The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising, given researchers’ cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered impact of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on turnout. Using population-level registry data on voter turnout, we make a number of contributions to the literature. First, we use the differential timing of divorces in relation to general elections to generate more credible estimates of the causal effect of divorce on turnout. Second, and while we find that both sexes are strongly and adversely affected by divorce, we show that the effect is much more pronounced for men. Finally, we use these, as well as a variety of additional data, to probe for the potential mechanisms that underlie the greater impact of divorce on men.