Heartbreak After 40 Years: Coping with a Spouse Leaving for Another Woman

Just a couple of years back, if you had inquired about my retirement dreams, I would have painted a picture of exciting travels across India and the scenic west coast of the United States alongside my husband.

Although our early career pensions hadn’t flourished as expected, we were still set to enjoy a modest income from our mortgage-free holiday cottage nestled in North Yorkshire. We planned to supplement this by continuing some freelance work—me as a personal development trainer and David* thriving as a project manager within the construction sector.

Our strategy included selling our five-bedroom detached house in Kent, which was valued at £1.25 million, within the next five years. With only a minimal mortgage remaining, we intended to downsize, thereby unlocking some equity.

However, everything changed just three months shy of my 60th birthday in November 2024. David shattered not only our 37-year marriage but also my future financial stability by announcing he wanted a separation. He assured me there was no one else involved; he simply yearned to live free of responsibilities.

Reeling from the shock, I recall crying out, clinging to the hope that he wouldn’t follow through. Desperate to understand, I asked what he wished to pursue that our marriage had denied him. Yet, he remained unyielding, stonewalling me completely.

A few weeks later I discovered he did have someone else – a woman he’d known for ten years through the cycling club they both belonged to, not that I’d ever had any suspicions.

Looking back at his behaviour, I think David had left our marriage emotionally a year earlier, he just hadn’t had the courage to be honest about it.

I knew we were going through a rough patch, but marriages of our length sometimes do. For months he kept assuring me that he wanted to work through it.

I’ll never know exactly how long it was going on for because he has refused to admit he had an affair. He tried to pass it off as a new relationship that began after he told me he wanted to separate – but his bank statements showed they’d been out for dinner together when I was away on a yoga retreat, and they’d booked a weekend away over a month before announcing that he wanted to separate.

Quite apart from the devastating heartbreak and sense of betrayal, there were major financial implications to our divorce, says Kate Martin. Along with my marriage, gone were my plans for retirement and my hard-earned but comfortable life

Quite apart from the devastating heartbreak and sense of betrayal, there were major financial implications, something few people – including me – consider when starting divorce proceedings.

Along with my marriage, gone were my plans for retirement and my hard-earned but comfortable life.

When our divorce was completed last year, I was left with no pension, no savings, no job and no hopes of being able to retire in the foreseeable future.

In contrast, David has a six-figure settlement sum – which he received from the sale of our house and shares from our company, which I signed over in the divorce – lives in the home owned by the woman he had an affair with, and earns a very healthy salary thanks to his established career and reputation.

Sadly, I’m far from alone in bearing the brunt of the financial sacrifices after divorce.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the divorce rate for those aged 50 and above has doubled since the 1990s, and women are three times more likely to suffer financial hardship than men at this age as a result of divorce. After all, we’re the ones who pause or give up our careers to raise children, frequently sacrificing pensions and the ability to save in the process, and there’s little recognition or provision for this in a divorce settlement.

And that’s exactly how I got here.

The sale of our house was hit hard by the economic climate of 2024, which saw interest rates rise and stamp duty changes. After being on the market for eight months, it sold for £175,000 less than the valuation. Overall our asset split was 50/50, with me negotiating to keep the holiday cottage as part of my settlement, as a limited source of income, but this does not leave us in equal positions financially.

I used the money from our house sale to buy myself a modest three-bed terrace in Kent, which cost me £350,000.

I’d had an ISA where I’d deposited my cashed-in pension savings and lived off that for a year – the emotional fallout from the divorce meant I wasn’t well enough to work.

Of course, when we were in the thick of raising our four children and building our business, I never thought for one moment we’d end up divorced.

David and I met when we were lodgers in a house in Essex owned by a colleague at the company where I worked in sales. We moved in a week apart in July 1986.

Three years older than me, he’d moved to London from North Yorkshire to train as an electrician, something I thought showed courage and ambition. He made me laugh and was my biggest supporter.

We became a couple later that year and married three years later.

