HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: The details that make Nicole and Keith's split kind of about us.

This article originally appeared on Holly Wainwright's Substack, Holly Out Loud. Sign up here.

The minute the headlines went up, the DMs started.

No! It can't be true.

Well, come on. They must never see each other.

Sob. We played one of his songs about her at our wedding.

Younger woman. 100 per cent. MEN, am I right?

20 years! If they can't make it, what hope is there for the rest of us?????

To be fair, I invited these reactions, posting about Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's split on my Instagram stories in the hours after it happened.

I have worked on the Internet long enough to know not to post too many 'news' stories the moment they happen. To not try to express an immediate reaction to something I know very little about in a few short words on a hot pink background.

But reader, I was shocked. Celebrity news shocked.

Image: Supplied.

I still can't believe it.

There are some Gen X celebrities who feel like family. Not close family, who might invite you to their destination wedding if numbers were low, but perhaps that distant second-cousin-in-law you hear gossip about at family gatherings.

You're across the broad strokes of their lives. Holidays. Weddings. Births. Graduations. You've watched them grow up on your phone, just as you've grown up, albeit with fewer laugh lines. You know people who've met them. You heard how much their house cost. You hope one day to get invited to it.

Nicole Kidman is one of those people. One of those celebrities. She's been in the zeitgeist for so long, we can rattle off her eras alongside our own. BMX Bandits, for God's sake. The ingenue years, with the wild red hair. Hollywood. TOM CRUISE. Serious Actress. Mum. Big Divorce. Lenny Kravitz. Oscar. Keith. The Wedding. Baz Luhrmann! The longed-for babies. Nashville. Arthouse. Surgery. Big Little Lies… And on, and more.

Shorthand chapters for a complicated life we feel we know, but obviously don't.

Watch: Amelia, Jessie and Holly 'decode' Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's divorce.

It barely needs stating that Nicole Kidman is not Like Us. Rich and beautiful, talented and hardworking, she has become one of the most famous people on the planet.

But she is like us, it turns out, in some crucial ways that cause complete strangers to relate to her reluctant 'Life Lately' updates.

Sometimes shit happens to her that she cannot control.

And in midlife — a time we once assumed was when things stopped happening to people (women) and we all faded into some kind of soft-focus, low-brightness complacency — everything can still blow right up. In fact, it often does.

Call it a midlife collision, or the great midlife marriage collapse, but women in their 50s are getting divorced a lot. The rise of "grey divorce" is a thing, accounting for 32 per cent of all marriage breakdowns in Australia. While the divorce rate overall is dropping, for Gen X it's rising.

Why? And what do Keith and Kidman have to do with it? Well, it's complicated, and nothing, but in decoding the narrative that's played out across the gossip media this week (and left unchallenged by either Kidman or Urban themselves, as I write this), some very typical tropes emerge.

And they're factors familiar to all the relationship interviews I have done for MID, the podcast for Gen X women.

After 20 years — a baby-to-adult life span together — a couple is now at Sibling Level of familiarity. Hopefully, that's safe and affirming, an unshakeable foundation, the joy, as someone put to me, "of finding someone to stand still with". But not always. And look, it's not hot.

Everyone is wrestling with the unfamiliar reflection in the mirror. Even if you are choosing to do everything your finances and access allow to hold back time, those changes you've lived through are visible on your face and body. You look like the different person you are. So does your partner.

How do you react to that? By chasing something or someone that makes you feel like the person who was in that mirror 20 years before?

There's a loosening of the bonded identity and sense of purpose parenting little kids together brings. Who are you now you're not the constant dual centre of your children's universe?

You've been through some Serious Shit that's made you question everything: Losing parents, scares about your children, professional devastations, illnesses, hormonal meltdowns, financial dramas — your perspective has shifted.

Your problems — addictions, toxic traits, insecurities — do not disappear with age. They just keep right on flaring up, and what was once an endearing challenge to your partner is now just… exhausting. Tolerance for putting up with someone else's shit is now at limbo level.

Leaning into work as your family needs your physical time less seems like a no-brainer. But what happens when this external validation slowly bumps your relationship down the leader board, without you even noticing?

All of these things have been floated — in reports of varying credibility — as reasons Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are divorcing after 20 years together.

And all of these things — in much less glamorous circumstances, with much less choice afforded — are challenges that most long-term relationships face.

It goes some way to explain why so many people are so obsessed, why a 'none-of-our-business' split feels personal. When someone in your wider circle chooses to end their long relationship, or has their long relationship ended for them, we often look at our own. Are we okay? Are we happy? Are we settling? Are we… them?

So. Have you heard?

Second-cousin in-law Nicole is getting a divorce. Finding out WHY feels like urgent family business.

Listen to Jessie, Em and I decoding the press narratives around Nicole and Keith's split on this special episode of Out Loud:

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Read more from Holly:

• HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: 'King Charles is "furious" with one of his sons. And it's not Harry.'

• HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: 'Exactly what a tarot reader told me.'

• HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: So, what do people do at night?

Feature image: Getty.