Sometimes, it’s nobody’s fault. That’s just a truth to understanding why some long term marriages, like Tipper and Al Gore’s, end.  Often, it's after a slow death that one partner finally puts to rest. Too often the split is triggered by a love interest which more often turns out to be lust disguised as love.

For most, betraying a long term marriage is not done easily. It comes from desperation, the quiet kind that some long term marriages breed. The kind many Boomers have been living in, at least according to some statistics. For those of us who married very young, the divorce rates are even higher. According to The National Marriage Project, our lack of experience kept us from understanding just how difficult it is to partner with anyone for a lifetime.

Among my circle of friends and associates, I can name three Boomer wives who discovered their husbands leading double lives; the kind money buys. One old friend discovered his wife had been involved for several years. And just the other day, I learned that a long time acquaintance of mine kept her lover a secret for over a decade. Several couples I know admit to living in sexless marriages, which in my mom’s day was tagged ‘marriages of convenience.’ 

Though Boomers are big on claiming movements, I’m not sure this one is any more emblematic of my generation than previous generations of couples who lived with their quiet desperation. What does seem emblematic is our choices: Boomers don’t automatically opt to live in a lie until we get too old to remember or care what we opted to lie about.

Solid marriages, the kind I admire, aren’t plentiful in my circle. I know they exist but from my view, they are exceptions not the rule. We don’t opt to go quietly as many of our parents did. Blame it on them. Evidently, they didn’t raise us to be quiet. They raised us to believe our voices had power; otherwise, the civil rights and anti war movement would not have rooted. The post WW II boom gave us so much more than our parents ever had and their message to us clear: we could have it all, if we worked hard enough, we could.

I don’t think it’s an accident that so many young Boomer men and women coupled up and built big careers together. It takes two to climb up; especially if parents’ money isn’t funding the climb. I may be the only one who connects dots between our country’s near collapse and the collapse of so many long time marriages. On both fronts, we really did believe we could have it all and for years, many of us did.  Then midlife hit and the never ending frantic pace slowed enough to see more clearly this abstract notion we only considered in our youth: until death do us part.

For couples able to reinvent together, I can’t think of a sweeter way to go through to the end than side by side with your lifelong mate who you still dig.  But for those couples who lost or never had this kismet, viewing old age together through the prism of midlife eyes looks like a long and winding road without much melody.

The rumor mills already suggest Al was smitten by another woman; perhaps introduced to him by one of his famous Hollywood buddies. If it turns out to be true, I don't think it makes him the bad guy. It just makes him one of us; a Boomer who still believes we can have it all.

After what we’ve learned so recently about indulging voracious appetites, you would think we’d opt for conservatism and some of us do. But some still believe that living your life making love not war is worth the price paid for leaving a long term marriage. Some believe there’s still time to find that melody. I’m not saying it’s a good thing but I do think this is emblematic of my generation.