Our first son was born when I was 27 and, although I briefly went back to my job in sales, I soon quit to be at home with our baby. It was the early 1990s, a time when there was still an expectation for the mother to stay at home. Like many women then, I didn’t consider the impact that might have on my financial circumstances in the future. Call me naive, but David always assured me he would treat me well if we ever split.

We’d always wanted a big family; my second son was born in 1993, followed by two more daughters in 1997 and 2002.

David and I had started a fire detection company – working on major contracts installing fire detection systems in the construction industry, including hospitals and other prestigious projects – with a six-figure turnover.

We built up the business together, with me doing the accounts and office administration alongside running the home and raising our children.

By the time two of our children had flown the nest David, then in his 50s, got a lucrative job in project management alongside our own business, latterly for big construction companies.

The divorce rate for those aged 50 and above has doubled since the 1990s, and women are three times more likely to suffer financial hardship than men at this age as a result of divorce

Initially, divorce feels like the end of everything, says Kate, not least financial security at a time when you hoped to step back from work and enjoy retirement. But eventually it becomes a chance to reset and create a new life

In 2009 we bought our dream family home, which I set about renovating, and enjoyed a very comfortable life. Dancing and travelling were our favourite things to do together and we enjoyed city breaks to the likes of Madrid, Paris and Berlin, and sailed to New York on the Queen Mary.

We were a great partnership, enduring many challenges together, not least our beautiful daughter Isobel being stillborn in 1996.

In my 40s, once the children were all at school, I decided to go back to work. I studied for a degree and became interested in coaching vulnerable young people. I started my career as a trainer but my earnings were only around £23,000, alongside my income from the business, which put me into the higher tax bracket.

To mark our silver wedding anniversary in 2014, David – who wasn’t prone to romance – suggested we renew our vows. Now it’s difficult to imagine that we had such a wonderful day, with food, dancing and champagne in a huge marquee in our garden.

You may wonder when – and why – everything changed.

Looking back, I believe things began to unravel, albeit without me noticing, around 2019. By then my youngest daughter was in sixth form and my eldest daughter was working but still living at home.

I then began caring for my mother, who had dementia, which took a heavy toll on my wellbeing. I was incredibly stressed and became emotionally unavailable to David.

Meanwhile, he seemed distant and wasn’t the supportive husband he’d always been in the past. Instead, he distracted himself with social events at work, and cycling holidays with a group of friends.

When I challenged him, remarking that he was behaving like a single man, he’d pretend I’d misunderstood and make me doubt my memory.

Still, when my mother died in December 2022, I thought David and I would regroup, relax and look forward to retirement together. But during the two years that followed, there were more unsettling changes. David would come home from work and refuse the dinner I’d prepared, claiming he’d had a late lunch. He rarely called or messaged me any more and was uncharacteristically irritable and rude when he spoke to me.

When I asked what was going on, he’d close the conversation down, saying: ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’

Then, in August 2023, we were glamping at a vintage music and dance festival when he lost his temper over me offering to host his family for Christmas lunch at our holiday cottage, after he’d agreed to us having lunch in a hotel – an uncharacteristic overreaction that surprised me.

We sat in a tent with the rain pouring outside when he told me: ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you.’

The following day I was so angry that I printed off and filled out a divorce form. I didn’t mean it, but I felt so furious and hoped it would make him realise how isolated and locked out I felt. He was shocked, insisting: ‘We’ve been through difficult patches before, we’ll get through this one.’

For three more awkward months, I wondered what on earth was going on as he continued living like a single man. But I still held out hope that, after nearly 40 years together, we would work through it.

Then came that Monday evening in November 2024, when he came home from work to announce very coldly that he wanted to separate.

I was heartbroken. To add to my confusion, he didn’t want to leave our home, so, of course, I hoped he’d change his mind.

After work, he’d shower then go out for the evening, telling me his whereabouts were none of my business. Despite being incredibly upset, I still clung on to the hope that he’d see sense and snap out of whatever it was.

