RETIREMENT & LIFESTYLE PLANNING      Baby boomers need to plan their transition into retirement for  Financial Security     Active Health Management  Emotional Wellbeing  Maximum Self Esteem ISSUE - 18 - SUMMER 2003

Women who brave their husbands’ anger and leave the comforts of a long-term marriage face many challenges.

For months after Joanna left Bill, her husband of thirty years, she suffered agonies of grief and guilt. Her insides felt like the water-wall at the National Gallery in Victoria- tears constantly falling. Resolve floundering, she nearly went back to Bill many times. In spite of his bitter fury and resentment at being abandoned she still loved him, yet deep down she knew he would never - could never - accept the person she had become.

Since the children had left home Joanna’s world had opened up in an extraordinary way. She had taken an arts degree with honours, embarked on an exciting new career and discovered a gift for public speaking - all at a time when Bill was anticipating early retirement, a better golf swing and extended travel. He did not share his wife’s new-found lust for life. In fact, he felt threatened by the joy and stimulation she was obviously experiencing and belittled her achievements. In the end, Joanna could not bear the thought of giving up the journey she had embarked upon and instead gave up Bill.

Joanna is not alone. A small but significant number of mature, modern women are changing their lives in ways that almost certainly would never have occurred to their own mothers at the same age and would definitely have horrified their grandmothers. After many years of running a home, nurturing children, supporting a husband domestically, socially and professionally, often while holding down a job at the same time, they are taking stock. It is as if, says psychologist Dr Peter O’Connor, they put their own lives on hold until they feel the family can cope and then they make time for themselves.

This time is a catalyst for the creation of a new stage in their lives in which their years of acquired wisdom and practical skills are harnessed and can catapult the wife, mother and working woman into her untapped potential. The transition takes on a momentum of its own and can provoke disharmony at home with husbands who don’t like the familiar pattern of their lives being disturbed. Some adapt well, others less so

In his new book Looking Inwards, Dr O’Connor describes an increasingly common pattern of separation, “one in which a woman, often aged fifty or so, whose children have left home, chooses to leave a boring and unsatisfying marriage, despite the consternation this causes among family and friends.” Dr O’Connor knows from many years’ clinical experience that women do not leave long-term relationships lightly. “It is rarely, if ever, an impulsive decision, but rather one that is made over a long period of time and is primarily based on a need to find and be oneself.” He believes there is an urgency about this need that leaves women with little choice. “I remember one woman saying to me, ‘I don’t necessarily want to hurt my husband or be acrimonious. I just had to do this’.”

One crucial difference between current and past generations is that no-fault divorce makes it financially possible for women to walk away. Another important factor is the dramatic social and religious changes that have taken place in society. Forty per cent of marriages now end in divorce. Even though this statistic hides considerable anguish, it is part of life. Women no longer define themselves by the same social and religious mores that governed their parents’ lives. For their mothers and grandmothers, divorce would almost certainly have meant loss of standing in the community, loss of friends and loss of face in the parish church.

Most women, however, still marry with the expectation of ‘for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part’. When they are young they cannot see the challenges lying in wait nor anticipate how they will deal with them. These challenges affect each person in different ways and on different levels. People change. One of the greatest changes for women, so significant that it is even called ‘the change’, is menopause. The menopausal woman in the past was all too often dismissed as a figure of fun on the verge of invisibility. Not today. She is finding new confidence and energy and looking for deeper meaning to her life.

It is rarely, if ever, an impulsive decision, but rather one that is made over a long period of time

The extraordinary growth in popularity of spiritual and personal development workshops in recent years is a reflection not only of the waning appeal of mainstream religion but also of the demand for personal fulfillment among the older women who overwhelmingly attend them. According to psychotherapist Dr Jill Hosking, “when women hit menopause, their biological drive for sexual passion is often transformed into something more intellectual, more spiritual.”

Once these women embark on a journey of self-discovery, they can find it difficult to go back. It becomes a matter of personal survival more powerful than the ties that bind them to their husbands, especially if their search for self is not respected or, worse, mocked as menopausal nonsense.

“There’s an increasing number of women in this situation,” says Rosalie Pattenden, Clinical Practice Leader for Relationships Australia, “more so in our time, I think, than ever before. They are looking for quality in their relationships, not just the fulfilling of a role. They want to be with someone with whom they can share their lives at a deeper level. If they are still dissatisfied after trying everything within their power to bring this about, they then say, ‘I don’t have to do this’”.

