I know two middle aged men who both did classic mid-life crisis things. One of them bought a sports car, the other one a motorcycle. Both of them also pursued extramarital affairs which were later revealed.
Based on my unscientific observation and speculation, I think there is a correlation. My hypothesis is that some middle-aged men develop a strong desire to recapture their lost youth. To be a bit more like a playboy and a bit less of a family man. The same drive which leads them to buy motorcycles also leads them to chase girls.
I see a lot of guys like that in New York working “high performance” careers in finance, consulting, and law. It’s sort of like they bust their ass all their lives working these high paying jobs trying to prove how awesome they are. Except there is always the fact that someone makes more money threatening their ego.
By the time they get into their 40s and 50s, they finally make enough money to buy that sports car and attract the sort of women that are into that stuff. Plus after years of extensive travel and 70 hour work weeks, their married life is usually pretty strained anyway.
I’d always understood that the usual midlife crisis (for either sex) was triggered by the realization that you’ve passed your peak years and that unless you changed something everything was going to be downhill from here. (And the “peak” varies, but it’s usually job related.)
I went through one of these in my forties, although in my case the symptoms were my quitting my regular job to start my own business. My wife told me that this was the sort of midlife crises she could deal with, even though it turned out that I’m far better off working for someone other than myself <G>.
I bet you are right about there being a correlation (which is a factual question relating to which I don’t happen to know any data). But I also bet your hypothesis is not quite right.
I had a horrible midlife crisis, just agonal, and it left me forever changed. I can’t help extending my experience of it into this question. The crisis was about realizing my life felt finite and my eventual demise suddenly seemed visible, within the horizon. And, it was about observing my life as a mostly done thing, and thinking about how I liked what I had done with it. Not that I couldn’t do things that were different and new and surprising, but more that I was on course to complete my life in a pretty predictable fashion, and the surprise would be if I did anything different.
I notice beautiful women all the time, so attractive they are, and after this crisis what my mind goes to is not the happy but vague idea of future loves, but rather the observation that my yearning for them is an empty one, and I’m never going to enjoy them as partners, because I don’t want to try sending my life off into affairs and hurting my family and scandal and all of that (not the least of which is that getting a piece of this rotund fuzzy greying magic is unlikely what beautiful women want for themselves).
I can feel sympathy (and disapproval and more) for men who do want to try sending their life off into these affairs. My sympathetic feeling is that their choice is for beautiful women. We’re supposed to want beautiful women. That’s what beauty is about. I don’t think the feeling is a want for recapturing our own youths, I think it’s a want for the women. From the outside, maybe this is untestable, as the result is the same (I guess). But the OP is about what the desire is, and I am pretty sure the desire is outwardly focused.
I do desire beautiful women, every day, so many of them (or so many of you) out there in the world. I have to assume this is just a really ugly element of our natural burden to want to reproduce, and not something to cultivate in our 40s and beyond. This isn’t like wisdom or the want for world peace. It’s more something to which we should respond, “Down, boy!”
The midlife crisis, by definition, is brought on by awareness of one’s own mortality, but the actual behavior can take many forms. One reaction is to grieve; another is to deny.
Not every 40-ish man who buys a sports car or takes a mistress is in crisis. Some are merely taking advantage of opportunity, never before having had the wherewithal to unleash the inner douchebag, or having run out of reasons not to.
And some because they enjoy it. I’m fortunate insofar as I have never really had a problem attracting women. In fact, I find it very easy. Monogamy, on the other hand, is a challenge for me and one that I struggle with. Masking said struggle behind a mid-life crisis would be as deciteful, intellectually, as having an affair.
Well, sure. There are plenty of ways to recapture youth that don’t involve lying to your family. Why wouldn’t they be blindsided? The guys could have indulged their “crisis” without going overboard or being a douchebag.
A person can be youthful while still acting like an adult. I’d like to think that’s the default rather than the exception. Their wives probably thought so too.
Well, if it’s obvious that doing things like buying a sports car are a big red flag, then the infidelity should be less of a surprise.
I guess part of the problem is that people want to believe the best about their spouse. Especially a wife who has given all of her limited fertility to one man.
So if a wife sees that her middle aged husband starts going to the gym every day, dressing better, and buying a sports car, she is likely to think he is having a midlife crisis but is channeling it into activities which are constructive or at least non-destructive.
I would too. One strategy might be for the wife to involve herself in the husband’s youthful activities. For example if he joins the local motorcycle club, she might join too and go riding with him. She could even tell him “Come on, I don’t want you to meet some bimbo and start two-timing me.”
Women sometimes think that if they “give” on the sports car, that will scratch the itch.
Also, often guys like this have always WANTED a sports car, so it isn’t a surprise to the wife when the Audi TT shows up - however, they usually don’t admit to their wives that they’ve also always wanted a hot young thing sitting next to them in the sports car, and if she wasn’t it, she isn’t anymore at 45.
A lot of middle age people go to the gym every day, because middle age is the point in time your doctor starts saying “you know…” and the mirror starts saying “you know…” Its even possible the wife has been saying “you know…”
And in my experience - as a 46 year old woman with a number of divorced friends - when he is interested in capturing his lost youth, if he’s prepped for infidelity, she isn’t encouraged to join him in the motorcycle club, or at the gym. Those are activities he wants to do “with the guys” or activities he wants to do “for himself.” And very often, someone needs to be driving the kids to soccer, and he is either at work or out on the midlife sailboat, so she drives the kids and goes to soccer games while he plays.
We do. You’ve never heard terms like homewrecker, bimbo or slut?
One of my girlfriends divorced recently due to serial infidelity on the part of her husband. In addition to her husband being shunned by a circle of people, a number of women (who aren’t necessarily younger, and at least in one case leave my husband confused) are also being shunned.
No, I mean the middle-aged guy buying the sports car and having an affair with a much younger women is a long-standing cultural meme.
Right, because nothing is healther to a relationship than being clinging and possessive and gloming onto all his activities.
I don’t consider talking a calculated professional risk to be a sign of a “mid life crisis”, unless that business was “being a rock star” or something similarly absurd.
My ex-husband had his mid-life crisis at age 45-ish which would be age appropriate. He told me that everything that was wrong in his life was my fault. And his affair did blind side me. I had no idea he was fooling around, possibly because he was in Illinois and she was in Pennsylvania. The funny thing is that he took up with a woman who was older than him. He married her after our divorce. Oh, and 9 years after our divorce, he lost his job and the house. And his wife is on disability. So much for his life being my fault.
Buying a sports car doesn’t involve lying to anyone. Why is that a red flag?
Wow. Seriously? So the wife should view herself as nothing more than a brood mare?
Yeah, why bother with trust in a long-term marriage? Just let him know you expect he’ll cheat, that’ll make him feel like remaining faithful. :rolleyes:
