Executive
Overview
What Is the
Midkife Crisis?
The midlife crisis is a 1-to-3 year period
of mental readjustment that occurs with married couples
in their mid-forties. It typically manifests itself
between the 15th and 20th years of marriage.
What Causes
It?
What Effects
Does It Have?
If the spouses going through the midlife crisis
know that it's merely a period of adjustment, followed by
good and comfortable decades that are really better than
the parenting years, the adjustment can probably be easily made.
However, in all too many cases, one or the other of the two partners
jumps out of the groove and takes irrevocable steps that, a year
later, they regret. Liaisons, divorces, harmful career decisions,
and bad financial commitments are common disasters that attend
the midlife crisis.
The midlife crisis generally occurs at
a very bad time. The children haven't yet grown and
gone, and the effects upon them (and eventually, upon one's grandchildren)
are terrible. If the marriage partners separate, it's like a rocket that fails to make it to orbit,
and instead, crashes and burns. It occurs at a time when
schooling expenses peak, and instead of having one household to
maintain, the partners now have two households to care for, at
a time when they can least afford it.
What
Comes After the Midlife Crisis?
In my experience, typically, the best
years of your life. As your children leave home, domestic
stress declines, and you and your mate grow ever closer together.
You begin to explore interests that you weren't able to indulge
when you were so busy rearing your children and striving on your
job. You and your partner do many things together, and many things
separately.
In 1932, an author by the name of Walter Pitkin
wrote a popular book called, "Life Begins at Forty",
but it would probably be more nearly correct to say that
life begins just past the midlife crisis.
What
Are the Treatments for the Midlife Crisis?
For
a partner who considers straying:
The first step is to realize when you've
developed the midlife crisis syndrome. There are books
about it. Counselors are well-aware of it, and can help educate
you concerning it. Gail Sheehy's book, "Passages"
(http://search.barnesandnoble.com/OopBooks/OopResultsTitle.asp?userid=34OJ0SX5OW&WID=47332606
&price=&format=&signed=&edition=&dj=&recent=&title=&author=Gail+Sheehy&itm=2)
was the book that first brought the midlife crisis to everyone's
attention. It should be available at public libraries.
The second step is to hang in there.
For your own sake as well as your loved ones, please don't
make any life-changing decisions for a year. Please don't
tear up the lives of the people who love you and whom you love
with moves that you will haunt you for the rest of your life.
(Stray now; pay later.) In a year, the midlife crisis will
pass. Then you can make your decisions with the knowledge that
you have given your thoughts time to mature. Realize that this
is very common condition that affects most married couples, and
that if it is contained, it will soon pass. Your hobby is
a manifestation of your attempt to replace your involvement in,
and high hopes for your job with something else that can engage
your mind and mobilize your enthusiasm.
What follows below is the main body of this "article".
In 1973, author Gail Sheehy wrote a book called
"Passages"
alerting the world to one of the more dangerous phases of the
modern march through life, the "midlife crisis".
It's been 30 years since Ms. Sheehy first identified
the midlife crisis. At the time, her book made the best-sellers
lists, and her findings were widely disseminated. Her insights swept
the U. S. like other fads, and by now, they may have lost their
fizz. However, that doesn't mean that the midlife crisis is any
less common in our lives than it was in the 1970's, or that it's
any less dangerous. Ignoring its perils may create the very dangers
that "Passages" warns against.
The Midlife
Crisis Is a Brief Interlude... a Time of Readjustment
It's extremely important to understand that
this midlife crisis is a brief phase life in life, lasting two
or three years, and that it's followed, by those who don't blow
their lives apart during this rite of passage, by what Robert
Browning described when he wrote,
"Grow old along with me.
The best is yet to be:
The last of life for which the first was made."
The earlier years of marriage are very demanding.
The period beyond the midlife crisis is a time when the bread
we've launched upon the waters finally comes in, but sadly, for
all too many married couples, the bread sinks within hailing distance
of the shore.
The Perilous
Midlife Crisis
The midlife crisis generally occurs between the
16th and the 20th years of
marriage. The children are generally teenagers, and are emotionally
separating themselves from their parents, in preparation for their
departure from the nest. They are farther from their parents than
they have ever been before, and in close families, are farther
than they will ever be again. (They also know more about everything
than they've ever known before or will ever know again.) This
can be hard on the parents, who may find it difficult to believe
that this is a natural, temporary stage of maturation, and not
a permanent divorce. It's a time when stress may be at a peak
at home. Relationships between the spouses are strained because
of the problems of having a house full of fledgling adults who
seek the privileges of adulthood without yet having the mindsets
of mature adults.
