Is divorce over 50 harder on men?

In keeping with a global trend, divorces among New Zealanders over 50 are on the rise, most commonly initiated by women.

The end of a decades-long heterosexual marriage brings different challenges to each party, with women tending to pay a greater "financial price", while men pay a greater "emotional price", says Jocelyn Elise Crowley, author of Grey Divorce: What We Lose and Gain from Mid-Life Splits.

"[Adult children] really tend to side with the mother after a grey divorce and therefore, there were much more difficult and negative consequences for the fathers," Crowley tells Sunday Morning.

In general, the men and women Crowley spoke to for Grey Divorce felt optimistic about their future and hopeful about living the next 20-30 years in relative happiness, she says.

According to her research, the biggest reasons for wanting a divorce differed between the genders.

For men, she found the three primary reasons for seeking a divorce (in order of significance) were growing apart, cheating by their wives, and having different financial goals or ways of managing money.

For women, it was cheating by their husbands, their husbands' addictions (often to drugs, alcohol or pornography) and experiencing abuse (more often verbal and emotional than physical).

Women who initiated divorce were primarily searching for happiness, freedom and independence from their ex-partners, says Crowley, who is a professor of public policy at Rutgers University.

"It's not that they're trying to find a new life with a new partner. They just want happiness on their own terms."

For women, "brutal" economic consequences can get in the way of building this, she says.

"Women have to go back to work and, later in life, they worry a lot about making sure that they have enough in their savings to ultimately retire."

Divorcing men over 50 also spoke about wanting independence and freedom from their ex-wives, Crowley says, but more so than women, they viewed divorce as "a chance to start over".

"There was this idea that somehow, even though they went through this horrible divorce in their 50s, they would be able to press the reset button."

Divorced men's dreams of happiness were often stymied by "incredible social strain", Crowley says, including the loss of relationships with friends and family members, and damaged relationships with adult children.

While she was researching Grey Divorce, many men told Crowley she was the first person they'd spoken to about the experience.

"Most of the men that I talked to didn't realise the tidal wave of grief that they were experiencing, until that moment. They were incredibly grateful for the opportunity to release some of those feelings."

Although we assume people in their 30s and 40s understand the complexity of adult relationships, Crowley says divorce can be just as hard on adult children as on young children.

"If they feel somehow abandoned, if they feel somehow that their world has been shaken, that can be a trauma and produce profound psychological effects for those individuals in their 30s and 40s."

When a couple over 50 divorces, Crowley says children very rarely blame their mother. More commonly, she found, the relationship with their father was disrupted and took time to rebuild.

"[Adult children] really tended to side with the mother after a grey divorce and, therefore, there were much more difficult and negative consequences for the fathers."

When it comes to repartnering, over-50 fathers also had a harder road getting approval of their new partners, Crowley says.

"If the adult child has had a strong relationship with their mother and that mother repartners, they're likely to be more approving of the partner, more comfortable with the new partner and so forth.

"If the father takes on a new partner, that child is more likely to be somewhat hesitant in their relationship with the new partner.

“It might take a lot more for that adult child to warm up to the new partner, so I think, in that case, fathers face much more difficult circumstances than mothers."