“At the time of the divorce, I was 55 years old.
I was left alone for three years.
“Having always worked on construction sites, Hervé explains that his job has not helped him to make romantic encounters.
Still, he was determined to find someone to share what he calls "the rest of his life."
“After all, I have a good thirty years to live.
So I registered on the Meetic dating site.
"
Hervé divorced, like 38% of men over 50.
This is what emerges from a survey published by the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) on Wednesday, on the increase in break-ups and repartnering among people aged 50 and over.
In 2005, 29% of 50-year-olds thought of rebuilding their lives.
Now they are 37%.
“What has changed is that before, people reached 50 having had only one union.
Today, this is no longer the case.
A quarter of women of this age have known several, ”explains Anne Solaz.
The researcher, author of the study, also points to important differences between men and women.
“After 50 years, the love market is out of balance.
On the one hand, because men die more quickly.
And on the other hand, because they are moving towards younger women.
Women therefore have fewer opportunities to re-pair.
"
"No more sharing the same roof"
Another element put forward in his survey, similarities with the vision of life as a couple among young people.
"People in their fifties no longer want the traditional couple," says Anne Solaz.
“This is especially true for women,” she says.
“No more sharing the same roof, it is rather everyone at home who is privileged.
"
A trend confirmed by Blandine, a 61-year-old retiree who lives in Sainte-Marie-de-Ré (Charente-Maritime).
Separated for seven years from the father of her children, she still dreams of love and a commitment to two, but little taste the prospect of cohabitation.
"I don't want the day-to-day, to struggle with cooking, shopping and laundry for the house, and falling on a sock that hangs out, there are concessions that I no longer want to make », She explains.
READ ALSO>
Who are the "quincados", these very teenage fifties?
Four years after her divorce, Blandine stayed with a man she met on a site for a year, but felt that moving in together was "a mistake".
“I had the feeling that I was falling back into the same routine as with my husband,” she describes.
"I am looking for complicity and common passions, but I would like to invent another way of being together," she says.
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
“It's a very heterogeneous age group with one major specificity: either the project to be a parent has already been completed, or we have drawn a line over it.
The result is the desire to share more areas of interest than the same roof, at least at the beginning, ”notes Héloïse des Monstiers, director of the dating site Disons demain.
This version of Meetic created by the group in 2017 is aimed at 9 million single people over 50.
With the idea that after having worked and having children, "people want to approach this second part of life from the angle of pleasures and no longer obligations", decrypts Héloïse des Monstiers.
Claim the desire to be in love
In fact, today's 50s and 60s are not yesterday's.
At 61 years old, Blandine can boast of a very rich social life, of an associative investment, of the pride of having bought and renovated a house for the first time on her own, and of her dancing outings in the evening in La Rochelle. with her girlfriends.
“There are still four years, claiming the desire for love after 50 years was taboo, but people are more and more liberated and this is no longer the case,” says Héloïse de Monstiers.
Hervé can attest to this, he who now lives happily with the woman he met on Meetic.