I got married then divorced in midlife like Jennifer Lopez

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It was seven years ago when I got married. We’d chosen my 50th birthday and there were many good reasons behind that decision. One was that it meant we would never forget our wedding anniversary and, given that we were getting on a bit, it seemed entirely possible that we otherwise might. It was also because I thought a double celebration would be great. This is what people who get married in midlife believe, that we’ve finally found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We might have been heartbroken in the past but at last, thank goodness, we’ve met the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Hallelujah.
So there we were, myself and my husband-to-be, surrounded by family and friends in an Oxfordshire town hall one afternoon in December 2016. There was so much goodwill in that room. I remember walking down the central aisle of the town hall. My eldest son was giving me away, as my father died many years ago, and I saw the faces of the guests. Everyone was beaming.
It wasn’t a traditional wedding — at this age you are pleasing yourself. A set of cousins made up the string quartet that played Burt Bacharach as I walked towards my future husband. People made funny, clever, tender speeches. My next-door neighbour, who was a chef, did incredible food. My best friends decorated the rather run-down former stately home where we had the wedding party. It was magnificent and it was glorious and I thought that, for once in my life, I had actually made a good decision in terms of my significant relationship.
But it wasn’t just me that was involved in that wedding. There is something about a midlife wedding that involves everybody because we all want to believe in the miracle of love. When Ben Affleck and JLo rekindled their romance three years ago, the entire world got excited. It was like a fairytale that became real. And we all breathed a sigh of relief because there was a feeling that if they had finally found the right person after all those years of missing the target, we could too. Now JLo has filed for divorce.
I had thought that I would spend the rest of my life with this person. I loved my wedding day and I loved being Mrs Somebody. Someone had my back. Someone truly loved me. We would grow old together. We would look across the room at each other years later and say, “Thank goodness I found you and made the wise decision to marry you.”
But that didn’t happen. All sorts of other things did, and we got divorced nearly two years ago now. Divorce at any time is grim but it feels particularly painful when you are older. I think that’s because everyone has become so invested in the happiness of the marriage. There is an attachment to the idea that we can find love at any time in our lives, which of course we can, but many people don’t see that as possible once we get older. Women feel that the pool of available men is smaller. How many times have I heard “men want younger women”? If marriage doesn’t work out when you’re in your late fifties, the assumption is that’s the end of it all. We’re just going to hang up our spurs and go on holidays with other spinster-like friends.
Of course this is not true. Getting divorced in old age is not brilliant but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a life ahead of you. This is part of the reason people tend to look up their past boyfriends and girlfriends. It is a lot easier to date someone you knew when you were 20 than it is to date someone you really don’t know at all. You share a history. You knew each other’s parents. You liked the first dog they had.
However, quite often these relationships don’t turn out very well because, actually, the two people haven’t changed that much and what didn’t work then doesn’t work now — or, conversely, they’ve changed so much that they’re like strangers to each other. I have many clients who have done a Bennifer, probably not with the same expense or style, but they have gone helter-skelter down the path of falling back in love with their first partner only to wake up two years down the line and wonder what on earth they’re doing.
But of course there is love out there, and the midlife love story doesn’t have to be one of sadness and divorce, misunderstandings and broken hearts.
In my work as a therapist I take a lot of single people through the coaching system Calling In The One. I have a great success rate of helping people to find love. A lot of them don’t believe they can because they’ve been damaged in the past by love that hasn’t worked out and by divorces and separations and all those other things. The sense of joy I get when I hear that my clients have met someone, that they’re happy and that love is blossoming, is completely infectious and almost addictive. And the people who haven’t yet met someone have actually met themselves in a different way that is also joyous. They have discovered that they are very happy being single and are now becoming the people they really want to be on the planet.
But none of this is reassuring when you are in the middle of a love story that has gone wrong. There is the shame of having to admit that your years on the planet, your intelligence, everything you know, all amounted to a hill of beans when it came to romantic decisions. There is learning in this: I probably wouldn’t be doing what I do today if my marriage hadn’t crashed and burnt. But would I wish all that heartbreak on someone? Of course I wouldn’t.
We want these love stories to work. We want grown-ups to have beautiful futures with the right person. We want to go on their journey with them. We want love to win out.
As my mother said on my wedding day, “Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about you any more.”
It doesn’t feel brilliant to know that she’s back to the worrying but it does feel good to know that she really doesn’t have to.lucycavendishcounselling.com; lucycavendishlovecoach.com
How to Have Extraordinary Relationships by Lucy Cavendish (Quadrille, £16.99). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
by Helen Down
What would you do if someone who trampled across your delicate 21-year-old heart popped up on LinkedIn decades later with a connection request that most definitely wasn’t work-related?
This was a dilemma I faced some months ago. Initially his name seemed generic — most likely a random, someone desperate to grow their network. But no. When I checked the message I saw a sincere apology and photos from New Year’s Eve 1994, a quaintly analogue Polaroid montage of us staying up for three nights straight, high on youth and lust. The generic name suddenly reassumed an important identity.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, having split in 2004 before reuniting in 2021, had been the poster couple for later-in-life second chances. But now the poster has faded and peeled off the wall because poor old Bennifer is over. On Tuesday the pop star showed up at a court in Los Angeles to file the papers herself. The date of separation is listed as April 26, 2024.
