I knew marriage wouldn’t be easy. What I wasn’t prepared for was for it to be so lonely. There can come a moment where you no longer connect. Whatever you’re trying to say, you can do it plainly to their face, sign it, write it, Morse code it, or do a live television broadcast, but there is no getting through. Comms are down. It’s at that point I found myself among the growing number of middle-aged women getting divorced. I don’t quite feel like celebrating.

Across features, memoirs, podcasts and social media, divorce is presented as a story of reinvention and emancipation: a second act that you wilfully step into with newfound ‘radical clarity’ and a renewed passion for life. It’s become the alternative fairytale ending: a heroic rite of passage from which one emerges happier, stronger, better looking and finally self-fulfilled.

And alongside it come catchy little labels like ‘silver splitters’, before and after photos of ‘the divorce effect’ and even a 2026 seasonal trend called the ‘hot divorcée summer’. Four-times-divorced Jennifer Lopez has suggested we should throw a party when a relationship ends and describes break-ups as a ‘launchpad into your next best self’. And by all means, grab hold of all the positivity you can.

But the danger is that reinvention can become another obligation. It’s as if we’ve replaced one prescribed narrative with another: marriage as the route to fulfilment, divorce as the route to self-actualisation. Just as marriage was not ‘the answer’, divorce isn’t either. It cannot guarantee a shiny new chapter or a better version of yourself.

A 2025 report on midlife British women, Beyond the Break: The Truth About Divorce in Midlife for Women, compiled by NOON for Mishcon de Reya and Julius Baer International, presents divorce as ‘a reinvention’. It found that 31% of the divorced women surveyed reported feeling the happiest they’d ever been. It’s encouraging, but look closer. When the same women were asked which single word best summarised their experience, the most common word was ‘sadness’. The second was ‘relief’. More than a quarter of these women cited domestic abuse or violence as a factor in ending their marriage. In this context, happiness might simply mean ‘safe’.

Leaving a marriage isn’t always the decisive act it’s made out to be. You might have spent years in torturous liminality, or reality may have suddenly intervened. And with children in the mix, it’s not just your happiness at stake. The new you isn’t the priority. Legal & General’s 2025 research, The Divorce Gap, found that women’s household income typically falls by about half in the year after divorce, against 30% for men. That can mean downsizing with the kids and trying to go a lot further on less.

Naively, I imagined a graceful exit where everyone emerged better off and damage was minimal. It wasn’t an option. ‘No matter how hard you try, all plans go to shit,’ said a friend. The best advice I was given. The Beyond the Break report also found only 29% of the divorced women surveyed said they understood their financial situation beforehand, only 9% had taken advice, and around half said they didn’t get the support they needed. It’s not intentional design; it’s disorientation. And a horrific amount of paperwork. Divorce is the most tediously administrative full-time job I’ve ever had, and I’m actually paying to do it.

And there’s co-parenting. You might have romantic freedom (if you have the time, energy and inclination to enjoy it), but you’re still permanently tethered together, trying to stay even-handed while explaining how this ‘train wreck’ came to be. And because my kids are little and love sharing with strangers, I had a full month of them telling anyone and everyone that ‘Daddy is living in a hotel’, at a time when I wasn’t quite ready to discuss it with most of the people I knew, let alone the general public.

Some days you’re brimming with vitriol. Then suddenly, nostalgia hits. The good bits come floating back like a little carousel of highlights: the excitement, the adventure, the love, the shared laughter watching your kids do or say something utterly ridiculous. If you were feeling lonely during the marriage, this is worse. It’s just a different kind of loneliness. No matter how much you may have wanted out, there’s an odd aftershock to actually being on your own. I spend a huge amount of energy trying to project certainty amidst the chaos. It feels bizarrely dishonest and even more isolating.

Often divorce is about survival. It can be brutal, traumatic and complicated. The clarity is knowing that you have to leave, not something to be gained by doing it. Yet divorce is increasingly presented as the ultimate act of self-empowerment, with the implication that women must turn suffering into growth. As if simply surviving isn’t enough. If you don’t emerge as a new and improved version, you’ve somehow failed not only at marriage, but at divorce as well.

And that bothers me. I’m all for self-betterment, but my sense of self was there before marriage, throughout it, and still is now. I don’t need divorce to give me an identity I never lost. For me, it’s about adaptation, not reinvention. I didn’t marry to complete myself, but to build something new with someone else, and failed mission or not, I got a lot out of it.

Do I like the idea of a final order glow-up: revitalised, rejuvenated, sharply dressed with a face radiating joy? Yes. But current reality is looking more like emaciated, medicated, in faded tracksuits and a touch dead behind the eyes. Midlife tends to ask big questions with or without a marriage ending. Getting through it with a sense of self, faculties intact, and kids still thriving is asking enough. It’s not a narrative I get to own because I don’t know how it plays out. Nobody does. The rest can come later.