It's also a time when the "empty nest"
syndrome is staring parents in the face.
The spouses are usually in their forties. For
the first fifteen-to-twenty years of their marriage, they've been
consumed with working their way up at work, and with caring for
their young children at home, but now, that requires less time.
Before this, there was pride of purpose, and a sense that, as
young adults, they still had plenty of time, and that better days
lay ahead. Now, the spouses are suddenly confronting middle age
and their own mortality, with (they think) no prospects for a
better future ahead. Work has often lost its luster, and is now
seen as no more than a way of making a living. She's thinking,
"I'm 40-something, going on 40-something-plus-one. I'm going
to lose my looks by the time I'm in my 50's.. I've outgrown him.
Am I going to stuck with this marriage for the rest of
my life?" He's thinking, "I'm 40-something, going
on 40-something-plus-one.How much longer am I going to be attractive
to women? Linda, at work, thinks I'm really a really desirable
guy, and my wife doesn't appreciate me. Maybe it's time to make
a change. Our children no longer care about me. I'm just a wage
slave, a draft animal hired out to pay their way. Poor me."
Basically, this is about, "Is this all I'm going to get out
of life? What's in it for me?" The thinking and the feelings
are self-centered and child-like.
Resentment over your spouse's faults may build
up over the years when you were too busy to deal with them, and
this may help fuel the urge to split. And, of course, everyone
has flaws, except for you and me.
One of the symptoms of the midlife crisis is
that one of the spouses may suddenly take up a hobby as a symptom
of their restlessness, and because of the inadequacy or absence
of their previous goals. Frustrated by their lack of influence over what happens
at work, they find a venue where they can exert control.
Another characteristic of the midlife crisis
is that the marriage partners' normally-good judgment is compromised
by the wash of feelings that are running during this interlude.
(If you've been infected by the midlife crisis virus, try to avoid
making any life-changing decisions until you've recuperated. The
midlife crisis time is no more conducive to seasoned judgment
than is the whirling mind of drunkenness.)
In the meantime, it seems to them as though
all their friends are splitting up... which, of course, is a consequence
of their friends' infection with the same mid-life virus.
What follows next can be a disaster comparable
to the death of one of the spouses,
which, in a way, is what happens. One of them may act upon this
lunacy, running off with the soubrette, or with the dream man
who turns out to be a nightmare.
Then they learn what it's really like
out there. But it's the rest of the family that pays the piper
for this tarantella. Specious arguments about the children being
better off or the children adjusting happily to this new state
of affairs are in the realm of "I'm going to get rich trading
commodities!" or "I've got this gambling scheme that
just can't lose!"
Most of us really marry only once. First love
endures, even unto our dying day. And we never really divorce.
One of the important lessons that profits us
when learned through contemplation rather than the hard way is
that the grass really isn't greener on the other side of the fence.
Its Impact
Upon the Affected Children
The midlife crisis is terrifying to children
because they're aware at some level that this is childishness
on the part of one or the other of their parents, and their security
is threatened. They're outwardly unaffected but inwardly shattered,
and their chances of making it through the temptations of adolescence
are sizably reduced. From a child's point of view, any involvement
on the part of one of their parents with another adult is a rejection
of them. Euphemisms about "making it easy on the children",
and "the children are taking it quite well" are eyewash,
as will be apparent when the children grow up and get to choose
how often they see the errant parent. Also, there holes in discipline and
role-modeling that can undercut a healthy adolescence.
The effects upon children are heart-rending. And eventually,
the parents pay many time over for their folly and self-centeredness.
Scenes
from a Marriage
In the early 70's, the famous Swedish filmmaker,
Ingmar Bergmann, captured the midlife crisis in a movie entitled,
"Scenes from a Marriage".
In the movie, Marianne and Josef are a happily
married couple whose marriage has reached the level of comfortable
accommodation. They own a rural cabin, and they visit it in the
opening scenes of the movie.
One night, while they're doing the dishes,
Josef announces in a quiet, matter-of-fact way, that he wants
a divorce. At first, Marianne thinks that he's joking, but soon
realizes that he isn't. He's met a 19-year-old woman, Paula, who
thinks he's a dispensation from God. He wants a divorce so he
can marry her.
He packs his clothes and leaves. Marianne's
grief overflows, but she gradually makes arrangements to break
up housekeeping and to live on her own.
After a few weeks, she encounters Josef again.
