Divorce Rates Higher for Older Couples When Wife Becomes Ill

Excerpted from an article in Tech Times:  Divorce Rates Spike Among Older Couples if Wife Becomes Sick

"For older married heterosexual couples, the risk of divorce increases when the wife becomes seriously ill but such is not the case when the husband does.

According to social scientists from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and University of Michigan, wives who experience health crises such as heart problems, cancer, stroke and lung disease increase the risk of divorce. Curiously, husbands who experience these life-threatening illnesses do not pose the same effect.

The researchers analyzed 2,717 marriages in the Health and Retirement Study from 1992 to 2010. These couples started out healthy in their marriages and how the onset of a serious illness affected the quality of their marriages were measured in the study."

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This study did not analyze why this is so, but researchers speculated that gender norms around caregiving may play a factor.

Duh. You think so!?!??!!

Both Richard and I were surprised and reassured that he was able to be so selfless when my pain condition was at its worst.  He had never been tested like that before.  He was not only selfless, at times he was heroic.

But I always thought that he was the exception.  I have heard from a few blog readers that they too had heroic partners.  I have heard from many more that their (male) partner fit better somewhere on the awkward to negligent scale.

However, to put the entire blame on the male partner or on gender norms misses the way the couple is intertwined and operates as an integrated system -- with each move balanced by countermoves.  The couple dance is a complex one, honed over years of practice.  Illness plays a new tune and requires that the dance change and that couples adapt with new moves.

Illness puts a terrible strain on relationships.  And couples rarely have either the support or the education they need to adapt and weather illness together.  When the well partner feels sustained and engaged, both partners are uplifted.  Likewise, if the well partner is disregarded and disengaged, both partners will sink.

When I appreciated Richard's efforts, he felt seen and needed and could use that to bolster his caregiving efforts.  When I disengaged from him and chose isolation rather than connection, he too distanced.  When we talked about what we each were going through and needed from each other - there was more life force available from which we could each draw.

Has your partner disengaged?  How does that effect you?  Have you given up on him (or her) and sought support elsewhere?  Have you found ways to re-engage with your partner?

Post-Illness Readjustment

Do you know any couples who have had this experience?

She develops cancer. Or he has a heart attack. One is seriously ill and the other moves into serious caretaking mode. Whether it's love or resilience or luck, they not only manage the illness effectively, they manage to relate to each other in empathic ways. The love they started with seems to expand under the pressure of illness. In fact, they may even say that illness showed them strengths in each other that were invisible before.

Then normalcy sets in. Maybe it is ushered in by recovery or by adaptation to a new way of living and relating, with illness.

One would imagine that the couple would welcome some stability and would take their illness-induced lessons and apply them with more love and vigor in this next phase.

But the lessons don't hold, and the relationship falls apart.

They start picking at each other. Bickering over the insignificant -- refilling ice cube trays, shutting the computer off when not in use, leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor.

Things escalate. The arguments get louder. Old grudges surface. Dues for favors done years ago are expected to be repaid now.

Or maybe things get quieter. So quiet that soon there is nothing left to talk about. And no interest in creating new experiences.

The couple who did so well during illness can't cope with the new normalcy. They become like soldiers who discovered their aliveness in battle and can't return to the averageness of civilian life.

Do you know couples like this?