Why can't I move on?

You can’t move on yet because at this age a breakup rarely ends just one thing. It can reopen a divorce, empty out a calendar you built around two people, and rewrite the picture you had of the next twenty years. And some of what feels like processing, like going back over it night after night, can keep the hurt running instead of settling it. Recovery after a later-life split is slower than you’d like. It does come.

Why does this one hit so hard if it wasn’t even a marriage?

Meet Sonya, 55. Her marriage ended at 49. At 52 she met Dev at a friend’s birthday, and for three years they had a good thing: Saturday farmers’ markets, his terrible jokes, a standing call every night at nine. In March he said he didn’t see a future and he was sorry. It’s now October, and Sonya is still holding her phone at 9 p.m. She keeps telling herself she survived a 22-year marriage ending, so why can’t she get over three years?

Because it’s rarely three years she’s grieving. A later relationship after a divorce often carries proof that you could start again, that the divorce wasn’t the last word. When it ends, that proof goes with it, and the old loss can come back with the new one. Two endings stacked on top of each other weigh more than either one alone.

Isn’t going over it how you process it?

Sometimes. Sometimes it’s how you stay stuck.

Psychologist David Sbarra and colleagues at the University of Arizona randomly assigned 90 people who had recently separated or divorced to different kinds of writing.1 For people prone to brooding (combing through the separation for answers), writing about their feelings left them more emotionally distressed months later.1 People who didn’t brood came out about the same whichever kind of writing they did.1

That’s a small study about marriages, but the point carries. If you naturally turn things over, then another hour of “where did it go wrong” may not be processing. It may be the loop. A useful test is whether you finish a session of thinking about it feeling a little clearer, or exactly as raw as when you started. If it’s the second, put it down and do something with your hands.

How long is this supposed to take?

Longer than the people around you seem to think. Research on adults whose marriages ended in later life found that depressive symptoms rose after the loss, and the effects persisted for several years.2 It also found that symptoms ultimately returned to where they’d been before.2 That study was about marriages, not a three-year relationship. But it’s a useful corrective if you’ve been telling yourself you should be over this by now. Slow isn’t the same as stuck.

It also helps to separate the four things that tend to blur together at 9 p.m.:

• What happened: he ended it in March, and you haven’t been in touch since May.
• Your reading of it: “I’m too old to start over.”
• The fear: being alone for the rest of your life.
• The next step: something you can do this week.

The fear is about decades. The step is about days. You only have to handle the days.

Why does pulling back from the kids make it worse?

Many people in their 50s go quiet with their grown children after a breakup. Embarrassment, not wanting to hear “I told you so,” not wanting to worry them. It’s understandable, and it may cost more than it seems.

A study of 930 people who divorced after 50, using two decades of national survey data, found that depressive symptoms rose around the divorce.3 Having no contact with at least one adult child in the past year made the effect worse, for both mothers and fathers.3 That study was about divorce rather than a later breakup, and it can’t say the lost contact caused the extra distress. But it’s a good reason not to let shame shrink your world just when you need it widest. You don’t have to give your kids the whole story. “It ended, and I’m sad, and I’d love to see you” is enough.

When is it more than a breakup?

Sadness after a loss is normal. Some signs mean it’s time for more help: a sad or empty mood that won’t lift, losing interest in things you used to enjoy, sleep or appetite changes, hopelessness, or thoughts of death or suicide.4 Depression is usually diagnosed when symptoms last most of the time for at least two weeks and get in the way of daily life.4

If that sounds like you, or the grief is disrupting your sleep, your work or your days, a licensed mental-health professional is the right help, and your doctor is a good place to start. If you ever feel hopeless or think about not being here, reach out to a crisis line right away. You’ll find one at the bottom of this page.

What to do this week

• Give the 9 p.m. slot a new job. A call with a friend, a crossword, a walk. The hardest hour needs a plan, not willpower.
• Cap the post-mortem. If you need to think it through, give it twenty minutes in daylight, then stop.
• Tell one grown child or close friend how you’re actually doing.
• Go back to one place you shared, on your own terms, so it stops belonging only to the two of you.
• Put one thing on the calendar that has nothing to do with them.

What the research doesn’t show

• The writing study was small, and it looked at marital separation, not later dating relationships.1
• The later-life studies were about divorce and widowhood. No large study has tracked breakups of dating or living-apart couples in their 50s.23
• Lost contact with adult children went along with more depression, but that doesn’t prove it caused it.3
• Averages aren’t timelines. Some people move on in months, others take years, and neither means something is wrong with you.