He's no longer so happy with Paula. Paula is so immature! She
wants to go out dancing and partying every night, and he wants
to rest.
Later, he wants to come back. Paula and he
have split. Paula wants a younger man, and he wants Marianne.
But it's too late. Marianne won't take him back. The door has
slammed tight.
The movie continues as they age. Neither of
them ever remarries. Instead, they grow old, lonely and alone.
This Story
Plays Out Over and Over in Real Life
Not long after Ruth and I saw "Scenes
from a Marriage", I was talking with a very pretty neighbor
who mentioned that she and her family were going on a skiing trip.
Something about the way she said it evoked a little frisson of
deja vu for me, raising the specter of the midlife crisis. Not
long after that, I encountered the woman again (at Christmas time).
She said that her husband had just moved out. He'd met a 19-year-old
who had excited him, and he had moved in with her.
Merry Christmas!
Four weeks later, I saw her again. She said
that her husband wanted to move back home, but that he also wanted
to continue bedding down with the woman. She told him absolutely
no.
Still later, Ruth and I saw him walking with
a much younger woman at the mall, and then we saw him walking
with older and homelier women. And many years later, although
his very pretty wife had dated many men, she had never remarried.
Their children were working as store clerks.
And Played
Out Again and Again
By now, I've seen this theme re-enacted again
and again. Usually, it's the man who makes the witless move, but
I know of a few cases in which the woman was the culprit.
Like honeymoons, or the periods of grieving
after a mortal loss, the midlife crisis is a stage couples go
through. After it has burned itself out, they're either left with
embarrassment at their self-indulgence if they haven't been consumed
by its flames, or they're left with the dead, cold ashes of their
lives if they've acted upon their folly.
Beyond
the Midlife Crisis
After a year or two, the thoughts and feelings
of the midlife crisis run their course, and the affected lose
interest in its issues. New interests, causes, and passions re-energize
their lives, and they're ready to move on to more rewarding challenges...
unless they've made life-disrupting choices while they were in
the narrows of their midlife crises.
After the stresses of the midlife crisis have
subsided, the spouses enter a new era of closeness. The wind dies
down, the waves subside, and they get on with their lives, exploring
interests that they were unable to address during those years
when they were so overwhelmed at home. (Ruth took up bird-watching.
I began to write poetry and short stories.)
Divorces
Run in Families
I've never read that divorces run in families,
and stable marriages run in other families, but you can see by
looking around that it's true. There are virtually no divorces
in some families, either in past generations or in the current
generation.
Then there are other families in which virtually
everyone has been divorced at least once.
I mentioned this to a marriage counselor. She
said,
"It's no accident. They learned subconscious
lessons at their mothers' knees. Children who grow up in stable
families have a better chance of having a stable marriage themselves.
But once that chain is broken, all bets are off "
If you act out, and get a divorce during your
midlife crisis, your folly may well reverberate through your children's
marriages as well
This isn't to say that there aren't situations
in which divorce isn't well-justified, but, the year or two of
the midlife crisis is a time when marriages are at exceptionally
high risk... a time of rebellion and of "do-your-own-thing".
Our mental states aren't conducive to seasoned judgment during
that interlude.
The Time
of the Great Marrying
The time of the Great Marrying occurs when
we're between the ages of 18 and, perhaps, 23. There's a scramble
then for the most apparently-desirable marriage partners. Most
students want to select their partners while they're still in
school, where there's a good selection of unattached marriage
prospects. By the age of 25, the pickings are leaner. There are
some seemingly-attractive singles who turn out to be much less
attractive when you get to know them better..
The Permanently-Married
Many of the ones who marry during the time
of the Great Marrying will remain married, reappearing in the
singles world only at the far end of life after their spouses
have died. The chances of finding them in the forty-something
singles' "Meet Market" are small. If they do show up,
they often re-marry within a year or two, and once again, are
unavailable.
The men and women who say, "All the good
ones are married", aren't just letting off steam. When you
look at the numbers, you realize the grain of truth behind what
they're saying.
The Never-Married
The ones who never marry are single for the
rest of their lives, and the probability of finding them among
older singles is highest. More often than not, if they've never
married, it's for some good reason, and the likelihood of finding
one's dream partner among them is slight. Some of them are addicts.
Also among these singles are many homosexuals.
The In-and-Out
Partners
Then there are the ones who move in and out
of marriages. These are the most dangerous men and women of all.
They include many addicts who straighten out while you're in the
courting stage, but who fall back into their addictive ways once
you're married. (It must be extremely hard to have your spouse
fail to come home for supper, and then to found out that they've
gotten stoned, and have bedded down with whoever put the make
on them that night.)
