Many people have had a midlife crisis. The age of onset generally comes between 40 and 60. You may believe you’re having a midlife crisis for a number of reasons. But all of it comes down to panic, despair, and a feeling that you just can’t go on.
Midlife Crisis: It’s Not Just for Men
Guys Have Their Say
A 39 year old guy wrote on Reddit: “I have always heard men go through a midlife crisis where they want to be young, get motorcycles, do a bunch of athletic sh-t, drive fast cars etc. While I know these behaviors are not typical of every male these are the main things that stick out…”
That was what I always heard too. Men and their midlife crises! But then I found out, when *I* was 39, that women can have a midlife crisis as well. Because I was having one. There were no motorcycles for me. Just a new baby, older children, a husband who’d lost his job, a huge house which we probably couldn’t afford and a sinking sense of despair. And hopelessness. And a compelling conviction of approaching death.
You Can Either Laugh or Cry …
Back in those days, shortly after the birth of Andrew, my youngest child, my doctor told me that I had high blood pressure and that although controlling this problem with medication was possible I should not have any more children. I don’t know why I got so upset about that obvio opinion, looking back. Since anyone who was observing would have said Leo and I had already had too many children.
Still, the finality of it. The “you”re old and ill” aspect . And I looked around and realized I was just about to turn 40. The bottom just fell out of my world.
Depression stalked. I felt inches from death. Any second my heart would stop and I would collapse right there on the street, someone would see me stagger out of my car and fall down, they would call the ambulance but … too late … 39 years old dead as the proverbial door nail.
I tried not to think about this vision. It kept coming up.
I remember writing somewhere “I can’t be old, old just doesn’t fit with my personality, my whole personality depends on being a young woman … what am I going to do? This is impossible!”
So I Called My Father
I called my father, that man upon whom, back when he was alive, I relied in my most solitude-filled moments. He was the one person who you could call up and say “Hey Dad my life is going to hell” and he wouldn’t blame you or criticize you. He’d listen. He’d say something to make you feel better. If you called my mom and said your life was going to hell, on the other hand, she’d tell you it was your fault.
I said “Dad, help. I have high blood pressure. I’m getting old. You know I’m afraid I’ll die, afraid my life is over.”
I’ll never forget what he did
He laughed. He said “Susan high blood pressure does not have to be a big problem. If you keep taking your medicine you will be okay. My uncle has been taking high blood pressure medicine for 40 or 50 years and he’s fine. You have a long road ahead of you and a lot of work to do. You need to stop all this.”
I listened. I let my father’s words since in. Maybe the situation wasn’t hopeless. Maybe some day I would feel better. And the downward spiral of emotion stopped.
An instant cure did not occur. But it did help. There was another experience with another older person which had a big impact on me around that time. One afternoon I had a brief break from my child care responsibilities and decided to go ride my bike in the park. I decided not to wear a helmet, because, what did it matter? Being old and washed up anyway, I went riding down the bike path at top speed, letting my anger at the world manifest with furious pedaling.
I noticed a white haired gentleman walking along the path. It’s true I probably should have slowed down as I rode past him. But I went whooshing past without saying a thing, or ringing a bike bell, and as I went by he yelled at me.
“What is wrong with you young people! Don’t you care about anything? Where’s your helmet!”
I was struck silent. I slowed down. How could this man care about me and what I was doing? Who was I that anyone cared what happened to me? Did I actually have value? Was I really not old? I turned it over and over in my head.
And I also just about never got on a bike without a helmet again. This small act of care from a stranger changed me. Oh sure, I was still depressed for the better part of two years. But I came back to that moment again and again, and told myself, that if my life mattered to a total stranger, maybe it should matter to me too.
Life Changes, It’s True.
No longer a young woman, I was sad that this was true. But there was another happiness behind this that I was still young enough to do stuff. And the truth is, a lot of the stuff I wanted to do, I could do. I liked to write, I liked to be with my family, I liked to teach, I liked to cook. The prognosis was that I could do these things for a long time and this was encouraging.
Second Midlife Crisis
Things went along for fifteen years, nip and tuck, touch and go. And then there was the second midlife crisis, the one when I was 55. I didn’t actually think of this event as being a midlife crisis per se.
It was Leo who called it that. As in “Susan is having a mid life crisis … that’s why she wants to divorce me.” I have to say the second midlife crisis has been more momentous in terms of trajectory change than the first. Although the awareness of mortality which came with the first crisis was bad enough, my second midlife crisis has brought with it awareness of horizons worse, as they say, then death.
The second midlife crisis arrived for the opposite reason as the last one. The first one, it was because the doctor said I was unwell. The second came because the doctor told me I was in good health! I had been preparing, or expecting, a somewhat early death for a long time. And I went to my check up and the doctor seemed to be thinking that I was going to be around for the long term, baring unforeseen circumstances. Decades, even.
Some Things Are Even Worse Than Getting Old
Although the awareness of mortality which came with the first midlife crisis was bad enough, my second midlife crisis has brought with it awareness of things even worse than getting old. Things like being married to Leo for 30 or maybe even 40 more years. Because now, after so long a time had passed, I continued in good health. That good health was like a shining gift from the universe. And it could be turned into dross. All I had to do was keep doing what I was doing.
