When it comes to matters marital, none but the staunchest of the cynics among us disobeys the programmed response: weddings mean all things “hurray” (bells; flowers; sex) and divorces mean all things “boo” (pain; turmoil; lawyers). Strange, yet agreeable, therefore to enjoy a warm and fuzzy twinkle upon learning from the Office for National Statistics that the divorce rate is up again – but that this time the rise is solely attributable to one category: the increase in the number of people, and in particular the number of women, who are filing for divorce after the age of 60. For how can this, really, be other than good news?

It is illogical to suggest that their unhappiness is greater than that of the married sexagenarian of ten, twenty or even fifty years ago, given that the contributing factors to wellbeing remain equal: duty, as previously, has been done in terms of “family values”; the children are suitably raised and gone; the job is finished and the mortgage paid; the pension is earned and the carriage clock handed over; he is bald with the requisite paunch and she is lined with her breasts gone south.

And although we should be careful to rule nothing out, it is – how shall we put this? – less likely than it was in younger years that either is experiencing the ravages of hormonal madness wrought by the lust of a new infidelity.

All we can conclude, therefore, is that – as analysts have suggested – the rise in divorce is largely the result of older women being happier to strike out on their own rather than remain in unhappy marriages. In other words, unlike their mothers and grandmothers, they are taking stock, finding wanting and deciding to b****r that for a game of soldiers.

That they should have come to an awareness of their dissatisfaction was in many respects inevitable: where women once dropped, exhausted, at the end of their “useful” years, now if they reach 60 in good health they can sensibly look forward to another quarter-century of reasonably active life. It is not surprising, then, if they take a good long second look at whom they are expected to do the time with and wonder if until-death-do-them-part really is expected to apply to the old guy who has been boring and snoring them senseless for years. The Darby and Joan they dreamt of as the confetti flew would have been lovely – but Darby and Joan, sadly, they are not.

That they should act on their dissatisfaction, however, is the real triumph; perhaps, even, one of the proper legacies among the many muddles of the latterday women’s movement. To spring both partners from their unplanned, but mutually constraining, domestic dreariness takes a strength, independence, courage and optimism that until now has just been too much to ask. Salute the escapees, I say: go, girls, you go. And whatever you do, don’t look back.

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