Gray divorce is the name researchers coined for adults aged 50 and older ending their marriage. They found that gray divorce doubled between 1990 and 2010. Currently, 36% of U.S. adults getting divorced are aged 50 or older.
Gray divorce couples may have minor children, adult children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. The shock waves can reverberate through four generations, destabilizing the permanence and family relationships everyone assumed would last a lifetime.
Family members touched by gray divorce often report feelings of loss, shock, disbelief, destabilization, overwhelm, aloneness, sadness, loneliness, and grief.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison’s depiction of grief encompasses all these feelings. “It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom, and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”