There’s an old saying, ‘Men are from Mars, women are from Venus’.
And when it comes to divorce, you won’t be surprised to hear that men and women couldn’t be more different in their approach.
Cassandra Kalpaxis, who has worked through hundreds of divorce cases in her 14 years as a family lawyer, says men and women who initiate divorce generally do so at different stages of life.
Men, she finds, are most likely to leave unfulfilling marriages in their seventies. They usually ‘hang in there’ 15 to 20 years longer than unhappily married women who throw in the towel in their late forties and fifties.
Wives are often blindsided when their 70-something husbands call it quits, as they assume they are both too old for divorce to be a realistic option.
There are many reasons why men decide to break up at 70, but Cassandra finds it is usually because their own parents have died and they feel free to separate without causing family disappointment.
She finds many of these men were never convinced of the benefits of marriage in the first place, and only got hitched because that’s what they were expected to do.
‘A lot of people in this age bracket married to check it off the list,’ she tells me.
Cassandra Kalpaxis, who has worked through hundreds of divorce cases in her 14 years as a lawyer, says men and women who initiate divorce generally do so at different stages of life
‘In many cases they didn’t love the women they married – but they don’t perceive it as living a lie; they look at it as fulfilling their duty.
‘They lived their life wondering what their father would think if they walked away.’
Cassandra has heard countless stories from older men who have endured a lifetime of marital misery and who, if they had been young today, would never have married.
‘They tell me if they didn’t marry they would have been considered the black sheep of the family,’ she says.
‘They say they didn’t have the luxury or marrying for love, that they never wanted to marry anyone at all.’
A common refrain of these older male divorcees is that while they may have made a life with their wife, they want to be on their own in their final years.
The wife’s reaction is often total devastation: ‘In these cases the women are usually extremely shocked, they didn’t see it coming.’
This isn’t the only reason men divorce their wives in their seventies. Sometimes, in retirement, they go through a ‘post-employment crisis’; they look for excitement and their marriages are often discarded during this time.
‘In their mind, they are in their twenties – they need that thrill. They might say things like their wife will no longer sleep with them,’ Cassandra says.
Some men struggle with their wives getting older, whereas women tend to be more tolerant of their ageing husbands, the lawyer adds.
‘Women are happy to play nurse to their husbands and help them when they get old and ill. Men, I find, are less likely to be able to get through these moments.
‘They don’t want to stop living to care for an elderly partner.’
Cassandra finds that men who initiate divorce are most likely to do so in their seventies, while unhappily married women tend to do so 15 to 20 years earlier. The actor Robert De Niro filed for divorce from his wife Grace Hightower in 2018 at the age of 75 (they are pictured in 2014)
As for the age when women are most likely to leave their husbands, it’s usually in their mid-forties, which is when they ‘stop caring what others think’.
They no longer feel obliged to stay married out of a sense of duty, and they start to seriously consider whether the man sleeping next to them is the person they want to grow old with over the next four to five decades.
Cassandra says most unhappily married women decide their marriage is over by their mid-forties but generally don’t ask for a separation until their early fifties.
‘One woman I saw was so anxious to leave her husband of 30 years, but knew it was what she needed to do if she wanted to be happy,’ she tells me.
The woman thought she would be single for the rest of her life, and asked Cassandra to arrange the divorce so she could live independently in her later years.
Then she unexpectedly found love – and the new relationship made her realise just how unfulfilling her first marriage had been.
‘She came in and said, “I can’t believe I waited my whole life to experience happiness with a man who loves me,”‘ Cassandra recalls.
In the case of a marriage breakdown such as this, when it’s purely dissatisfaction with no violence or infidelity involved, Cassandra says the process is relatively easy.
‘Once the other party gets over the initial shock, things usually work out smoothly.
‘People don’t want to fight about assets, their kids are grown up, they just want to walk away the easiest way possible.’
Cassandra advises the first thing you should do if you are contemplating divorce is to have an open and honest conversation with your spouse.
But if there is abuse in the marriage, skip this step and go straight to a lawyer and make a plan to have the conversation safely.
Cassandra has a strict definition of ‘safety’ in the context of asking for a separation.
‘When I ask a client “is it safe”, they should be able to say with confidence that they have free access to their finances, they can come and go from the family home without being questioned, they have access to their phone with no scrutiny over whom they contact, and they are safe from physical harm,’ she explains.
Some clients, when they finally bite the bullet and broach the topic of divorce, are surprised to find out their spouse actually feels the same way.
The conversation could even head in a positive direction with both parties deciding they are willing to work through the problems in the relationship.
Men are less likely to leave unfulfilling marriages until much later in life, waiting until their seventies to make the move. Women, by contrast, tend to throw in the towel much earlier
‘Many people, especially people who have had children, feel disconnected. They feel like they don’t know the person they are married to anymore,’ Cassandra says.
‘This is because they haven’t taken the time to keep that connection. And they could find it is still there – they do still like each other.’
In some cases, Cassandra has helped people through a divorce only to learn later they decided to remarry after a period spent living apart.
Cassandra is the author of the book Dignified Divorce, which teaches unhappily married people how to separate from their partner and ‘keep it out of court’.
In Australia, couples have to be separated for 12 months before they can apply for a divorce. They also need to be citizens or consider Australia to be their permanent home or have lived in Australia for 12 months before lodging the application.
Both parties in the relationship can file for divorce, or it can be a single application. Any property matters and decisions about dependent children must be finalised before a divorce can be settled.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk