Granma, What Big Eyes You Have!

This is a new phenomenon, one we've not heard much of before because it simply hasn't happened in the numbers that are now showing up. Older, much older and even elderly women deciding after decades of marriage (generally to the same man) that they've simply had enough. And no more, thank you very much. Leaving their unsuspecting spouse of many years of shared experiences good and bad, to fend for himself. For that, generally speaking, is what occurs; women tend to take singlehood more in their stride than do men long accustomed to having a woman in their life to tend to the minutae of daily existence.

Women tend by nature to be more inclined to have a coterie of friends on whom she can rely for company, conversation and comforting. Men tend to be more reserved, less likely to have a circle of friends on whom they can rely to fill in the now-yawning gap in their lives. As a species with two distinctly other sensitivities and sensibilities the genders really don't reflect one another all that closely. Women gather around one another to give emotional support each to the other, while men are more likely to sit at home, perplexed and lonely.

A new book, entitled "Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over" by Deirdre Bair, singles out this new social cataclysm, and informs her readers of various particularies in a number of older women's lives which somehow propelled them to the decision to launch new lives unencumbered by their spouses' presence. A woman, for example, in her 80s no less, married for 50 years who seemed to all onlookers to reflect a contentment with her partnership with her devoted husband, suddenly reaches the conclusion that life might be better without him.

Nothing in particular appeared to precipitate this decision; the 80-year-old abandoned her marriage, it would seem, because she felt she "could not go on living the same old life, in the same old rut, with the same old boring person". Ouch. I wouldn't care to let myself temporarily into the thoughts of that "old boring person" to whom she referred, her ex-husband of a half century. While it's conceivable that he might have viewed her to be a "boring old person", it's more likely that his wife's decision was a devastating one for him, and most certainly for his potential longevity.

One other woman was described as having been married for 53 years, always been a housewife, had no financial security, and had just undergone an organ transplant. She related to the author that she felt "I don't know how many years I have left; I just know I don't want to live them with him". To which I can only sigh, how did you manage for that half-century-plus, for heaven's sake! If, after that length of time there was no kindling of a deep abiding love and respect, no depth of comfort and exchange of utter concern each for the other, it was an unfortunately failed marriage, no matter how long it survived.

All of a sudden, for these suddenly-transformed elderly feminists, the concept of freedom or having more control over their lives has erupted and they have fixated on that potential. At that age, I would venture to ask, freedom to do what? Experience whatever life now has in store, the undesired episodes as well as the triumphal experiences without someone near and dear with which to share? Control precisely which aspects of your life that you cannot now account for? Could one's spouse tetchily refuse the other opportunities to expand horizons, at this stage of the game? How the hell did you manage to put up with it for all those years without screeching "no more!", or without gently teaching your partner that your life is yours to do with as you will, partnership aside, up until now?

We learn through this recently-published book that it's conceivable that a lack of ability to communicate one with the other might possibly be the source of the problem. Imagine living with another human being in such close proximity, in a tight personal duality - where was the sensitivity to the other's needs and aspirations, emotions and wishes? If communication was lacking or inadequate doesn't it take two to dance? That late-life divorces featuring elderly wives leaving their husbands has become an "epidemic" in North America and Europe is an amazing social failure, a cultural shift of critical proportions.

In my own mind's eye I see a lot of lonely and lost people. Certain at a critical time in their lives that they were doing the right thing - finally - for themselves, and caring not a whit about the welfare of that singular person with whom they have shared a lifetime. Elderly women appear to have signed on to a trend where, for example, there are greater numbers of women in the U.S. living without a spouse than ever before; some 51%. Mostly these represent a new breed of women, post-feminism, who have somehow procrastined a tad too long about the possibility of marriage and child-bearing, who have missed that life-experience-duality , or decide not to re-marry, or trying out co-habitation determine it's not for them, and finally just settle in to permanent singlehood.

This all strikes me as somehow sad beyond words. An unwillingness to experience the comfort of sharing a deep and abiding love with another human being. The possibility of raising children together. Or just living harmoniously and pleasurably together, sans children. Rather than focusing on an exaggerated view of self, of wishing to prolong a kind of expanded childhood leading into single adulthood with no one special to be companionable with, to share with, to view life with. Does this bespeak a selfish gene? Or, one who feels comfort in their own sufficiency. Or shades between.

As for older women...why this late-age wrenching decision? Was marriage so utterly intolerable? These glumly lugubrious admissions of intolerance for the intolerant bespeak exactly what? Other than to amply demonstrate the iniquity of human nature...