, the trend has been moving in one direction for decades, upwards. The divorce rate for adults 50 and over has roughly doubled since 1990. For people 65 and older, it has tripled. Research at Bowling Green State University found that older adults now face record high divorce rates and that 65 and older is currently the only age group in the United States with a consistently growing divorce rate. While younger cohorts are divorcing less, older Americans are divorcing more. Back in 1990, about 8.7 % of all divorces in the United States involved people 50 or older. Today, that number is closer to 40%. Nearly four in 10 people getting divorced in this country are over 50. The researchers who coined the term call it the gray divorce revolution, and they were not wrong. The second marriage factor. Here's a dimension of the story that does not get nearly enough attention and it's critical to understanding why the great divorce rate is elevated. their first marriage of 30 years. There are people ending their second or even third marriage. Professors at the University British Columbia and Texas Tech who specifically research gray divorce noted in an interview with CBS News, many of these gray divorces are actually second marriages and second marriages carry a dramatically higher divorce risk. The data puts a divorce rate for second marriages at 60 to 67%. compared to roughly 40 to 50 % for first marriages. For third marriages, the rate exceeds 70%. So what does this tell you? Well, it doesn't say that you shouldn't get married again. but it does say that you really should do the work on yourself and make sure your spouse does as well to improve the probability that you're gonna succeed. are two and a half times more likely to end in divorce than first marriages. And the median duration of a great divorce from a second marriage is 18 years compared to 29 years for a first marriage, which means a lot of divorces are not ending 30 year unions. They're ending 18 year second marriages, sometimes even shorter. Among those in second or higher order marriages who divorce gray, about 15 % have been married for only up to five years or less at that time. Why does this matter? Because the narrative around gray divorce often assumes we are talking about couples who built a lifetime together and are only now calling it quits. The reality is more varied. A meaningful share of gray divorces and second or third marriages that did not survive either. And the research tells us that people most at risk of gray divorce are precisely those who've already been through it once. So as we talk about the 50 plus population going through this, understand that we're talking about a diverse group. Some are entering first marriages of three or four decades. Others are entering marriages that came with their own complexity, blended families, stepchildren, step grandchildren, assets from prior marriages, inheritance expectations from multiple families. That layering of complexity is part of what makes gray divorce so distinct. Now let us talk about what makes gray divorce fundamentally different from divorcing earlier in life. A lot of people approach gray divorce as if it's just a regular divorce with older people involved. It's not. The playbook is completely different. The stakes are different. The timeline is different. The psychological complexity is in a different league. When you divorce at 35, you have 30 or more working years ahead of you. You have time to rebuild your career, your finances, your social life, your sense of self. When you divorce at 58 or 65, the runway is much shorter. You're more likely to have reached peak earning potential. Your assets are largely fixed. Scott Hansen, a certified financial advisor who writes on this topic for Kiplinger's put it plainly, divorcing after 50 is harder to recover from financially because you have less time and fewer tools available to rebuild. That compression of time affects every single decision you make. Think about what 30 years of marriage means in practical terms. Your finances are woven together in ways that took decades to create. Real estate, retirement accounts, pension plans, investment portfolios, business interests, stock options, deferred compensation, estate planning documents, wills, beneficiary designations. And in second marriages, you may have all of that layered on top of assets and obligations from a prior marriage. Financial advisors who specialize in gray divorce report that hidden assets come up more frequently in these cases than in younger divorces, simply because there's been more time for financial complexity to develop. The identity earthquake. After 30 years of building a life as part of a couple, you have to answer a question most people in great divorces have not asked themselves in decades. Who am I when I'm just me? Your identity in many cases has been constructed around someone's spouse, around a role in a family unit, around routines, traditions, rituals that all resolved around the two of you. Research shows that individuals who divorce after 50 exhibit more severe depression symptoms than younger divorcing adults. The complex emotions include relief, sadness, anger, and fear, and they are often processed against the backdrop of asking yourself whether everything you built together was real. the life you lived was what you thought it was, that is a heavy question to carry. In gray divorce, one spouse often loses healthcare coverage. If you were on your spouse's employer sponsored plan and that coverage is cut, you're