Quiet Quitting or Conscious Recalibration?
A recent New York Magazine article — The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands — explores women over 40 who are “quietly quitting” their marriages, choosing not dramatic divorce, but emotional withdrawal.
You can read the original piece here.
At first glance, it looks like disengagement.
But beneath it, I see something else entirely.
A recalibration of worth.
A refusal to continue expending emotional labour without reciprocity.
A values correction that whispers: this no longer aligns.
We are witnessing a cultural moment where midlife women refuse to keep sacrificing themselves to systems that mistake silence for loyalty.
At work.
In leadership.
In relationships.
The Affection Economy speaks to this precisely:
the transition from endurance to agency.
From performance to presence.
This is not about rejecting marriage or rejecting men.
It’s about rejecting the unspoken expectation that women must emotionally carry structures long after they have stopped feeling safe, seen or honoured within them.
Quiet quitting, when viewed through a values lens, isn’t collapse.
It’s discernment.
It is women choosing peace without spectacle.
Dignity without apology.
Clarity without confrontation.
And perhaps the most radical shift of midlife is not in walking away from life,
but in walking back toward self.
This is what we explore through our retreat work — not escape, but alignment. Not rejection, but return.
To self.
To truth.
To affection.
Because alignment is not always loud.
Sometimes it’s simply the moment a woman stops abandoning herself.
This recalibration is at the heart of the Affection Economy retreat work — spaces designed for us to pause, realign with our values, and return to ourselves with clarity and compassion.
Learn more about the retreat here.
Author’s Note:
This piece was originally published here on The Story Maker.
It is available for republication, syndication, or editorial adaptation.
For commissions or licensing, please get in touch with Jet Swain
