Silver divorces are more common among couples where women have health issues. Does your personal experience support this study's findings?

leosandlattes · 2025-03-27T19:12:37+00:00

My boyfriend's grandma wakes up at 5am to drive her husband to his dialysis appointments 3x per week, and the clinic is 2.5 hours away. She will never leave him in a million years (or however long they have left).

Meanwhile my grandpa started fucking mistresses when my grandma became sick. And they are from a "traditional" non-western country. So.

SnowyCherryBlossoms · 2025-03-27T21:39:30+00:00

My grandfather looked after my grandmother after she developed dementia for years.

TermAggravating8043 · 2025-03-27T19:36:55+00:00

Even if the last study had an error in its numbers, the results aren’t wrong.

My mum had a conversation with a nurse about her social circles when she got diagnosed with breast cancer. My aunt got the same but unfortunately it came true for her, her husband of 30+ years didn’t outright leave her, but he became unbearable to live with, he started bullying her, he refused to pick up her meds, he berated her for not doing housework, she ended up moving in with us for help whist she was recovering. He then also claimed she left him so she was evil etc and he had a new women in the house less than a month later.

What’s worse is this guy had a motorcycle accident about 10 years ago, he spent 4 years recovering and had to learn to walk again, she was by his side the whole time, fed him, cleaned him, but he refused to take over the domestic chores or help her get into the shower or car when she needed help.

Nephilim8 · 2025-03-27T19:33:56+00:00

There’s a video that looks at a bunch of these studies. They’re all over the place. Some of them found that divorce was more common when the man was sick. Others showed increased divorce regardless of which one was sick. Others showed a reduced chance of divorce for both genders.

Gilmoregirlin · 2025-03-27T23:20:43+00:00

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, I was single and I heard over and over again how lucky I was to have a strong female support system who came with me to appointments and be single. It was basically told that a lot of women with cancer get left. And reading some of the support groups I belong to I am sure glad I am single! That’s not to say it’s all men. There are many men who are supportive and will stay but a lot don’t. Luckily I am cancer free now.

DeputyTrudyW · 2025-03-28T03:58:06+00:00

At my last job, I didn't sign up for the 401k program because I'm long time separated, not divorced. The HR lady told me that legally my husband would be entitled to the money. Years ago they had to make it that way because so many men would leave their retirement to some side piece and the actual wives and children would be devastated. I knew a lady who in her fifties was dx with cancer, her husband divorced her quickly and ran off with his secretary. She had to take up a waitress gig while being a paralegal during the day. Recently I saw a headline where a man was too embarrassed of his hoarder house so he let his wife of decades die in her own filth, took about a week for her to die. Oh and one more- my aunt died young and it was horrific. My mom had a memorial service for her and her BIL, my dead aunt's husband, was rushing it along because he had a date after.

anna_alabama · 2025-03-27T19:26:22+00:00

All of my grandparents (on both my side and my husband’s side) have been through several major medical crises later in life. They are all very in love with their spouses and divorce would never become an option, ever. My husband and I are younger, gen z, but I have disabilities. My husband has been taking care of me since I was 18.

Outside_Memory5703 · 2025-03-27T22:57:03+00:00

My grandfathers wouldn’t have divorced my grandmothers

They just wouldn’t have done anything. Caring was womens work

On the other hand, I have seen men in my life care for their demented wives, although in most couples the husband died first and was cared for by his wife at home. The kids and nursing homes then get to take care of mom

SnooMarzipans8221 · 2025-03-28T04:13:48+00:00

Anecdotal.

My aunt has been a nurse for 30+ years. She's told a bunch of stories about wives in critical conditions or diagnosed with difficult to treat illnesses with husbands that barely care/never showed up/or started affairs. The couples' ages range from late 20s to late 60s.

Shinta85 · 2025-03-27T19:25:18+00:00

The only people I know that would even come close to fitting the bill here (health issues at an advanced age) would be my in-laws. My FIL basically does everything for his wife to his own detriment at times. He had massive open heart surgery and while he was in the hospital she falls and breaks her leg. They get home a few weeks later and he immediately becomes the caretaker. She refuses to rehab and even try to improve and just rolls around in a wheelchair 80% of the time and orders him to do pretty much everything around the house. Even still she talks down to him enough that it is noticeable to the people around them. I wouldn't fault anyone, man or woman, in that position if they decided they have had enough but he seems determined to stick it out.

I honestly hate visiting them because I can't stand to see how she treats him.

Zabadoodude · 2025-03-27T22:03:18+00:00

My grandparents had a rocky marriage. They argued a lot and both said they mainly stayed together for the kids. When my grandmother got ALS and became paralized my grandpa really stepped up and was her round the clock caregiver for the final years of her life.

If these studies are correct, only about 20% of men divorce their wives after they become seriously ill. So statistically, cases like my grandparents are still 5 times as likely as it is for the husband to just bail.

wizardnamehere · 2025-03-28T02:52:35+00:00

We inspected three health dimensions: self-rated health, Global Activity Limitations Index, depression.