looking at potentially enormous out of pocket costs at the exact stage of life where your medical needs are rising. COBRA is an expensive short term bridge. Medicare does not kick in until 65. If you were 55 and divorcing, you could face a decade of navigating healthcare on your own. Build this into your financial planning from day one. The social network disruption. When you've been part of a couple for 30 years, your entire social infrastructure was built around the two of you. Research from Rutgers University by Joslyn Elise Crowley, author of a book specifically on gray divorce, found a social penalty for men in particular. In many long marriages, women were the kin keepers. They invested the time and energy into maintaining relationships with family and friends. The husband relied on his wife to build and manage the social life. When she is gone, the social infrastructure often goes with her. Men who go through gray divorce are at a significantly elevated risk of becoming what researchers call kinless, completely disconnected from both family and social networks at a stage of life when those connections matter most. Now let's talk about the financial reality. Let me be direct here because the financial stakes in gray divorce are high and the window to course correct is narrow. Research published in the journals of gerontology by professionals Susan Brown and I.Fan Lin at Bowling Green found that men see their standard of living decline by about 21 % following a gray divorce. For women, the numbers are more severe. Women household income typically drops between 40 and 45 % in the year following a gray divorce. That is nearly half your household income gone. A 2024 study on food security and health outcomes using data from the health and retirement study found that food insecurity and disability both increase in the year of gray divorce and remain significantly elevated for up to six years or more afterwards. For women over 63 who go through gray divorce, poverty risk climbs dramatically compared to married peers. Some researchers put that risk nearly nine times higher. The magnitude of the financial exposure is real and lasting. talk retirement accounts and QDROs, otherwise known as the Quadro. any retirement plans governed by ERISA, which includes ⁓ 401K 403B plans, pensions cannot simply be divided informally. You need a document called a Qualified Domestic Relations Order or Quadro. That is a specific court order that establishes one spouse's right to receive a portion of the other's retirement plan. Without a properly drafted quadro, you could use your share entirely. Getting this wrong is not a paperwork inconvenience. It's a retirement security catastrophe. You need an attorney and ideally a specialist who specifically understands quadros. The family home trap. In many great divorce cases, the marital home is the largest single asset. And one of the most common mistakes I see is one spouse insisting on keeping the house without fully understanding the financial trade off. but if keeping it means surrendering a proportionate share of liquid retirement assets, you are trading long-term financial security for short-term emotional comfort. The house costs money to maintain, property taxes, utilities, repairs, insurance. If your income drops significantly and you're carrying a house built for a dual income household, the math will catch up with you. Be ruthless about this analysis. Let's talk about social security. If you were married for at least 10 years, you may be eligible to claim social security benefits based on your former spouse's work record, even after divorce. You can claim up to 50 % of their benefit without reducing what they receive. But the timing of when you claim has permanent consequences. This is not a decision to make without expert guidance. Healthcare coverage. If you are losing healthcare coverage through your spouse, you need a plan. COBRA is a short-term bridge, but premiums are often very high. Private market coverage before Medicare eligibility at 65 is available, but expensive. Build this cost into your financial settlement negotiations from the very beginning, not as an afterthought. The true cost of litigation. The median cost of divorce in the United States in 2024 is around $7,000. The average is 15 to $20,000, and this is per person. Highly contested divorces can cost over $100,000, sometimes into the millions. In a gray divorce with complex assets, a fully litigated battle can consume money that was earmarked for retirement. Mediation and collaborative divorces are not just softer options. They are often strategically smarter ones when you're trying to protect a fixed pool of assets. The gifting opportunity most people miss. Here's a financial planning angle that almost never gets discussed in the great divorce conversation, and it deserves serious attention. being assessed, divided, and restructured, that process is also an opportunity to think intentionally about transferring wealth to the next generation. The IRS allows individuals to give up to $18,000 per year per recipient without triggering gift tax consequences. That is the 2024 annual exclusion amount. For a married couple who has not yet finalized a divorce, that can be up to $36,000 per recipient before the split. Grandchildren, adult children, beneficiaries of all kinds. This is legal, legitimate, and often completely overlooked because people are so focused on the division itself. Beyond the annual exclusion, there are strategies around 529 college savings plan for