Grey divorces on the rise: Divorcing after 60 to start a new life

Yes there’s always time to be happy. We are no longer willing to give up feeling good as demonstrated by the data on divorce in Italy: according to Istat data, the so-called “incidents” are increasing in our country gray divorceor those separations between people over 60.

The numbers show that marital instability is increasingly affecting older couples too and between 2015 and 2021 the divorces among over 60s have increased by more than 40%going from 6,131 in 2015 to 8,715 in 2021 in absolute numbers. Of course, these are not large numbers, but the direction of society is clear. We must also keep in mind that many people who separate, especially at that age, often leave without getting a divorce and therefore without being included in these statistics. But from 1974 to 2015, the number of separations among people over sixty went from 3.2 to 14.6%. And it is a phenomenon that cuts across social classes and geographical areaswith a prevalence of gray divorces in the south.

Abroad it is much more frequent, not to mention Hollywood where divorces are the order of the day. Among the marriages that ended at an advanced age there is that between Meryl Streep and Don Gummerwho after forty-five years of marriage without have decided to separate saying that their love had come to an end. It does not matter what they have lived together, their children and everything they have shared: if you are no longer happy together it is better to separate and try to find happiness again.

Divorce in Italy, why grey divorces are increasing

On the one hand, divorces over 60 depend on a longer life expectancythe factor that most influences this choice is the awareness of the right to happiness. Some want to wait for the children have grown up and “settled down” and very often it is precisely when the house remains empty that the couple no longer finds reasons to be together and share the house and life; others simply don’t want to settle and give up an “obvious” or “forced” life, especially knowing that once they reach sixty there may still be quite a few years ahead of them.

In short, it’s nothing strange if after a lifetime spent together, at a certain point you decide you don’t want to spend the last years of your life together. The only difficultyunderlined by sociologists, is the mutual care which is missing and which could become a new emergency in Italy where the welfare of the elderly weighs heavily within the family environment.

Source: Vanity Fair

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