Hmmmm. It's worth being careful here.

Depression is a confounding factor (in that being depressed may have a casual effect on initiating divorce or a cofactor/sign you're in a bad relationship)
The data doesn't include who initiates divorce.
The difference between divorce rates of male in poor health vs female in poor health are very small.
The sample is pretty small.
There is a lot of 'cleaning up' or narrowing of the population which makes me suspicious and is worth going carefully over in the methadology.

I'm sure this will go on death ears in this sub, but the lesson on the retracted 'In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life' paper was that scientists should be careful about combing through data to find results they think are interesting or expected based on preconceived notions.

You're not doing your intellectual health any favours by searching up papers coming to conclusions you agree with. Read them carefully and think about what sort of evidence it provides, THEN have a look at the general state of the literature.

abaxeron · 2025-03-27T20:31:18+00:00

and it's not in favor of men either.

Curious.

We utilized data from the European Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement (SHARE), spanning Waves 1 (2004–2005) to 9 (2021–2022), and employed discrete-time event-history analysis to model the risk of silver splits, separately among couples aged 50–64 and 65+ (N = 31,915 and 48,361 couple-years, respectively)

The dependent variable examined was the occurrence of divorce or union dissolution among couples who were either married or in a relationship (n = 275).

...Okay.

Confidence intervals for predicted probabilities are at 83.4%, whereas those for the AMEs are at 90%.

...Okay.

Average marginal effect difference 0.4% in two years.

Killewald's paper observed 0.8% per year effect difference of women divorcing their husbands for losing full-time employment (at 99% confidence, controlled for housework and children... Oh, and income). And blue pillers were hooting that the number is insignificantly low.

Do you have any personal experience on the topic?

No; basically all older women I know, are widows.

Sharp_Engineering379 · 2025-03-27T21:06:34+00:00

I work with middle aged men and my anecdotal experience is that middle aged and senior married men will try to cheat or claim they only stay for the kids and grandkids after their wife “lost interest in intimacy”.

They phrase this in a dozen different ways, but the invitation to cheat with a grizzly old man twice my age is dangled out a few times per month.

Seems to depend on the nature of women’s illness. If it’s reproductive or sexual in nature, men are going to leave, especially if he can guarantee a replacement hole.

SIL is a geriatrician, and she just hired my high school best friend to work as a social worker/ liaison for nursing homes and supported care facilities for “divorcées”.

LevelCaterpillar1830 · 2025-03-27T20:07:08+00:00

From what I've seen, divorce seems to be more common when the man loses his financial capabilities and also more likely when the woman loses her physical capabilities. But, then again, it's still overwhelmingly dependent on the specific circumstance.

Electric_Death_1349 · 2025-03-27T20:16:21+00:00

This does not tally with my personal experience, having known a number of older men, including my father, who cared for their wives during periods of sickness and physical decline.

I’m not disputing that it does happen, by I think this is one of those subjects where the data tends to reinforce personal prejudices.

justJezabel · 2025-03-27T21:27:09+00:00

My mum is a doctor and we talked about this, sadly it's quite common as soon as the wife gets the diagnosed ... affairs or divorce...

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LoudPiece6914 · 2025-03-27T23:35:27+00:00

The only experience in my personal life I have with this is a woman, divorcing her husband when he got sick, but she was right to do so. She stayed to raise all their kids into adulthood, he did his job to provide for the family but he was always a dick. He always made an effort to be nice to all the kids but we could always see he upset her and he was a dick who was at least nice to the kids who his kids interacted with.

Most of the time I don’t think it’s right for people to divorce when their partner is sick. You make a vow to stay together in sickness and health. But I also think if your partner was not abusive, you can fulfill your responsibility to take care of them in their time of need and not stay in the relationship. Ultimately, I think men who leave their wives when they get sick should be criticized in most situations.

Jetpine9 · 2025-03-28T00:34:28+00:00

Personally no. I've seen friend's parents where either the man or the woman supported an ailing spouse (severe alcoholism was involved in each case). Not always happily, but they stuck it out. I know a bunch of Gen X couples where the woman is seriously ill, to the point of needing assistance with nearly everything, and taken care of by her spouse.

Peter_Andre_IQ · 2025-03-28T09:24:45+00:00

I guess men still have higher income while sick so it's a worse deal for a woman to leave a guy. We shall see how it will change once women will be having equal income. I personally haven't heard about any other case of divorce apart from guy developing depression and being left after becoming financial burden.

Lower-Director1043 · 2025-03-28T15:47:59+00:00

Now do a study how many women leave their husbands or boyfriends because in their imagination they don't feel the spark anymore or got the ick, or they felt overwhelmed .

MotherPermit9585 · 2025-03-28T18:23:23+00:00

My dad didn’t divorce my mom when she became ill but he didn’t help her much either. Almost all of her medical appointments fell on me. She slowly worsened until she ended up in a nursing home and he rarely visited her there. Life is complicated and I would never say that my dad is a bad person or even that he was a bad husband. He was actually a great father when I was a kid.