grandchildren, direct payments for medical or educational expenses, which are exempt from gift tax, regardless of amount, and the transfer of specific personal property, furniture, jewelry, artwork, heirlooms. These are items that often become contentious in settlement negotiations, but can instead become gifts that are distributed thoughtfully before the financial picture is finalized. Think about the household items that have accumulated for over 30 years of marriage, a dining room table that belonged to a grandmother. a piece of artwork that your son has always loved, the set of tools in the garage that your daughter's husband could actually use. In a great divorce, these items often get fought over, not because they have enormous monetary value, but because they carry emotional meaning. Getting ahead of that by intentionally distributing meaningful items to your children and grandchildren, while you still have the ability to do so collaboratively, can reduce conflict and simultaneously a genuine legacy goal. Talk to your financial advisor and your attorney about the gifting angle early in the process. ⁓ It is one of the few financial moves in gray that can reduce the estate being divided, potentially reducing your overall financial footprint ⁓ and be an act of generosity towards the people you That combination is worth exploring. We're going to talk about the forgotten people. And I want to spend a significant amount of time on this segment because I believe it's the most under-reported dimension of great divorce, and in many cases, the most consequential for the long-term health of everyone involved. When we talk about protecting children through divorce, we almost always mean minor children. The custody battle, the parenting plan, the child support calculation. Adult children are legally invisible in this process. The courts do not consider them. Most divorce attorneys do not factor them in. This is a profound blind spot. Carol Hughes, a marriage family and child therapist who has written the definitive book on the subject says the effect of divorce on adult children cannot be overstated. These are people who have an emotional stake in their parents' marriage, their family structure, and their understanding of their own history. Divorce does not stop mattering when children turn 18. The stability shock and invisible grief. Your adult children, whatever their age, have built their sense of what family looks like around your marriage. Many of them have used your relationship as a reference point, consciously or not, for what a long-term partnership looks like. When that reference point disappears, it creates a kind of existential ground level uncertainty that can ripple into their own relationships. Research finds that parental gray divorce destabilizes adult children. They begin asking themselves questions that they had never had to answer before. What will the parent-child relationship look like going forward? How will the family traditions, rituals, and holidays survive? years, can fall apart, what does that say about my own relationship? And yet, they grieve largely in silence. Think about what we do when someone loses a parent to death. We show up, we bring food, we acknowledge the loss. When parents divorce, even after 40 years, adult children often grieve in silence. There's no ritual. There's no community recognition. There's often an unspoken expectation that they should be okay with it or even happy for their parents' fresh start. But they are experiencing real losses. The family home as a concept, the tradition around the holidays, the simple certainty of calling one number and reaching both parents. That grief is real and it deserves acknowledgement. The inherited shock. Let me say something that rarely gets said out loud. but that I hear from adult children again and again. Many of them had an inheritance expectation. Right or wrong, they had it. It's a natural result of watching parents build something over 30 to 40 years. Adult children who watch their parents live modestly, invest carefully, build equity in a home, accumulate retirement savings, often carry a quiet understanding that one day some portion of that would be theirs. Not as an entitlement, but as a reflection of what the parents had worked for to build and intended to pass down. Great divorce changes that calculus dramatically. Our retirement account that was on track to support two people in retirement and potentially pass something to the next generation gets cut in half. family ⁓ may appreciated significantly over three decades, gets liquidated or transferred. Legal fees consume tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds, possibly even millions in contested cases. What was once a meaningful estate can become a fraction of what anyone expected in a very short period of time. Adult children watch this happen and they often don't know how to process it. They feel guilty for caring about the money because it feels mercenary. But the grief is not really about the money. It's about the plans that were attached to it. It's about their own financial future, especially for adult children who are themselves in the expensive years of raising young families. It's about the idea that their parents' decades of work will be consumed by legal and financial processes that feel arbitrary and painful. the that divorcing parents need to sit with. Your adult children are right that this affects them. Their inheritance expectations were not irrational. The financial impact on your great divorce will extend