How to avoid divorce in your 40s

Plenty of relationships hit obstacles once couples reach midlife – here are some expert tips to help you navigate them

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telegraph.co.uk/family/relatio…

✍️'I was 44 when my ex-husband and I called it quits on our marriage and we divorced a year later,' writes Lauren Libbert.

'While we’d been having problems for a while, the death of my mother at this midway point in my life triggered an existential crisis'

➡️Tosh Brittan was 43, when the restlessness and dissatisfaction with the state of her marriage kicked in:

🗣️“We’d been married for 17 years and ...I started to think about life beyond children and looked at my marriage and thought, ‘Is this it?’... the spark was gone”

❌Brittan and I are one of the many ­couples whose marriage didn’t make it beyond their 40s; a decade where relationships seem to hit a romantic ­cul-de-sac and end up in divorce

💒❌In the UK in 2019, 45 to 49 was the most popular age to divorce.

The average age being 46.4 for men.

And 43.9 was the average for women

💢Crisis point

Relate counsellor Simone Bose comes across many couples experiencing this “midlife malaise” at her practice. “After 10-plus years of marriage, couples gradually make less effort and become complacent towards each other”