But yeah, that study doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think society does an adequate job of socializing men to be caretakers for their family members. Working in healthcare I often see this scenario where even the ex-wife (or wives lol) come back and help a dying man. It’s more often the daughters and daughter-in-laws than the sons too. I don’t believe it’s because women are naturally more caring. Men are also capable of strong emotional bonds and caretaking but there’s something wrong with the way society views these roles and so many men don’t feel like it’s “their place” to step up. They just kind of passively step aside and allow others (or no one) to pick up the slack. Or at least this is what I’ve seen in my family and in the hospitals on average. Interestingly gay men or feminine-presenting men ime are much more likely to take active roles in caring for their parents and other family members.

tacticaltossaway · 2025-03-27T21:02:00+00:00

The dependent variable examined was the occurrence of divorce or union dissolution among couples who were either married or in a relationship (n = 275). Specifically, we defined a couple as having experienced a divorce or separation if one partner reported being single or divorced at Wave t, but they both reported being married or cohabiting at Wave t − 1. In instances where the couple was not observed at Wave t − 1, we considered data from Wave t − 2 (or the earliest available wave).

Methinks being the man being dead may be influencing their counts. That is: a woman with a deceased partner will likely report being widowed rather than being single or divorced. The questionnaire has widowed as a normal option.

Interestingly, such gender inequality did not emerge among couples aged 50–64 when depression is taken into consideration: issues with depression in either partner elevate the risk of union dissolution.

If you uh, look at their graph for depression, this is not the case. If you scroll back up it even says

The AMEs confirmed that the presence of depression in just one partner significantly raised the risk of a silver split; however, the increase in risk was not significant (though slightly elevated) when both partners were depressed.

In which they conveniently don't mention gender. Looking at the chart shows why.

No-Rough-7390 · 2025-03-28T02:25:52+00:00

Depends on how long the guy has put up with a sexless marriage.

NockerJoe · 2025-03-27T20:17:56+00:00

As a man actually dating someone with a diagnoses that bad a lot of people really don't get what the negatives of it are. Women here love to weaponize this shit in a really gross way but I don't blame anyone who can't handle it. This shit is hard and every single problem in your relationship gets magnified 100x unless both people actively work on it.

People like OP who wave about boomer couples like this to weaponize it have literally never been there and it shows, because you've never actually had to watch both how that kind of struggle can seriously change someone, and how being involved will also change you and very often not for the better.

But somehow despite it all one of the worst parts is invariably the middle aged women who try to either weaponize people in your position for gender wars, or else congratulate you in a way that means a lot for them despite not knowing you or your situation because you've basically locked yourself in as some kind of vague provider figure.

Maffioze · 2025-03-28T08:09:14+00:00

I think the conclusion is uncertain and overly simplified. You don't know whether men struggle more with declining health in their partner as it can be mediated by women struggling more with their own declining health which then leads to a response in the male partner. I can also be related to women having more people they can share the caretaking load with.

When you take a very cynical view you could argue that women have a financial incentive to stay together until their partner dies while men's incentive to do this is lower since they are usually the more wealthy party.

ImaginaryDimension74 · 2025-03-27T21:33:33+00:00

Wives tend to outlive their husbands. A wife who supports her husband with health issues will likely inherit all his wealth. That is often a powerful incentive to stick by his side.

Clean-Luck6428 · 2025-03-27T20:43:40+00:00

Correlates with my experience… with older couples.

Wives of previous generations genuinely see their husband’s growth as something that they have sunk costs in. They feel there is a correlation between their investment in their partner and their partner’s success. Most of these women will respond to their man with a setback to try and recoup the losses as she sees these losses as partially her own.

That said my sister shamed my mother for helping my dad try to find a job when he lost his. My sister would leave her husband if he got sick no question. I feel this is generational

Feisty_Report7848 · 2025-03-27T19:04:27+00:00

These wives went through their partners' poor health and long-term unemployment.

Women are scorekeepers in relationships, first and foremost. She wanted the man to owe her, and she wanted him to know he owed her.

Women do not, and never will, love men. The moment they stop having fun and the marriage becomes a chore, they dip. Because they have no character.

Kaisern · 2025-03-27T19:28:32+00:00

20% doesn’t sound that high to me, it’s probably similar to the amount of women who divorce a man if he loses his job

Various-Complex7118 · 2025-03-27T23:38:20+00:00

If they were measuring the change in divorce rate wouldn't this just mean that the odds of the man filing for divorce are now closer to equal with the amount women file for divorce? Im also a little confused by why women are upset by this when you are the ones always saying you should divorce your spouse for any and every reason? I guess that only applies when men are the ones harmed by divorce?

Title	Silver divorces are more common among couples where women have health issues. Does your personal experience support this study's findings?
Author	EulenWatcher
Upvotes	11
Comments	135
Date	March 27, 2025 6:56 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1jlbkt4/silver_divorces_are_more_common_among_couples/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/silver-divorces-are-more-common-among-couples.1547833 https://theredarchive.com/post/1547833

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