beyond you and your spouse. It is not a reason to stay in a bad marriage, but it's a reason to handle the process as efficiently, as collaboratively, and as financially thoughtful as possible. every dollar consumed in unnecessary litigation is, in some sense, a dollar that came out of the legacy you were building for your family. The anger at a specific parent. Here's another dynamic that is rarely talked about, but that plays out in gray divorce families all the time. Adult children sometimes get angry, not just sad, not just confused, angry, at one parent specifically. When one spouse is perceived as a financial aggressor in the divorce, the one who is fighting hardest to take the most or who is perceived as having put the other spouse in a financially vulnerable position, adult children often have a strong reaction to that. When a parent who spends decades as a primary caregiver suddenly faces a 45 % income drop because the other parent is pursuing an aggressive settlement, the kids notice. When one parent is forced to leave the family home while the other retains it, the kids have feelings about that too. When one parent is seen as a cause of the divorce, whether because of an affair, a long concealed financial secret, or a series of choices that accumulated into a family crisis, adult children may direct real anger at that parent. They take sides. They may reduce contact. They may say things they can't take back. And that anger, left unaddressed, can calcify into a strange moment that lasts for years. Conversely, even when one parent truly did behave badly, the other parent weaponizing that with the kids makes things worse for everyone, including the kids. Research consistently shows that children who feel recruited into one parent's grievance against the other experience worse long-term outcomes, regardless of what they were told, how justified the anger might be. Adult children of gray divorce are not immune to this dynamic just because they're grown. ⁓ They are caught and that catching damages them. If you're going through a great divorce and you sense that your adult children are angry at your spouse or at you, the conscious move is to create space for that conversation, to listen without defending and to resist the urge to confirm their narrative about the other parent, even if every cell in your body wants to. The relationship your children have with each of you is going to outlast the divorce. Protect it for one another, protect it for yourself, and most importantly, protect it for your kids. The time tax on adult children. Here is a practical reality that almost no one prepares divorcing parents for. Your great divorce is going to take up your adult children's time, and they may not have it to give. Think about where most adult children of great divorcing parents are in their own lives. They're in their 30s and 40s, often the most demanding professional and personal years of their lives. They're raising their own children. They're managing their own mortgages, their own careers, their own marriages. They are, in many cases, already stretched thin. And then the phone calls start. Late night text from a mom who can't sleep. The father who suddenly needs help figuring out how to cook his own meals for the first time in 30 years. The request to mediate conversations between parents who can't speak to each other directly. The need to help one parent find a new living situation. The weekend visits that now have to be split between two households instead of one. The grandchildren who need to be managed around a new and awkward family structure. This is a real burden and it can generate real resentment. Not because adult children don't love their parents, but because they are being asked to absorb costs, emotional and logistical and sometimes financial, that they hadn't budgeted for. Some adult children, particularly daughters, find themselves stepping into a caregiver role for a parent who is suddenly financially or emotionally vulnerable after great divorce. The role was not part of the plan for this chapter of their life and it comes with significant costs. research the matrifocal tilt in gray divorce, meaning the pattern where adult children draw closer to mothers and pull away from their fathers after a split, reflects this dynamic in part. Mothers often reach out for support. Daughters in particularly respond. Fathers often retreat. And the resulting distance between fathers and their adult children can harden into something permanent if it's not actively addressed. If you are a parent going through a great divorce, here's what I want you to hear about your adult children. They love you, they want to support you, and they also have full lives of their own that are not on pause while you go through this. The most loving thing you can do for them is to build your own support system, a therapist, a divorce coach, a support group, close friends, so that the weight of your emotional processing doesn't land primarily on your kids. Get your own oxygen mask on before you reach for theirs. the matrifocal tilt in father isolation. Longitudinal research using 16 years of data from the health and retirement study found that after a great divorce, mothers become twice as likely to have frequent contact with their adult children. For fathers, the opposite is true. Fathers are about half as likely to engage regularly with their grown children after a split. And when fathers repartner, contact decreases still further. The Bowling Green researchers described it this way. A man