“They may have gone through years of anguish before reaching this point and often feel terrible about breaking up the family. The accompanying guilt and feeling of selfishness is not taken lightly but they decide it’s their time, there’s more that they want to explore in their lives and they can’t but help go off on this journey.”

According to Dr O’Connor, the split usually takes husbands com- pletely by surprise, no matter how many signals his wife has given him. Men who are left, he says, get very bitter, “but when you explore it with them you often find they never really knew who they were married to anyway, that’s the sad part.” Conversely, in a marriage where a husband gives his wife the space to grow and rejoices in her blossoming, the rewards in terms of emotional and physical intimacy can be profound.

Three years down the track, Joanna is sad that Bill was not able to hear her when she tried to share her changing ideas with him but does not regret leaving. She enjoys living alone and leads a full and busy life. She would never venture into another relationship, she says, where she is not valued for who she is. Bill has since remarried a younger, more pliant version of Joanna and still does not understand what went wrong the first time.

ALEX

I was married for 29 years to a charming, handsome man of great integrity. We met under very romantic circumstances but I always felt there was something missing. He never bared his soul to me and would get angry if my questions were too personal. I craved intimacy.

As he became older he became very domineering and controlling of the kids and me. We stopped communicating. Eventually, I went to talk to someone at Relationships Australia but he refused to join me. That did a lot of damage. From then on I felt I was marking time, thinking my secret thoughts but all the while complaining to close friends.

I spent ten years thinking about leaving, accusing myself of being self-indulgent and imagining how upset the kids would be but when it finally happened, they understood. My husband was more shocked than they were. He didn’t believe I would go and four years later, still says that he doesn’t know why.

JAN

I was only 19 when we married and settled in the country, our marriage lasting 23 years. My husband came from an undemonstrative family and said there was no such thing as love. This attitude to our relationship made me desperately lonely. It was not loneliness for people. I loved my friends and children; I enjoyed gardening, painting, creating a lovely home and having people to stay. It was an emotional loneliness that never went away.

When the children were older, I wanted to do something with my art but my husband wouldn’t agree, nor would he let me buy a flat in Sydney and make a home for the kids during the week so they wouldn’t have to board, which they hated. My husband simply wouldn’t accept any change. “I like my life the way it is,” he said. “You change yours.” He didn’t think I would but I did. We were always very different and grew to be more so. One day when I picked my husband up from the office, I told him about my sense of loneliness and that I couldn’t stand another 40 years of it. Before I left, a number of women in our local town came up to me in the streets and said, “God, I wish I had the courage to do what you’re doing.” That was scary – to think there are so many people out there feeling locked into unhappy lives.

CLARE

I’d been married for 29 years and unhappy for 15 of them but never thought about leaving, nor expected that I ever would. It wasn’t part of my consciousness. I kept the fact of my unhappiness to myself and didn’t realize that a number of people, including my spouse, had twigged. Because I fulfilled what was expected of a dutiful wife I thought his life was going swimmingly. It took a trip overseas to bring on a crisis. His agenda was to “bring me back into line”. This was a technical error on his part. Once he started to put that into play, the worm turned. Added to which, I saw that it was making us both unhappy.

The moment I started to talk about leaving, his desperation made him almost mad. I was not physically threatened but I had a feeling that the things that were terribly wrong for me were wrong for us both. I had a rock where my heart should be and when I went to bed at night, it felt so heavy it would pin me down and I feared I wouldn’t be alive in the morning. The only way forward was out.

His reading of the situation was that we would return to Australia where I would “come to my senses”. When we got back I suddenly realized he thought the whole thing was a minor aber-ration and that with some counsel-ling things would be better. But having wanted to leave for 15 years I knew this was my only chance.

This was five years ago. We recently had a meal together for the first time since the break-up. It was a good experience. We were both able to speak without emotion. I quite enjoyed it and I think he did too. It was a nice closure.

Drifting apart? Talk to your partner, listen and share your thoughts Remember you each have a valid way of seeing things Seek outside help through organisations such as Relationships Australia Relationships Australia Ph 1300 364 277 Web www.relationships.com.au Mensline Ph 1300 789 978 Find ideas and inspiration from the wealth of written material available Fighting for Your Marriage, Howard J. Markman, Scott M. Stanley and Susan L. Blumberg, Jossey-Bass, 2001 Strong Marriage, Dr William Doherty, Finch, 2003 Looking Inwards, Peter O'Connor, Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 2003 Facing the Fifties, Peter O'Connor, Allen & Unwin, 2000

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