Last week a Survation study on midlife women and divorce revealed that more than a third are ‘happier than they’ve ever been’. Some even said that the breakdown of their marriage had been ‘the making’ of them.
Others talked about a ‘rebirth’, a sense of ‘relief and excitement’, about becoming ‘the person they’ve always wanted to be’.
Oh dear. This will not go down well in certain quarters. This is dangerously subversive stuff. Midlife women who are divorced are not supposed to be whooping it up and having the best time of their lives; they’re not supposed to be thriving – they’re supposed to be weeping into their knitting, or desperately scrabbling around for the last single man still in possession of all his own functioning appendages.
They should be hanging their heads in shame, lamenting the end of their useful existence as cooks, nursemaids, housekeepers and counsellors to the opposite sex. Instead, here we are (and I am), not just surviving but thriving, even having the time of our lives. It’s absolutely outrageous.
After all, isn’t it the case that, as Rousseau, the great philosopher of the Enlightenment, once said, ‘The whole education of women should be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honoured by them… these are the duties of women at all times, and what should be taught them from their infancy.’
Not any more. Well, not exclusively, at any rate. There are of course plenty of people – both men and women, and certain cultures too – who still abide by that notion. And for many couples that dynamic – woman as carer, man as provider – works very well, or at least it appears to.
But for many it doesn’t. Or it does for a while, then something happens to disrupt it. Sometimes it’s a trauma that either brings a couple closer or drives a wedge between them. Sometimes it’s nothing as dramatic or as specific, just a general divergence of emotions and desires. Sometimes it’s an affair, or affairs. Sometimes it’s just too much water under the bridge.
In the past, men held all the cards in these circumstances. Financially, socially, culturally – it was almost impossible for women to just walk away from an unhappy, loveless or even toxic marriage. Most women simply didn’t have the earning power or the access to the jobs market that they have today.
‘No wonder so many divorced midlife women remain single: we’re confident, opinionated, unimpressionable,’ writes Sarah Vine
Even my mother’s generation found themselves putting up with deeply unpleasant or faithless marriages for the simple reason that they just had no other option.
That is no longer the case. Women may be derided by men like Jordan Peterson and his ilk for succumbing to the siren call of feminism, but the truth is, when all is said and done, women’s lib has, and continues to, set us free. If we want to, we can be the architects of our own destinies – just like men have always been. We have choices now – and we are voting with our feet.
What’s interesting, and what this study shows, is the different responses of men and women to this new reality. Men seem to really struggle on their own – and often enter quickly into new romantic relationships. Women also struggle, of course – but they are less likely to take up with new partners. They look for fulfilment elsewhere, sometimes in rather baffling places such as cold-water swimming, for example, of which there seems to be an epidemic among midlife divorcees.
Then again, it probably says something that midlife women would rather jump into a freezing- cold pond full of foul-smelling algae than share a bed with a man.
This may also have something to do with the fact that the pool of suitable men for women my age is very small indeed, more of a puddle. In my limited experience, at least, your average 58-year-old bloke tends to fancy himself with someone a lot younger. That may be about looks, but it also has to do with how much less biddable older women tend to be.
A midlife woman isn’t looking for someone to raise a family with; she’s menopausal or post-menopausal – she’s past all that. She’s not a people pleaser; she’ll laugh at a man’s jokes, but only if they are actually funny.
No wonder so many divorced midlife women remain single: we’re confident, opinionated, unimpressionable. In other words, every man’s worst nightmare.
Feminism alone is not to blame for this; the menopause has a bigger part to play than people realise. So much that’s said about it focuses on the physical effects.
But what people forget is that it has serious emotional and mental effects, too. Namely, that you suddenly wake up one morning and realise you couldn’t care less what anyone thinks of you any more.
All those nice, nurturing hormones have run out. No more insecurity, brain fog or running around trying to keep everyone happy. That self-conscious, selfless, subservient person has vanished, and in her place is someone older, wiser – and less inclined to put up with everyone’s nonsense.
I love Kelly’s eyeful
Model Kelly Brook is part of the line-up of this year’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
I’m not really watching I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (is anyone?) but I can’t escape the inevitable sight of Kelly Brook, left, in a bikini. What’s that old saying… a dead heat in a Zeppelin race? There is also something so joyous about seeing an authentically sized woman with an authentic-looking face for her age on screen. Shame the same cannot be said for some of the other contestants.
Isn’t it interesting that in the week a former Reform MP is jailed for taking bribes from the Kremlin (he was paid around £5,000 a time to read out parliamentary speeches urging Ukraine to negotiate with Moscow), the President of the United States – a friend, we are told, of Nigel Farage – issues an ultimatum to President Zelensky to… negotiate with Moscow
More gender drug madness
The NHS is embarking on a puberty-blocking trial involving children as young as ten
Why is the NHS embarking on a puberty-blocking trial involving children as young as ten? A much better course of action, surely, would be to track down those hundreds of individuals already living with the consequences of being treated with these drugs via the NHS’s now discredited Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London – and gather data from them. Or are they afraid of what they might find?
Chancellor Rachel Reeves at a Tesco supermarket in Earl’s Court, west London as she prepares to speak about inflation statistics from the Office of National Statistics
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, laments that she is ‘sick of the mansplaining’. I hate to say it, but there are just as many women as men who would be keen to explain to her why she’s useless at her job.
Good to see that the mastiff that savaged Tom Parker Bowles’s Jack Russell terrier Maud has finally been muzzled in public. I wish the same could be said of the aggressive dogs that populate my local park. There is a simple solution to this problem: bring back dog licences and make obtaining one contingent on passing a training course. After all, a dog is like a car: in the wrong hands it can be lethal.
Only abusers should feel shame
I was deeply moved last week by the story of Trudi Burgess, a 56-year-old teacher whose partner, Robert Easom, left her paralysed after he flew into a violent rage. Even after he had snapped her neck – which he contends he didn’t intend – he forced her to tell the paramedics that they had been ‘play-fighting’, whining that he couldn’t risk going to prison.
She told the court: ‘I felt sorry for him… my children would know what their mother had been through, and I was so ashamed.’ Those last words, ‘I was so ashamed’ is so often the tragic response of victims, and why so many stay with their abusers. They blame themselves, sometimes even believing that they deserve it, and don’t tell anyone. They shouldn’t be ashamed. The only people who should be are the pathetic, insecure men who use violence to bolster their flaccid egos.
Christmas is the season of good will – unless you are a member of the RMT (the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers’ union), which has just announced a series of rail strikes timed to ruin the festive fun for as many people as possible.
