Jensen Huang at Stanford, April 30, 2026. Photo Credit Anders Eidesvik.
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At a glance
- Jensen Huang’s departure from Nvidia opens a wider question about how a breach of trust can affect relationships and work after 50.
- A U.S. study of later-life divorce estimated a 45% decline in standard of living for women and 21% for men, measured by income relative to needs.
- Rebuilding trust or starting over can take time, especially when work, caregiving and retirement plans are intertwined.
Jensen Huang’s resignation from Nvidia after his admission of infidelity raises a question close to home. What happens when trust breaks after decades of building a family, a career and a future together?
In a November 8 email to Nvidia employees, Jensen Huang addressed two audiences. He acknowledged being unfaithful and said his actions had hurt his wife and children. To his colleagues at Nvidia, he said he had fallen short of the trust they placed in him. Nvidia’s board accepted his resignation as CEO and a director on November 11. The company announced the move the next day and named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress interim CEO.
Nvidia’s board had opened an independent investigation into reports of a possible foreign intelligence effort targeting Huang. In its initial statement, the board said it had no reason at that point to believe U.S. national security or company secrets had been compromised.
When I wrote about the Astronomer executives shown on a Coldplay kiss cam, I kept coming back to how quietly two people can grow apart. The Nvidia story brings me back to a different question. What happens in the days and months after someone learns about an affair? By 50, the person you’re sitting across from may be the person who helped raise your children, cared for your parents or supported you through a career change. Now you’re trying to figure out what you can still count on. The person you’d usually talk to about it is sitting right there.
When the life you built together feels uncertain
Discovering an affair can change how you remember ordinary things. A business trip you barely thought about at the time. A stretch when your partner seemed distracted. A conversation about retiring together that you took at face value. The questions can be exhausting because they reach backward into the life you thought you knew and forward into plans you assumed were settled.
Children can feel that change even when they’ve been out of the house for years. They may wonder whether they’ll see both parents at Thanksgiving or who will be there if one gets sick. They deserve room to work out what the change means for them, without being asked to take sides or carry messages.
What happens to the retirement you planned?
Then there’s the math. Can either of you afford to stay in the house? Does a plan to retire at 62 still work when there are two households to pay for? In a U.S. study of divorce at age 50 or older, sociologists I-Fen Lin and Susan L. Brown estimated that the standard of living, measured by income relative to needs, fell 45 percent for women and 21 percent for men. The study looked at divorce after 50 across many circumstances. Even for two people who made the same retirement plan, the financial consequences can be very different.
After divorce at age 50 or older, researchers estimated that standard of living, measured by income relative to needs, fell 45% for women and 21% for men. Graphic by RestlessUrban, based on I-Fen Lin and Susan L. Brown’s analysis of U.S. Health and Retirement Study data from 2004 to 2014.
When a private crisis follows you to work
The morning after you find out, there may still be a meeting on your calendar. You can be the person everyone relies on at the office and still find yourself sitting in the parking lot trying to get through a call about where you’ll sleep that night. At an age when you may be training a successor, looking for a new role or counting on a few more years of income, the timing alone can matter.
Leaders face another set of questions when a relationship involves someone whose pay, promotion or assignments they can influence. The person with less authority may have more to lose if coworkers start questioning how they earned a promotion or if speaking up could cost them an assignment. For an employer, that raises questions about how decisions were made and whether employees felt comfortable raising concerns.
What it takes to rebuild trust
Two people can have been lonely in the same marriage and still experience the discovery of an affair very differently. One may want to talk about the years they spent growing apart. The other may need a straight answer about what happened before they can have that conversation. Both conversations can matter. An honest account of what happened can help both people decide what they want next, and they may need different amounts of time to get there.
Some couples will want to see whether they can rebuild. That happens in ordinary ways, through answering hard questions and doing what you said you would do, even after the hardest conversations are over. Others will decide to separate. Either choice can come with grief and relief, sometimes in the same day.
Starting over after 50
After 50, starting over can mean learning how to talk to the person you’ve known for decades. It can also mean making a life on your own and finding out what you want from it. The years you shared still count, and you can take your time deciding what comes next.
One night you’ll catch yourself laughing at dinner. A few months earlier, you might have wondered if an ordinary evening would ever feel that good again.
Read more
- What the Astronomer CEO Moment Reveals About Infidelity
- Divorce after 50 linked to greater loneliness in 27-country study
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