Why marriages like mine crumble after two decades – Clare O’Reilly

The end arrived quietly: in the dawning recognition that we had built an amazing family together but had become strangers as a couple.

When I read that a quarter of divorces in England and Wales last year followed marriages of 20 years or more, I understood the figure in a way I might not have done a few years ago.

The Office for National Statistics data shows 26% of opposite-sex divorces in 2025 came after two decades or longer of marriage. Jon and I got together in 2002 and married in 2006. We separated in 2024, after 18 years of marriage. Our divorce came through the following year, when we had been together for 23 years and married for 19.

Two decades is long enough for a shared life to feel immovable, and for children to begin building lives of their own. After years as a tribe of five, we were increasingly faced with one another alone.

We got engaged after only a few weeks – rash and in love – and married in 2006, with Eddie, then 2, as our page boy. I was 43 when we split. Having contemplated it for months, I concluded I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a marriage that had become a friendship when what I wanted was more than friendship. I wanted to feel cherished, cared for and special. I weighed up the decision for a long time and put it off once it was made, but in reality, there was only one conclusion.

There was no single event that made the decision for us. No moment I can point to and say: that was when it ended. The truth was harder to pin down, but somewhere along the way, Jon and Clare got lost.

We became different people. The compliments and reaching for one another dwindled when there were little hands reaching for ours instead. We grew lazy with compliments for one another or making each other feel treasured or special.

I took pride in telling people we never needed babysitters or went on date nights. Looking back, that feels less like proof of how smoothly we worked as a family and more like a warning sign.

Outside parenting – which we loved and found fun – we became two pedestrian people. The laughs we’d shared in our early years a distant memory. We’d become so focused on doing everything together for the children that we’d stopped making time to be together as a couple.

After those heady first years, we settled into the long business of raising children: school runs, homework, packed lunches, clubs, lifts, meals, holidays and all the small decisions that make up a family. We became a team because the children needed us to be one. We divided everything between us without fuss and ran a tight, contented ship.

Between them, the children had 28 hours of clubs each week. We barely noticed we’d stopped tending to the relationship that made it a household in the first place.

As children get older, family life changes. By the time they’re well into their teens, they’re often out with friends more, making their own plans and needing less of the constant practical attention they did when small. The house becomes quieter. Parents who have spent years orbiting their children find themselves with more time in the same room.

That can be a lovely new chapter for a couple, it can also expose what’s been put to one side. Jon and I realised that, while we had done a brilliant job as a parenting team, we had changed. We’d grown into different people and no longer had enough in common as a couple to bridge the distance between us.

There was no plate-smashing or explosive row, only sadness and the slow understanding that the marriage had become something other than a romantic partnership.

It might almost have been easier if there had been a clear villain or a single terrible event. Then you could say: this happened, and therefore I am leaving. Instead, we had to accept that no one was to blame; we had simply grown apart.

I sometimes wonder whether an earlier effort might have changed things. I think it could have gone a long way. It wouldn’t have needed to be a grand gesture or an expensive holiday, just the ordinary, deliberate attention that keeps two people curious about each other, a date night, time to talk without discussing logistics, or doing something together that wasn’t organised around the children.

Perhaps those things could have helped us find our way back to Jon and Clare before the distance felt permanent. I will never know.

There is a particular grief in ending a marriage that has not become a war. You’re not leaving because you hate the other person. You may still care deeply about them, respect them and want them to be happy. But there’s a yawning chasm of grief for the life you made, the family home and the future you once assumed was guaranteed.

We also faced the question that felt selfish: is being good companions and co-parents enough if the romantic part of the relationship has gone?

For me, at 43, it wasn’t. I didn’t want to resign myself to a life that was comfortable and familiar but missing something I craved.

That didn’t make walking away easy; it made it a decision we had to take seriously. The end of a marriage is not proof that the years before it were a failure. We built a family, raised our children together and shared a huge part of our lives. Those things will always be true. If I could live my life again, I would not change any of it. We were great parents who raised children in a house full of love and laughter.

We’re both far happier now than we were when we were married, too.

I’m in a happy relationship with Dan, and it has reminded me how fulfilling it is to feel that you are someone’s partner. The simplest moments can feel telling: sitting together after a long day, giggling about the same thing, talking about something beyond life admin and feeling that the person opposite you is interested in the answer. I value that ease.

I would never tell another couple a quiet marriage is doomed, or that the age where the children grow up is automatically the point when you should leave. I have a friend who was in much the same position with her husband of 16 years and chose to stay because the thought of splitting their lives, assets and home felt too much to bear. Another friend and her husband have enjoyed several “honeymoons” since their youngest left for university.

Some couples find their way back to each other when family life changes; others choose a companionship that looks different from romance. But anyone reading this and feeling similar, there’s no shame in admitting sometimes you simply become different people, and the shared life that once held you together no longer feels like the life you want.

Staying together for comfortable companionship may be enough for some. For me, it wasn’t. I wanted to believe love could still be more than keeping the family machinery running smoothly. Forty-three isn’t too old to want that.