By no means all of the younger singles are
unsuitable for marriage. Some of them are excellent life partners
(e. g., the good marriage partners whose spouses have foolishly
dumped them during the midlife crisis),. but it must be expensive
finding out who are good partners and who aren't.
In short, the mid-life singles group is enriched
with unmarriageable or relatively difficult singles. There must
be a waxy buildup of men and women you'd be advised to avoid.
So Much
Can Be Wrong With a Spouse
There are so many things that can be wrong
about a spouse. They can be addictive. They can be unable to handle
money... too loose or too tight. They can be compulsive spenders.
They can try to take your money, or they can look out for themselves
at your expense. They can tell nasty or embarrassing things about
you behind your back, or even to your face, in front of others.
They can have bad breath or smell bad. They can be physically
abusive. They can be selfish and self-centered. They can have
violent tempers and throw things. They can be parasites, taking
from you without giving back. There can be endless arguments over
disciplining the children. They can have mothers who are third
members of the marriage bed. They can be chronic philanderers,
unable to resist sampling the flowers. They can be people who
have a high need for variety or for excitement. And so on. Of
course, some of these things may be adjudged to happen from time
to time in a small way even in a good marriage. But these are
the kinds of imperfections that must be accommodated if the marriage is to
remain intact.
If you let go of a good wife or husband (defined
as someone who isn't fatally flawed), it's like dropping a succulent
piece of ham into a pool of piranhas.
You Don't
Really Know Someone Until You've Been Married to Them for a While
One of the worst problems with changing partners
is that you don't know someone until you've been married to them
long enough for the honeymoon to be over. If you try to evaluate
someone before you're married, you'll either set the bar too high,
in which case nobody qualifies, or you'll set the bar low enough
that you don't really know "the other side" of them
until you've been married a while.
Think she's just about perfect? Think again.
There's a side to her of which you're totally unaware. People
are absolutely on their best behavior during the courting phase.
And after you're married, you're still going to have to do everything
you did before, plus some new obligations stemming from the enlargement
of your circle of relatives. And you're going to have to do all
this with with diluted resources. If you were in a rut before,
you'll be in a steep-sided ditch afterward.
Six months is the average period during which
endorphins run in a new marriage. After that, it's worse than
it was before. Is it worth screwing up the rest of your life for
six months worth of good feelings?
Looking
at the Numbers
Suppose you live in an urban area with 250,000
inhabitants.
Of that number, approximately 125,000 will
be members of the wrong sex.
If you delimit potential partners to those
who are no more than 10 or 12 years older than yourself, you're
probably looking at 25,000 members of the suitable sex within
your age range.
At any given time, there are nine married persons
for every unmarried divorcee. To this must be added the widowed
and the chronically single. This leads in the early or middle
years to, probably, no more than 5,000 eligible singles.
Some fraction of these singles are currently
locked in with someone else. Another large fraction, although
suitable, aren't in circulation for any of a variety of reasons...
e. g., commitment to small children. A third sizable fraction
consists of people with neuroses or psychoses, with substance
abuse problems, with other addictive problems (viz., obesity),
or with personality or character flaws such as a high need to
control, a very jealous makeup, chronic philandery, etc.
Many of the chronically single will never marry.
You'll be lucky if there are 500 singles in
your area who are visible and who might make suitable spouses,
and there will be several thousand people competing for them.
The minute someone promising (e. g., someone
widowed) enters the singles pool, those singles who are in contact
with them will tend to approach them.
When you subtract out all the unsuitable choices,
it becomes clear that the actual selection of desirable and available
singles in these early and middle ages isn't as generous as one
might suppose at first blush.
Marrying
Into a New Family
When you marry into a new family, it means
twice as many relatives to conjure with.... twice as many weddings
and funerals to attend, twice as many opportunities to sit up
with sick relatives at the hospital, and twice as many troubles
to contend with. In other words, it eats up a lot of your time,
and potentially exposes you to some serious problems that you're
expected to help solve.
Your Investment
in Time and Training
It takes a long time to housebreak and train
your young marriage partner. If you've spent 15 to 20 years adjusting
to your spouse, and your spouse has spent 15 to 20 years adjusting
to you, you have a lot invested in each other. Are you prepared
to spend another 15 to 20 years reaching the same level of comfort
with someone else? During the years of your marriage, you've both
grown toward each other. You've adopted some of your partners
more-admirable traits, and your partner has adopted some your
more-admirable traits.