It wasn’t until four weeks later that I considered the possibility he was having an affair. I went for dinner with my sister-in-law while on a three-day training course in Hull, when she asked me if I thought he was having an affair. 

Back at my hotel, I phoned David and asked him outright.

He admitted: ‘Yes, I have someone else and she’s none of your business. I don’t care what you think or what you feel, I’m going through with this.’ He wasn’t the least bit sorry or remorseful.

It wasn’t until I saw his bank statements – which I accessed through financial disclosure during the divorce – that I realised it had been going on for at least three months before our split. He’d bought her gifts from the same shops he bought me gifts from; he’d taken her to places we’d been to together.

When I insisted on knowing who she was because she was sleeping with my husband. David’s response was: ‘We’re not married!’

To which I replied: ‘We are.’ And his cruel riposte was ‘only technically’.

He then told me quite gleefully that the woman he was seeing – by this stage he was still denying that he’d had an affair – was a member of his cycling club whom he’d known for 10 years. Yet he still refused to leave our home.

On Boxing Day 2024, we had a horrible row and he left that night.

He walked away from 40 years together without a backwards glance and moved in with the woman he had an affair with, telling me he wanted a divorce, the house sold and a clean break financially. I took legal advice, although he assured me I didn’t need to because he was being honest and had nothing to hide.

I couldn’t face filing for divorce for another five months.

People underestimate the effect infidelity has on your psyche, your sense of reality and self-worth. I went from being a self-confident, intelligent, physically fit and capable woman to a shell of myself. I was frightened, lonely and having panic attacks for the first time in my life, which left me unable to work.

I eventually managed to put the house on the market, but David refused to meet any of the legal and removal costs which I had paid for through my remaining savings, and also refused to pay any of the joint credit card debts run up making home improvements in order to sell the house. He would make veiled threats about the finances, or just refuse point blank to carry out the process for divorce.

And that’s when things got really nasty.

David’s view was that I wasn’t entitled to continue to benefit from the business and used all the familiar tactics to prevent me from getting what I was due in my divorce settlement: he took a lower-paid job, lied about where he lived and claimed to have no money. He consistently devalued my contribution to his six-figure income and my contribution to the business, impressive CV and great reputation in the industry. David folded our company and, without him, the business couldn’t function, so my equal shares were worthless.

Our divorce settlement was drawn up by my lawyer – a consent order – which I paid for because he refused to contribute anything.

Of course, David is affected by the division of the assets too. But he was walking away with a six-figure lump sum, a roof over his head and, like most men who haven’t had to take career breaks to raise a family, he has the potential to continue earning a substantial living for another decade.

I have to try to build up my career from scratch again, after taking a year’s break from my work as a trainer and losing my income from the business overnight.

My life now is incomparable to when I was married.

My modest terrace in Kent needs completely renovating, a project I can’t afford. My social life is simple – going for walks and coffees instead of fancy meals.

No longer can I indulge in expensive holidays, clothes or treating my family. I’m budgeting again now for bills and groceries the way I did when I first married and we had very little money.

Nobody’s going to cry into their soup over this, but for me it is a monumental shift in lifestyle.

Yes, the divorce hugely impacted me financially and the thought of starting again at 60 was overwhelming.

But I am learning how to create a new life which is exciting and happy.

I came across a woman called Sara Davison who offers free divorce support online and have signed up to do her master practitioner course with a view to being a divorce counsellor myself. I have contributed my experience to her new book, Emotional Alchemy. I am hoping this new career path will give me not only renewed confidence but a stable income. I’ve also resumed my work as a trainer and have conducted my first service as a qualified funeral celebrant.

Initially, divorce feels like the end of everything, not least financial security at a time when you hoped to step back from work and enjoy retirement. But I’m hopeful it will become a chance to reset and create a new life which is exciting, fulfilling, peaceful, happy and joyful.

* David’s name has been changed. 

•  Follow Kate @sovereignwomancoaching

As told to SADIE NICHOLAS