who goes through great divorce loses not only a wife, but the conduit that connected him to his children. Because in many long marriages, it was a wife who maintained the relationship infrastructure of the family. When she is gone, the father is often left without the social architecture that held those relationships together. This is a preventable outcome, but only if fathers choose to be proactive, to reach directly, to show up, to rebuild those relationships on their own merits rather than waiting for someone else to manage them. For fathers who are navigating gray divorce right now, hear me. The research suggests you are at the highest risk of long-term family disconnection of any group in this conversation. That is not destiny, but it requires intentional action. Call your kids, show up for events. Do not wait for someone to facilitate it. Be the one who reaches out first. And for divorcing parents of both genders, your adult children need to be seen, not used. They need to be reassured, not recruited, and they need both of their parents to commit to showing up for graduations, the weddings, the births, and the holidays. Not as adversaries, but as two people who once built something together and who still share a love for the people they created. Your health is in the equation. Let me walk through the health consequences quickly because they are evidence-based and they are significant. A major 2024 study using data from the Health and Retirement Study found that gray divorce leads to increased in food insecurity, depression, and disability. And these elevated risks remain significant for six years or more afterwards. Depression rates among older adults going through gray divorce are higher than among younger divorcing adults. Emotional loneliness is elevated regardless of when in life the divorce occurs. And loneliness at this age is a documented risk factor for cardiovascular decline, cognitive issues and immune function. But here's the flip side and it matters. Sociologist Deborah Carr at Boston University who specifically studies the mental health impact of pre-divorce found that most older adults do recover their equilibrium after several months. And that recovery depends heavily on what the marriage was actually like. If it was a conflictual marriage, one that was emotionally unsatisfying or damaging, divorce often leads to fewer symptoms of depression and loneliness afterward, not more. Because of chronic stress, has been removed. Staying a deeply unhappy or abusive marriage does not protect your health. It undermines it. Leaving done consciously and with intention can be the beginning of a genuinely healthy chapter. The research also shows that women going through gray divorce tend towards problem-focused coping. Building financial knowledge, activating social networks, seeking therapy. Men are more likely to move towards isolation, avoidance, and distraction. If you're a man going through this, or you love one, that data should be a call to action. Build the support system deliberately. Don't wait until you are in crisis to ask for help. Your bodies are primary asset in the next chapter. Sleep, movement, nutrition, and stress management are the foundation that makes everything else possible. Divorce is one of the most psychologically stressful events a human being can experience. Taking care of your physical health during this process is not self-indulgence, it's strategic self-preparation. Let's talk about a conscious approach to gray divorce. All right. We've covered the landscape, the data, the financial states, the psychological complexity, the ripple effects of people around you. Now let us talk about what a conscious approach actually looks like, because this is a conscious divorce podcast and I am not in the business of leaving you in that problem. Conscious does not mean passive. It does not mean absorbing everything without protecting your interests. Being conscious still requires you to advocate for yourself, to get proper legal and financial representation, to understand your rights. It means being intentional and not being a pushover. Step one, understand that this is a long game. Every decision you make in this process will echo throughout your retirement, your health, and your independence for potentially 20 or 30 years. You cannot make those decisions based on how you feel today. Anger is not a financial strategy. The desire for revenge is not a retirement plan. Every time you feel pulled towards a decision driven purely by emotion, ask yourself, is this the decision I will be grateful for when I'm 75? The honest answer is no, slow down. Step two, build the right team. Great divorce requires a specific professional team. First off, I'm gonna tell you to get a divorce coach. They will be your thinking partner and they will help you work with your other resources with their highest and best use. It will save you a ton of money, a ton of anxiety, and you'll be much happier. Make sure you have an attorney with great divorce experience. Also a certified divorce financial analyst or CDFA who can model the long-term implications of every settlement trade-off. A therapist, it's not a luxury, but as a strategic resource. Clarity of mind produces better decisions. Explore mediation and collaborative divorce. These approaches are generally less adversarial, faster, less expensive, and produce settlements both parties are more likely to live by. When asset complexity is high, keeping the process cooperative is in everyone's financial interest. Step three, get