Gray divorce is the name researchers coined for adults aged 50 and older ending their marriage. They found that gray divorce doubled between 1990 and 2010. Currently, 36% of U.S. adults getting divorced are aged 50 or older.

Gray divorce couples may have minor children, adult children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. The shock waves can reverberate through four generations, destabilizing the permanence and family relationships everyone assumed would last a lifetime.

Family members touched by gray divorce often report feelings of loss, shock, disbelief, destabilization, overwhelm, aloneness, sadness, loneliness, and grief.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison's depiction of grief encompasses all these feelings. “It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom, and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

Neuroscience researcher Dr. Amy Banks states that a new field of scientific study that she terms “relational neuroscience” indicates that our brains and bodies are hardwired to help us engage in satisfying emotional connection with others, and that the human brain is built to operate within a network of caring human relationships. Other research found that feelings of loneliness and social rejection activate the same neural networks in........

© Psychology Today