There are some situations in which divorce
is the only reasonable option. These include partnerships in which
one of the partners is a substance abuser, chronically unfaithful,
a deadbeat, or exhibits other unacceptable behavior, but the one-to-three
years of the midlife crisis is, perhaps, not the best time to
make that assessment.
Expert
Feedback
If you want to find out what it's like to be
single in your forties, ask anyone who's been single for at least
ten years. (Don't ask someone who's planning to get a divorce,
or someone who's been divorced for a year. They may not know yet.)
The Midlife
Crisis Is Only a Phase
I know I've said this before, but it's so important
that maybe it warrants saying it again: it's terribly important
to know that the
mid-life crisis is only a brief stage in life, a time of transition, of readjustment
between the commitments of early adulthood when time seemed to
stretch out forever, and the golden age that follows the midlife
crisis when life's burdens have lightened.
After a few years, you simply lose interest in contemplating
your midlife crisis, and you move on to more worthwhile topics.
The midlife crisis is a temporary stage between
the frenetic pace of spreading one's wings (and ultimately, finding
one's limits) and rearing small children, and settling into the
fascinating and rewarding years that lie a year or two beyond
the midlife crisis... like crossing the sound barrier.
The Antidote
for Empty Nest Syndrome
The antidote for the sadness of an empty nest
is the realization that if you and your spouse successfully make
it through your midlife crisis, your nest won't be empty for long.
Pretty soon, the grandchildren will start to arrive, and you'll
get to enjoy your children all over again. And as any grandparent
can tell you, happiness is being a grandparent!
Your Lives
and Your Aging Rates May Not Be Like Your Parents' Lives and Aging
Rates
Although we're aware that things change as
we go along, most of us aren't aware of what's happening on the
longevity front. We have the idea that we're going to age and
die just like all the generations that have gone before us. (There
are gerontologists who will assure you of this.) However, it's
not true.
There are two aspects to the amelioration of
aging.
Increasing
the Average Lifespan of a Species
This is affected by the kind of lifestyle
we lead (e. g., not smoking, keeping our weight down, eating lots
of fruits and vegetables), and can also, perhaps, be improved
by activating certain longevity genes. This in itself won't allow
us to live beyond a maximum age, but it would allow more us of
us to live longer and better than we would otherwise.
Some of the medications we take today actually
slow certain aspects of the aging process. For example, the class
of blood pressure medications known as ACE inhibitors actually
slow the rate of accumulation of "glycation end products"...
the cellular sludge that is one of the principal by-products of
aging.
Increasing
the Maximum Lifespan of a Species
This maximum life span can only be increased
at present through a restricted-calorie diet. However, researchers
are learning that a reduced-calories diet can be effective at
any age. It can work whenever the subject reduces caloric intake
for a few days time. My own speculation is that it doesn't require
that someone be skin-and-bones. It may work whenever the caloric
intake drops low enough.
Beyond this are certain genetic manipulations
that, in lower organisms, extend not just the average lifespan
but also the maximum lifespan. For example, it has just been learned
that a component of grapes, resveratrol
(http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994085), activates
the SIR2 gene in yeast, extending its average lifespan by 70%.
"It's a long way from yeast to humans," says David Finkelstein,
at the US National Institute on Aging in Washington DC. "But
it points the way to go."
(Karyn Huntting played a key role (if not the
key role) in identifying the cardiovascular benefits of resveratrol.)
And beyond this is the fact that Nature has
a technique for totally reversing aging. Otherwise, babies wouldn't
be born brand, spanking new but would be the average age of their
parents. And if that were true, life would never have been possible
in the first place.
I believe that those who are young now won't
be subject to the tyranny of the clock as are those of us who
have gone before them. And that means that the transition into
middle age may not be what it appears to be..
The Bottom
Line
If you have had any thoughts about changing
spouses, think again. Your dream woman/man is a fantasy, and you'll
end up worse off than you were before. What you see is fool's
gold. If you can manage to learn more about what it's really like
out there, you'll show your appreciation for your spouse, and
will take no chances on letting anyone else get hold of them.
Good spouses are hard to find. And better days are coming. Wake
up before it's too late.
As married parents, try to cut yourselves some
pieces of slack. Take a little quality time with each other.
The midlife crisis is a classic sand trap.
Do you suppose that anyone who succumbs to it might possibly feel
just the least bit embarrassed about it later on?... like buying
the Encyclopedia Brittanica from that nice young man who's working
his way through college?
"All that glisters is not gold... "
