It’s still hard... but a break-up when you’re over 50 is so much easier
Two nights after my partner of four years ended our relationship out of the blue, I found myself away on a bank holiday weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday.
I couldn’t renege on the invitation, but I anticipated attending with a heavy heart. The prospect of a swift recovery from the break-up was unlikely. I’ve been through several and found all of them crushing.
I’ve never bounced back easily from heartbreak. I loved Mark deeply: starting such a wonderful relationship when I was 52, when I’d been expecting to see out my days alone, had seemed an unlikely stroke of good fortune.
But when I woke up in that seaside B&B in Northumbria, I was surprised to greet the day feeling chipper and ready for a cooked breakfast, rather than inclined to spend it under the duvet weighed down with misery.
‘I’m waiting for it to hit me,’ I confided to my friend Netty. ‘And when it does, it won’t be pretty.’
She chivvied me along, like the stellar friend she is, and I waited each day for the emotional grenade to explode. I kept expecting the black dog of despair to ruin my day, but it didn’t.
Instead I was thinking optimistically about my future, realising that saying ‘yes’ to new opportunities might help me salvage something positive from this situation.
As I tucked into a slice of wI Victoria sponge on the last day, I felt excitement about what might come next in my life. I might get the dog I have longed for, I thought, and commit to a long-distance walk.
Since that Northumbria weekend, I’ve had lots of time to reflect. Before we’d split, we’d arranged a five-day house swap in the Borders.
I went by myself anticipating a difficult time, given I’d be on my own in a strange place. Instead, I spent a lovely few days walking by the Tweed, lingering in book shops and feeling content. So far, so unusual.
Five months on, I wouldn’t say I was happy and can’t deny there have been tears, but where I expected overwhelming sadness, there has been a confidence I can work through this.
All of which brings me to the realisation that being older (I’m 56), wiser and more self-assured than during the break-ups of my younger days gives a lie to the received wisdom that breaking up gets harder as you age and a split after 50 is a disaster.
Instead I feel an unexpected peace of mind; a sense of new possibility I hadn’t anticipated feeling in middle age.
Maybe having less time in front of you than behind forces a more forward-looking response to loss than when you’re young.
SINCe my father’s death three years ago at the age of 78, I have a more focused view of life: if I die at the same age as him, I have only 22 years left. I don’t feel I should waste that time in a slough of despond about a boyfriend.
perhaps the losses accumulated over decades of life make us more resilient to whatever life might throw at us next.
when I broke up with my first love at the age of 25, it did feel like the end of the world. He was my university sweetheart, a handsome, rebellious, troubled boy from Norfolk, with whom I had a six-year relationship until, scared by his recklessness, I felt I had no choice but to walk away.
Nothing had hurt as much as that, but then I had lived so little. Three decades later, scarred by miscarriage, illness, three breakups and the death of a parent, I have developed resilience.
In my case, it may be that spending so long single has made being alone comfortable. I wanted children and spent my 30s hoping to find the man with whom that could happen.
when my boyfriend of three years ended our relationship just before my 34th birthday, I went into an emotional tailspin.
I’d assumed we would marry and have a family until the night he came back to our home in Glasgow to tell me he was seeing someone else and wanted me gone immediately.
I remember wasting away, deadeyed on a diet of Silk Cut, for at least a year after that.
Clinical psychologist Dr Sally Austen says: ‘A single woman hoping to have children may feel pressure to find Mr Right and invest time in the relationship before trying to conceive.
‘A break-up that means this process has to start all over again can be devastating, the sadness magnified by negative thoughts about never being able to have a family. when we are older and beyond the point where we are thinking of starting a family, we grieve solely for the relationship, which is painful, but simpler.’
My friends and I agree the older we become, the more fatalistic we feel. while I try to travel in hope, I have experienced enough, good and bad, to believe I’ll survive most things as long as I have family, friends, health and a kind view of the world.
ACCepTANCe in no way detracts from how I felt about Mark. we had been together since 2012, tentatively at first as he struggled with grief after his wife’s sudden death.
The reasons he walked away are complex: suffice to say on a couple of fundamental issues, we saw things differently.
But the time we spent together was, for the most part, happy, and there are times when I miss him beyond words. Believing I needed to keep busy and try new things, I went to an astronomy club and met some friendly people who showed me Saturn for the first time.
I joined a walking group; did a class at the University of York during which I started writing my first novel; booked a trip to South Africa; and signed up for a 192-mile walk across england.
‘As we age, we gather more baggage,’ says Sally Austen.
‘whether it’s our finances, families or health, it is a matter of some luck as to whether we can share someone else’s load.
‘Heartbreak in later life may be tempered by a relief that this baggage is gone.’
Five months on, I’m emerging from this chapter with hope intact. Mid-life is like an obstacle course, leaving us feeling vulnerable about what future we might face. I take heart that despite our accumulating frailties we are often stronger than we believe.