It’s possible women are just more willing to see reality. “Wives tend to be more confrontational and direct in acknowledging marital problems, whereas husbands evade or ignore conflict,” wrote the authors of a 2014 study on the topic.
About two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women, and the divorce rate for Americans over 50 has doubled in the past three decades. One in four divorces now involve people older than 50. This wave of “gray divorce” is putting a huge financial burden on the baby boomer generation as it approaches retirement. The overall divorce rate, meanwhile, has been holding steady, with about half of marriages ending in divorce.
Older marriages can have problems that younger marriages don’t. Retirement may put stress on a marriage, for example. When spouses stop working, they can end up spending a lot more time with each other, for better or for worse.
The average couple in Stokes’s study had been married more than 35 years. Even after decades, those marriages were still in flux, Stokes found. Comparing the 2009 and 2013 results, he found the participants’ views had shifted, with a husband's positive perspective on the marriage, for example, tending to improve his wife’s, or a wife’s negative view damping her husband’s estimation of their union—or vice-versa. (The shift was statistically significant but not great enough to narrow the gender gap overall.)
In other words, if you’re not into your marriage, it can be contagious. You’re going to show your dissatisfaction, consciously or unconsciously, and that can taint your spouse’s view. If you like your marriage, you’re likely to show it by being a better mate, the results suggest, and your spouse may gradually come to see your union in a better light.
“Even in these long-term marriages, it’s not that everything is set in stone,” Stokes said. “There’s still give and take.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.