On Woman’s Hour recently, Anita Rani and her guests set out to celebrate the positive sides of a woman’s midlife. Forget the crisis: your forties and fifties could instead be a time for change, a refresh. You could take up a new hobby, they said, or a new exercise regime. Or you could get a divorce!
What’s alarming is that this sort of discussion isn’t unusual. I regularly spot articles in newspapers and on social media that talk about divorce as if it’s just the latest wellness trend. They usually go like this: a middle-aged woman walks out on a long marriage and insists that she’s never been happier, that she’s free, that she’s ‘starting a new chapter’ in her life. She then demands through a rictus grin that you be happy for her. Here’s one headline: ‘I love my husband. That’s why I’m divorcing him.’ Is that supposed to make everyone feel better?
In the past decade, 62 per cent of divorces in England and Wales were initiated by women.
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