The Dynamics of Divorce 67
was sixty-two when he married his second wife, thirty-nine-year-
old Jacqueline Kennedy. Billionaire J. Paul Getty was married
and divorced five times. Said he, “A lasting relationship with a
woman is only possible if you are a business failure.”
On the economic front overall, the news may not be too bad for
older men who divorce. Studies have consistently shown that a
man’s standard of living rises approximately 40 percent following
divorce, whereas a woman’s may drop off by up to 70 percent.
Older, poorer, dumped guys have less fun. A less auspicious sce-
nario is in store for older men who are somewhat less successful
or who are the dumpees in situations where their wives have left
them. For some men, their personal and social success is often
defined by their marriage. This may seem somewhat ironic in
view of survey results which indicate that only about 39 percent
of husbands interviewed considered themselves “relationship
centered,” rather than work centered, compared with 59 percent
of the wives. A traditional husband often got away with paying
less attention to the actual quality of his relationship because he
believed he could still rely on his wife to keep the home front
together regardless of whether the marriage itself was picture per-
fect. This is an increasingly dangerous assumption nowadays.
Low self-esteem is common among men whose mates leave
them. Men are much more fragile than women when it comes to
coping with these role changes. A man can lose his pride. Once
that happens, he may begin to experience performance anxiety.
When a man’s self-image suffers, sexual dysfunction is always a
possibility.
By way of an overview, let’s take a quick look at the basic tra-
jectory that men’s lives take as they grow up and grow old. Young
men from their teens to their forties are hard wired to be some-
what single-minded competitors. From cave man days onward,
guys were designed to be physical, to literally be warriors, and
not to waste a lot of downtime on introspection or emotion. This
gets reinforced all along the way as young men compete at every-
thing from making sports teams to climbing the corporate ladder.
So, what most men want to do as they hit middle age is to stay put
where they are, to stick to their old habits and keep what they’ve
got. They don’t really want to make what author Gail Sheehy has