Study finds more older couples divorce when the wife becomes seriously ill

“In sickness and in health.” We’ve heard it at weddings. We’ve seen it stitched on commemorative pillows, inked into anniversary cards, quoted in romantic speeches. But lately, a growing body of research suggests that this promise—one of the most sacred lines in a traditional marriage vow—is quietly being renegotiated. Not in grand declarations. Not in public courtrooms. But in hospice corridors, over whispered arguments at the breakfast table, and eventually, in divorce filings.

A new study out of Italy, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, has found something both surprising and painfully familiar: the divorce rate among older adults climbs sharply when one spouse falls seriously ill—but only if it’s the wife. It’s not just about illness. It’s about gender. And what happens when the care we assumed would be mutual turns out to be one-sided.

The Italian study tracked thousands of married couples aged 60 and above over time. When husbands became seriously ill, their wives stayed. Divorce rates didn’t budge. But when wives were the ones who got sick—think cancer, stroke, or degenerative disease—the odds of divorce spiked dramatically. It’s a sobering data point. And yet, it makes a certain amount of sense when viewed through the lens of long-standing gender norms.

For decades, if not centuries, women have been expected to take on the emotional labor of care. To nurse, soothe, manage appointments, anticipate needs. It’s been built into the image of womanhood as much as cooking or child-rearing. When a man falls ill, the assumption—often unspoken—is that his wife will become his nurse, cook, driver, therapist, and patient advocate all at once.

But when it’s the woman who gets sick? The script falters. Many older men, having never been asked to perform sustained caregiving or navigate the intimate vulnerabilities of decline, find themselves overwhelmed. Some leave. Others distance themselves emotionally. And some, eventually, file for divorce. What’s unraveling isn’t just a marriage—it’s the myth of shared resilience.

Before we rush to judge, it’s worth pausing. Many older men in these situations aren’t cold or uncaring. They are unequipped. Caregiving is physically exhausting, emotionally disorienting, and logistically complex. For women who have practiced this form of labor across their adult lives—raising children, tending to aging parents, managing the emotional needs of a household—it’s a steep hill, but one they’ve climbed before.

For men who’ve never been taught how to feed someone through a tube, change a dressing, or schedule three specialists in one day? The hill feels like Everest. What the study reveals, then, isn’t heartlessness. It’s infrastructure failure. A relational contract that was never truly mutual in the first place. And when that contract is finally tested—by disease, by caregiving, by mortality—it buckles.

“Sick wife divorce” might sound extreme, but it’s not an isolated phenomenon. The broader trend is called gray divorce, and it’s accelerating. In the United States, the divorce rate for people over 50 has doubled since the 1990s. For those over 65, it has tripled. In many countries—including Italy, Canada, Japan, and South Korea—the trend is echoed in rising divorce filings among long-married couples.

Why now? One theory is that people are living longer, and they’re less willing to endure decades of disconnection, resentment, or inequality just because they’re in the final quarter of life. Another is that women, now more financially independent and socially liberated, no longer feel bound by marriages that diminish them—especially when health makes the power imbalance more acute.

In that light, the “in sickness and in health” divorce isn’t just a betrayal. It’s sometimes an act of survival.

What happens to love when it becomes caregiving? In most cultures, we idealize romantic partnerships as emotional equals. But aging and illness rarely play fair. When one partner becomes frail or dependent, the other steps into a new role. And that role—caregiver—is often gendered in deeply ingrained ways.

Women, across income levels and ethnic groups, provide the majority of unpaid elder care in the world. This is true whether we’re talking about spouses, daughters, or daughters-in-law. The expectation is so baked into family structures that it becomes invisible. You don't hear "he’s taking time off work to care for his wife" nearly as often as you hear the reverse.

So when illness enters a long marriage and the roles reverse, many men find themselves flailing. They may feel guilt, shame, helplessness. Some lean on external caregivers, which can ease the pressure—but only if the couple has the financial means. Others pull away. Some leave altogether. It’s not just the sickness that kills the marriage. It’s the exposure of how little care was ever expected to flow the other way.

It’s hard to say out loud, but here it is: some women who fall seriously ill feel relief when their husbands leave. Not because they wanted to be alone. But because staying married while being treated like a burden is worse.

There are stories—quiet ones, not on social media—of women who fought cancer while fielding complaints from husbands about “messy pills,” “doctor drama,” or “needing too much attention.” Of women recovering from surgery alone while their partners traveled. Of stroke survivors having to apologize for being slow, irritable, or confused.

In these cases, divorce is not a betrayal. It’s a painful but clarifying rupture. A reckoning. The moment when the myth of support gives way to the truth of who will actually stand beside you in the vulnerable parts of life.

We treat marriage like an unshakable pillar of society—especially long-term ones. The golden anniversary. The elderly couple holding hands. The romantic ideal of growing old together. But what the “in sickness and in health” divorce phenomenon reveals is that even long marriages are built on social scripts, not just love. And those scripts are gendered.

When women were financially dependent on men, they often stayed through anything. Now that they’re not, many are re-evaluating. And when men were protected from the messy, intimate labor of care, they rarely imagined needing to reciprocate. Now, when called to do so, some falter. The institution isn’t broken. But it is being tested—and sometimes found wanting.

Millennials and Gen Z, watching their parents and grandparents divorce in later life, are taking notes. Many younger adults are rethinking marriage altogether. Some are choosing cohabitation without legal ties. Others are opting for “living apart together” arrangements, maintaining emotional bonds without shared homes. Some are simply staying single.

What they’re observing is this: a marriage that doesn’t account for care—real, reciprocal, sometimes undignified care—may not survive the long haul. So they’re asking different questions before walking down the aisle. Not just: Do I love this person? But: Can I picture wiping their mouth? Holding their body up in the shower? Listening to them cry in pain—and still want to stay? That’s not romantic. But it’s real.

Yes, the study shows a gender gap. But this isn’t a simplistic morality tale.

Many men who leave sick wives do so because they were never taught how to show up in the way caregiving requires. They were taught to be providers, not companions. Problem solvers, not soft holders of pain. Their wives may have spent decades tending to the home, the kids, the emotional atmosphere—while they handled work, logistics, and big decisions.

When illness demands emotional intimacy and physical care, some men don’t know how to access that part of themselves. Or they try—and find they’re resented for not doing it “right.” None of this excuses abandonment. But it explains the cracks. And it calls for something gentler than blame: maybe we need to re-teach partnership from the ground up. Not just “support your spouse” in theory. But, this is what emotional labor looks like. This is what it feels like to care for someone in decline.

So where does that leave us with the vow? Should we stop saying it at weddings? Is it out of date? Not necessarily. But maybe we should stop treating it like poetic fluff and start treating it like a promise with terms. One that requires practice, training, intention. One that requires care literacy—not just love.

Some couples are beginning to have this conversation more explicitly. They’re asking: What does care look like, for us? How do we want to be treated if one of us becomes dependent? What are our limits? Our expectations? These aren’t easy conversations. But they’re real. And in a world where long-term health outcomes are increasingly unpredictable, they might be the most loving conversations we can have.

“In sickness and in health” isn’t just a line. It’s a mirror. It reflects how we understand love, care, and mutual responsibility. And when that mirror cracks—when one person stays and the other leaves—we see the fragility of our assumptions. The older couples divorcing over illness aren’t heartless. They’re revealing something society still struggles to admit: that care isn’t automatic. That love needs structure. That vows don’t sustain themselves—they must be lived, taught, and sometimes re-learned.

Because in the end, it’s not about staying married. It’s about being the kind of person someone would want beside them—in sickness, in health, and all the messy, human spaces in between.