proactive about gifting. As we discussed in the financial segment, the process of dividing your assets is also an opportunity to think about how you want to intentionally distribute things to people you love. Use the annual gift tax exclusion, make direct payments for grandchildren's education or medical expenses, Distribute meaningful household items in family heirlooms before they become battlegrounds. are acts of legacy, not just financial maneuvering, doing something genuinely good for your family. Step four, protect the family system. Do not share the details of your legal or financial conflict with your adult children. Do not ask them to carry your emotional pain. ⁓ speak about your spouse to them. Commit to showing up for the shared occasions, graduations, the weddings, the births. Your children and grandchildren deserve to have a family that functions, even if it's restructured. And be honest with yourself about the time and emotional burden you're placing on your kids. Build your own support networks so the weight does not land primarily on them. Step five, do the identity work. This is work no one around you will demand that you do, but it will determine the quality of every year you live from here. Who are you outside of this marriage? What do you actually want your next chapter to look like? Not the life you thought you were gonna have, not the life you think you're supposed to want. What do you actually want? This is a reclaim step. Excavate who you are underneath all the roles, then reboot. Build structures that support the person you're becoming. Then become. Step into the next chapter with genuine ownership. Step six, treat your health like an athlete. Sleep, movement, nutrition, and stress management are the foundation. Divorce is one of the most psychologically stressful events a human being goes through. Taking care of your body during this process is not self-indulgence. It's a strategic self-preservation mode. You cannot make good decisions, maintain relationships, or build a future from a diploma. always like using the example of the million dollar racehorse. If you owned a million dollar racehorse and you used it to run races and it was a little business of yours, would you feed it junk? Would you make sure that it was maintained properly, had the right healthcare ⁓ regimen? Of course you would. Well, think of your body ⁓ if you're the million dollar racehorse. Time for the U2.0 reframe. I wanna close the main content with a reframe because gray divorce more than almost any other form of divorce carries a narrative weight that is not always true. The narrative says, if your 30 year marriage ends, it was a failure. You wasted those years and you're starting over too late. The best years are behind you. That narrative is completely, utterly wrong. A marriage that lasted 30 years and then ended was not a failed marriage. It was a marriage. It had seasons. It produced children, grandchildren. It had moments of genuine love and real partnership. It shaped you into who you are today. The end of the marriage is not a retroactive verdict on all of it. It's the end of a chapter. One woman in the research described it this way. She did not view her 29 years of a mostly good and solid marriage as a failed marriage, even after the divorce. The marriage was what it was, and now something else is beginning. That is a posture I want you to carry into this. Not denial, not pretending the grief isn't real, but a recognition that the story is not over. That you are not too old to reinvent. That the next 20 or 25 years can be among the most intentional, most authentic years of your life if you choose to approach them in that way. I've watched people in their 60s build completely new purposes. People in their 70s, five companionship and love they had never fully experienced before. People emerge from gray divorce with a sense of self they had slowly lost over decades and finally reclaimed. You're not starting over, you're starting forward. With 60 plus years of experience, perspective and hard-won self-knowledge, that is a formidable foundation. All right, my friends, this is a wrap on today's episode of the Conscious Divorce Podcast. This one covered a lot of ground and I hope it gave you something useful. Whether you're navigating a gray divorce yourself, supporting someone who is, or trying to understand one of the most significant demographic trends reshaping American families right now. If today's episode hit home for you, please take 30 seconds right now and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Reviews are what help other people find this show when they need it most. And share this episode. Text it to someone. Post it. If you know someone going through this or someone whose parents are going through this, send it to them directly. You never know what someone is sitting with quietly. And of course, please, please, please subscribe. If you want to go deeper, both of my books are available on Amazon.com. The first is U2.0, Divorce a Better Way Forward. The second is a U2.0 Workbook, gives you the practical exercises to do the work we talk about on the show. Not just understand it, Both are available on Amazon right now. And if you're ready to talk where you are personally, offer a free 30 minute consultation. No obligation, no pressure, just real conversation about where you are and where you want to go. You can find me at www.reclaimandreboot.me. ⁓ I am Justin Milrad. ⁓ is the Conscious Divorce Podcast. Go build something worth having. Have a great day.