Husband Had Affair and Filed for Divorce After Family Death
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CIA Director David Petraeus resigned from postal service over extramarital affair.
En español | By now, it's an sometime story: one-one-half of a loftier-profile and long-married couple — usually the human being, truth be told — admits to having an matter. Sometimes, the couple'southward marriage tin withstand the adultery; other times, the alienation of trust is besides deep, and a split or divorce ensues.
David and Holly Petraeus don't fit the mold, say, of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, since Holly Petraeus has non been nearly equally prominent equally her military-hero-turned-CIA-chief husband of 38 years. And we don't know, still, whether their marriage will survive.
Only what we do know is that while questions of infidelity take hold of the most headlines, having an extramarital affair is not what'due south backside the breakup or divorce of most long-term relationships.
The AARP Sex, Romance and Relationships Survey on the sexuality of people 45 and older establish that extramarital affairs happen for only a relatively minor number of couples. So while infidelity is certainly the precipitating factor in some marriages declining, it'southward not the reason in most cases.
Why do so many long-married couples decide to carve up? How can people be so happy for so long, just to then have the matrimony plow sour in what are supposed to be their "golden years" together?
In most cases, the reasons are far less dramatic. Some relationships have been in refuse for decades and finally lose all their juice. A marriage doesn't usually just blow upwardly. It'due south more like a airship that has been seeping air for a long fourth dimension. After a while, it's totally deflated.
Another possibility is that a couple'due south issues intensify. Well-nigh problems are manageable, but and then something sends them into hyperdrive. It could be a change in jobs, health, children's lives, personal ambitions or any number of other triggers. Any balance had been achieved is undermined, and with it the ability to handle the issue and still take a decent wedlock.
Of course, we've all heard the familiar phrase, "We grew apart." Simply only because it's a cliché doesn't hateful it'due south not a common cause of divorce or separation amidst long-time married couples. A typical scenario is where a hubby and wife alive increasingly unlike lives: He gets more and more than into his work, she gets more and more into her children, her developed children, her grandchildren. Or she gets ambitious and he wants to relax, cut down, travel, and play golf game.
Lack of advice and loss of trust are also issues that can seriously push a marriage toward divorce. I doubtable that it wasn't and so much an affair that sent Maria Shriver heading for the door, just more than the fact that her married man had deceived her for so long. On superlative of that, she is dealing with public humiliation — equally well equally the destabilizing presence of a child. It is a rare relationship, of whatsoever length, that could confront these factors and continue on.
Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of marriages are non presented with such mega challenges. However, plenty of breakups occur after a relationship of many years. Although some people are able to negotiate the inevitable bumps in the road, for others those bumps plough into a sinkhole — something that they cannot seem to climb out of. Sadly, and often with great affection for each other, the couple say "enough."
And, aye, couples are saying that more than often these days. Why?
The reply is longevity. We alive so much longer now. Half a century ago, an unhappy couple in their mid-60s might have stayed together considering they thought it wasn't worth divorcing if they had only a few years left to live. Now, 65-twelvemonth-olds can easily envision at to the lowest degree xx more agile years — and they don't want them to be loveless, or full of frustration or disappointment.
And then, of course, we're at present looking at the aging of the boomers. They're different from the 50-twelvemonth-olds who lived earlier them. In previous eras, couples soldiered on even if they were very unhappy. But boomers gave upwards on the concept of the dutiful-simply-unhappy spouse a long time ago. They were the originators of a higher divorce rate, and while that divorce rate has slowed, we may be seeing a fasten as people ponder whether or not they will stay with their spouses into farthermost onetime age.
Then, yes, there are plenty of reasons why a couple who take been married for 30, forty, fifty-fifty fifty years might break upwardly. And although we don't celebrate divorce in this country, we are not agape of it, either. This now extends to our golden years, too.
Discuss: Why Practice Couples Divorce Afterwards 25 Years or More?
Did you or someone yous know divorce after a long-term union? What were the contributing factors and what advice would yous give other couples struggling to hold it together? Leave a annotate beneath or hash out in Belatedly-Life Divorce discussion in the AARP online customs.
Source: https://www.aarp.org/relationships/love-sex/info-06-2010/naked-truth-long-term-marriages-end.html
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