Oh my God. I thought. Leo had caused so much trouble already, and it wasn’t de-escalating either. In the year before I filed for divorce Leo had crashed my car, told me I couldn’t go to graduate school, wrecked two family vacations, and spent all the money I hadn’t put in our Vanguard account, an account which was truly minuscule. The financial thing was bad all on it’s own. We were nearing retirement and the way Leo was going, I wasn’t sure but I might be stuck here in town, unable to vacation, unable to shop … what would I do with my senior years? Especially since the verbal abuse was regular and pretty much inescapable.
The crisis came. Leo had to go. And believe me, that was a crisis because he didn’t want to.
Midlife Crisis or Midlife Wake Up Call?
Thus, the claim I was having a midlife crisis. And I guess I was. You could also say I was having a midlife wake up call. You know how they’re always talking about sustainability. Well, my life wasn’t sustainable. Financially or emotionally.
It was still a crisis. And in my own heart, I had to deal with my disillusionment about the loss of some of my few prestige points of this world: married for almost 30 years. It didn’t matter to neighbors or coworkers that my marriage was hellish. The prestige was the same. Since then I have come to know that many people live in the proverbial “marriage of convenience.”
But Leo really shouldn’t have been surprised, especially since our marriage was only convenient for him, and for me, it was a grinding and unending inconvenience on many levels.
Letting Go of the Kids’ Happiness and Thinking of Your Own for a Change?
Midlife crisis in a woman of 55 can be tough. There are things like realizing that you have been being taken for a ride for decades and that you should have done something about it a long time ago. There’s the thought that you’re too old to fix the mistakes that you made. And the fear that you are unable to take care of yourself because now you are alone and the idea that you are almost too old to work. What if your health fails? Are you still pretty? Maybe … maybe not? How pretty do you have to be at 55? Disasters lurked around every corner.
Then again, what if none of the imagined disasters happens? Then you’re worrying for nothing …
As in the first midlife crisis, with the grace of a more balanced perspective, I have been lifted out of the slough of despond. It’s true I had to struggle financially my first year alone, and my mother’s decision to side with Leo and tell my children that I am a bad person for getting divorced has been hard. The fact that the children don’t seem to have believed her helps. But I’ve kindof lost my mother over this.
One Last Thing
There’s one last thing I want to say about this midlife crisis idea. The thing that saved me, both times, was remembering that, whatever happened, there was still love in my life. I had people that were really important to me and thus not all was lost. I remember Andrew as a baby, seeing him growing up in that house of chaos, and thinking to myself, “I have to go on, I can’t die, someone has to raise this child. Leo would make a total botch of it if I were gone and if they decided to give Andrew to my mother … no, it’s unthinkable. I have to live.” And also, when everything was totally black inside my mind, when I didn’t believe anything good was coming for me, there was a single hope. Other people. My life meant something in that context.
Love sustains us, you know. It always has and always will and that’s why there are so many songs about it. Love gets us through when nothing else will. Love gets you through all of it, until it doesn’t have to anymore. And that’s my story.
Annotated Bibliography
The Afterlife of the Male Model from MEL magazine. Which talks about how male models experience middle age. It’s kindof like for everyone else, you can’t believe it’s happening but then it has. Perseverance and acceptance are key.
Wikipedia: Midlife Crisis: “A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 45 to 64 years old.” The phenomenon is described as “a psychological crisis brought about by events that highlight a person’s growing age, inevitable mortality, and possible lack of accomplishments in life. This may produce feelings of intense depression, remorse, and high levels of anxiety; or the desire to achieve youthfulness, make drastic changes to their current lifestyle, or change past decisions and events.”
Johns Hopkins Medical Health: Coping with Later-Life Crisis: In which the author suggests that midlife crisis could be better explained as later-life crisis, as it often hits after 50 or 60, and has an aspect of facing our mortality. By Alicia Ines Arbaje, M.D.
Esquire: “After 40, most of us start to panic about what we have (or haven’t) accomplished. Me? I’m learning that there’s more to life than being a famous writer.” Viet Thanh Nguyen shares his thoughts about reaching the middle of his life for Esquire
Everyday Health says that Gen X women (includes me) are sleepless and in despair in their midlife crisis … because of feminism and unrealistic expectations, along with midlife problems such as mortality and bills and debt. “Women who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s were raised with a particular kind of expectation. We were told the American dream was still in effect, and that made us believe it was going to happen for us. But it did not happen for women now in their forties and fifties. The stuff we were inculcated to believe was just not true. It was a bill of goods.” Wow. A heady read.
Women’s Day gives 17 signs of midlife crisis in women … and adds “”(MIdlife) can be a great place to readjust goals and make peace with your past. Frequently, the question of, ‘Am I enough?’ is at the center of this stage of life.” Lady you just said a mouthful. Also this: “Believing that all of the wonderful happenings that will occur in your lifetime have already taken place can be a sign that you’re in crisis mode.” Amen.
From Vox, I found Life is Hard, Can Philosophy Help? which is subtitled “What Philosophy has to say about midlife crisis.” The philosopher, one Kieran Setiya, says, “So when people like me talk about the midlife crisis, what they really have in mind is more like a midlife malaise … ” That wasn’t my experience. But another thing that Setiya points out is, everyone’s midlife crisis is different. And philosophy can help.
And finally I pasted in an embedded link from Reddit … young middle aged men on midlife crisis. The source of the quote about motorcycles at the beginning of this blog post.
More on this topic of midlife freedoms and despairs is here, in The Marginalian: The middle passage
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/03/03/the-middle-passage-john-hollis/
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