I think the mid-late 60s were a huge watershed socially. Lots of the people I know – older business associates, relatives – who were pre-baby boomers, had very short young marriages that collapsed in the early 70s. Many of them went on to have long, loving second marriages, but some didn’t.
I believe the people in my cohort – call us mid/late boomers – who married relatively late (25+) and have high educational attainment have a fairly low divorce rate. But if there is an uptick in late divorces, maybe it’s in part because in our cohort so many more people didn’t get divorced at younger ages.
My father-in-law left my mother-in-law the day after my wife, their youngest child, graduated from college. They were both in their late 50s. He was already in another relationship with a younger woman, although he denied it at the time. My MIL never remarried, or even really re-dated; she felt abandoned and betrayed permanently, which was sad to see. My FIL married his girlfriend a few years later, and remained married to her for almost 30 years, the rest of his life. The relationship lasted just about exactly as long as his relationship with my MIL. Honestly, my FIL’s second wife was a better match for him, and she stuck around through years of very tough medical problems, far past the time when her relative youth mattered.
I know my own parents’ marriage survived some infidelity on my father’s part, probably in their 30s, as my father got more successful (and better looking), and my mother, stunningly beautiful in her early 20s, became obese. I wasn’t aware of any tension at the time, though. My brother found out about it some years later and told me, but I never wanted any details. I never discussed it with my parents, except after my mother died and my father had incipient dementia my father sometimes talked about keeping away from the woman involved (who remained a family friend) to avoid having her try to have sex with him.
Among my really close friends, roughly 55-65, there are only two divorces, and both of them happened a long time ago. I also know two long-term homosexual partnerships, male and female, that broke up before they were allowed to marry. Only one of the break-ups happened after age 50. In both cases, the central issue was whether to have children. In both cases, the partner who wanted a child (or more) is now happily married and has a child (or more). Among my relatives, I know of only one divorce that happened after age 45, and that was a situation involving diagnosed mental illness and abusive behavior. Among my law partners (<20, ages 40-80), all have been married, and only two have ever been divorced.
I know more marriages that have been through a lot of turmoil, including infidelity and tragedies involving the children, and survived, at least so far. Some I thought were certainly headed for divorce, with open infidelity, awful tragedies affecting children, terrible economic reverses.
