I’ve recently met a few men whose marriages ended after 25, 27, even 30 years together. Those numbers stayed with me. Before I even get to the ending, I find myself thinking what an achievement that much shared life seems to be.
Then comes the part I can’t quite get my head around: after all those years, they split up.
I don’t mean that a long marriage creates an obligation to stay forever. I’m curious about how the decision happens. Twenty-five years is such a long time to know another person, to keep making plans together, to have an ordinary day and then thousands more. What changes enough to bring that to an end?
My first question is probably the obvious one: if it wasn’t working, why didn’t they leave earlier? But even as I ask it, I realize I’m assuming the ending explains everything that came before. I don’t know whether these marriages were unhappy for years or whether something changed much later.
That’s the part I’d like to hear about from someone who has lived it. Was there a particular event that made the decision clear? Had the conversation been coming for a long time? Or did one person arrive at a point the other never saw approaching?
From the outside, I keep thinking about everything they must already have weathered together. It makes me wonder what was different about the thing they couldn’t get through—or whether that’s even how they would describe it.
If you left a marriage after decades together, what made that the moment? What happened between knowing someone for half your life and deciding you were going to spend the rest of it apart?