By all accounts, they really tried. One of JLo’s friends reportedly said: “She wants this marriage to work so much that she is willing to make any sacrifice including giving up being JLo. She doesn’t want to be divorced. She doesn’t want to end up like Madonna — on her own at 60.” So if their “love the second time around” fairytale ended unhappily, what chance for us mere mortals who don’t live in Hollywood castles?
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Once the prickles at the back of my neck subsided, I recalled how the message sender had flattened my inchoate heart. Feeling a need to travel, he did an abrupt runner to Australia with nothing but a weekend’s notice that caused a month of tears. From the moment he took off, he was banned from consuming another neuron of brain space. Hence his name — DG — didn’t register at first.
The old me felt I should delete DG immediately, shove him even deeper into the wheelie bin of exes. But the new me, the one who regrets life’s missed opportunities, thought: why the hell not? So I eventually replied. Some relatively polite reminiscing ensued. Before long, DG was bold enough to suggest meeting up. A dog walk. Platonic, of course (or so we told ourselves). Natural, breezy chit-chat replaced the Q&A vibes of most early dates. The walk morphed into pints, which morphed into tapas … and, eventually, a snog on my doorstep. A snog full of promise and teen-worthy thrill.
Reconnecting proved a casual yet ultimately life-changing decision. Because, after three years of spinning in a doom loop of dating app disappointments, I’ve found — re-found — someone I can envisage spending the rest of my life with.
“Getting back with an ex is often viewed in a negative light,” says Jessica Alderson, co-founder of the dating and personal growth platform So Syncd. “Some people believe that if a relationship ends, it’s for a reason and should stay that way. It can even be seen as a sign of weakness. But that’s too simplistic. From sharing a foundation of mutual understanding to getting a unique mix of familiarity and excitement, and growing as people, there are numerous potential benefits, especially when connecting in midlife after decades of separation. It’s a completely different scenario from getting back together after a few months.”
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“It ended for a reason” is an all too common refrain. But what if that reason was being too immature, too naive, too anxious, too try-hard, too young to be comfortable in your own skin? Conventional wisdom tells us that extra years cause extra baggage, and it’s true: many in their thirties or forties find themselves dragging their suitcases down to the excess baggage check-in. But by the time 50 swings around, there’s been enough time to go full Marie Kondo on those weighty cases.
Perhaps it helps that DG and I met last century. That’s not just because we can get misty-eyed over tangible photos: that hedonistic New Year’s Eve; his band photo, which fangirl over here glued into her album (still cringing); the picture of him entertaining my family, complete with my dad wearing a hilariously of-the-era poloneck. And it’s not just because it’s easier to forgive once the pain has had decades to fade. No, it’s mainly because meeting in a pre-app era brings a purity that’s hard to find in today’s algorithmically driven world of dating.
As seen in Match Group and Bumble’s 80 per cent tumble in share value since 2021, we’re no longer falling for dating apps. For more than a decade, they’ve breadcrumbed us with false promises, teased us with glimmers of hope. He likes Jamie XX too! He’s also read The Bee Sting! Look at that, he surfs! Sadly, these desperately sought small commonalities are not the foundations for a solid relationship. You’ll probably have better luck down the pub, in the club, maybe even sweating away in the gym. Failing that, try LinkedIn.
I’ve wasted far too much of my post-divorce freedom tiptoeing around dating app matches, trying to work out if these strangers can be trusted, trying to figure out how far I can push my Marmite humour, trying — and failing — to imagine how they’d fit into my social group. But reconnecting with someone from the past makes it easy to swipe left on these concerns. The accountability and familiarity that comes from having crossed paths previously is Baby Bio for a budding romance.
In the months since DG and I rekindled our flame, we’ve laughed so hard, I nearly peed my pants. We’ve made each other cry with silliness and sentiment. We’ve revelled in Mediterranean sunshine. We’ve held hands in public without dying on the inside. We’ve whiled away hours in the service station on Stonehenge’s ley lines, deep in emotional conversation. We’ve supported each other as he writes his music and I write my novel. We’ve even made a Waitrose shopper coo with delight when a daft joke blossomed into a kiss over the courgettes. Without shared history, such moments of surety, joy and intimacy take years to develop, not months.
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The U-shaped theory of happiness says we sink into despair at life’s midpoint. But once you’ve finished trundling along its bottom, your bruised heart will be more resilient. You’ll have a better sense of who you are, what you want. You’ll be able to kick back a little, take your foot off the career pedal. Your kids will start setting you free as they near adulthood. This is why finding love in midlife, when you’re wiser and freer, is so much healthier than youthful infatuation. Throw shared history into the mix and there’s even more joy to juice.
DG and I aren’t yet tired of joking that we’ve been in a relationship since 1994 but with a break. We occasionally wonder how life would have panned out had he not skipped off to Oz but I wouldn’t change a thing. The avoidant 21-year-old me simply wasn’t equipped to build a long-lasting relationship with him. And we’ve both put our intervening decades to damned good use: experiencing — and learning from — other loves, encountering adventures and realising some of our dreams. Most importantly, our much-cherished children would be different if we messed with their DNA by time-travelling back to 1994.
Thirty years is a long time. Enough time to forgive those who caused you pain. Enough time to soften, learn from your mistakes and unpack the excess baggage. Enough time to understand that, unless you’re Bennifer, love stands a better chance the second time around.