Jackie McGregor: Empty nest, empty marriage: the rapid rise of NI’s ‘silver splitters’

These were the poignant words spoken by the character Monica Baddingham, in a scene from the TV show, “Rivals,” where she and a friend pondered the disillusionment of their marriages.

Their quiet, devastating sadness echoed feelings shared by countless women.

The clip was widely circulated on social media, where viewers praised the writer and actresses for portraying the subject so well. Women discussed online how deeply touched they’d been by her words.

In the same scene Monica also admitted that she had expected to grow braver with age and at some point, “live like blazes,” but she had remained as timid as ever.

Women can sometimes find themselves feeling duped after marriage. They may look across the dinner table and wonder when their beloved’s metamorphosis from Prince Charming into Victor Meldrew occurred.

For most, this change manifests in a husband no longer treating his wife with the same respect, affection or attention he’d given her before marriage. They appear emotionally absent.

This is sometimes known as the “bait and switch,” when a partner presents an idealised version of themselves, love-bombing someone into matrimony (the bait), only to reveal a low-effort, disinterested persona once the deal is sealed (the switch).

This is not, of course, experienced exclusively by women; men can suffer the same duplicity.

But more often, it’s women who find themselves taken for granted, treated like a maid in their own home, left to rear children, manage the house and perhaps care for elderly parents almost singlehandedly, while their partner carries on much as he did when he was single.

He may continue to go off and pursue weekend hobbies as if he has no parental responsibilities whatsoever.

Others may spend hours scrolling on their phones checked out of family life, proving to be “neither use nor ornament” as my grandmother used to say, breeding a nuclear level of resentment in the partner left to do everything.

In “Rivals,” Monica’s friend answered the question of why women stay with the simple statement “for the sake of the children.”

Women frequently put others’ needs before their own, seamlessly blending into everyone’s backgrounds, until they don’t know who they are anymore, ghosts in their own lives.

But once the children are grown and have left the nest, some women look at the stranger beside them and find the thought of spending the rest of their lives together, without the buffer of their fledglings, unbearable.

Hence the rise of the ‘silver splitters’ — those separating later in life, typically after the age of 50.

High-profile examples like Tess Daly, 57 and Ruth Langsford, 66, have both recently navigated public separations after long marriages.

It’s not just seasoned celebs untying the knot, according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency the 45-49 and 50-54 age brackets consistently show the highest proportion of divorce cases in the province.

Although divorce later in life can be costly and complicated, involving the division of the family home and other shared assets, the cost of continuing to feel invisible may be even greater.

And so, many mature women are reclaiming their identities, stepping out of the background, and finally deciding to live like blazes.