Have you - or someone you know - had a mid-life crisis? What was it like?

[TheEverlovingFork]

Just that really, as I get into my 40s I've really started noticing a sense that time is stacking against me and it keep spurring me on to make impulsive, slightly stupid (not dangerous) younger me kind of decisions . a couple of my friends I thought were happily settled - same sort of age group - are making the same noises and I wondered if it's just something everyone does?

Anyone had one? Seen one? I feel a bit like Shirley Valentine and want to fuck off to an island somewhere and have inadvisable but great sex with a local lothario and somehow magically lose all my peri weight and start life again as a nude model or something. One of my friends in particular is making really weird decisions and might be divorcing her seriously lovely DH which is something none of us saw coming in a hundred years. I guess it's called a crisis for a reason, right?

The only person I know who had a ‘midlife crisis ‘ was my ex father in law.
Late 40’s realised he wasn’t getting any younger, blinged himself up, got an earring, bought himself a sports car and then fucked of with someone half his age and moved halfway accross the country and never spoke to his wife and adult kids again.

i think he was just a knob though.

i sort of had one when I was 41. I binned off my abusive partner, (and met a lovely man) lost loads of weight, got fit, and reevaluated my life.
Then my new Dh died and I’m back where I was.

I need another midlife crisis lol

Ah, I'm glad you got rid of the abusive partner but so sorry you lost your DH. It sounds like the reevaluation period was really thorough for you and you made a load of bit positive changes. Whereas others just get the earring and the sports car like your ex-FIL. I guess the crisis really is in how someone handles it.

*big positive changes

Lots of my friends in their 40s divorced, changed, got fit, travelled and changed careers. I wouldn't say crisis just a new phase of life.

Personally I ve got away with mine as I've always been a bit random and irrational and driven fast cars 🤣

I do know what you mean though I wondered if it's as simple as hormones giving us the last push, I git broody in my mid 40s never had that feeling before and felt like I had to have sex!

I'm having one right now. I'm divorcing my lovely DH. Everyone thinks I've gone mad. I've always been into fitness (run marathons etc) but am starting to want to do erratic things like climb Everest 😂 tattoos, piercings, motorbikes. It's all calling me. It sounds on paper like a midlife crisis.

Is he lovely though?

I'm still sort of in one.

Lost a lot of weight. Went a bit insane. Almost had an affair with a younger man; it's still not totally outwith the realms of possibility that we'll overstep one day I guess.

Changed almost everything; how I look, my hobbies, the music I listen to, my interests.

Not sure where it's all heading really.

My ExH did.

He got increasingly fed up with our twin teenagers and felt they were ungrateful and so he started shouting at them because they weren't supporting him in getting what he wanted from life (ie not doing any housework and having perfect children he could boast about).

After we got divorced due to his unreasonable behaviour which escalated to hitting people he took up with a 15 years younger woman and is now married and having a baby 23 years after our twins.

The baby is due soon and I'm not sure he's really looking forward to it but there you go.

Our twins don't really speak to him anymore as they think he is an embarrassing cliche and also he's said that he doesn't like his first family.

Maybe your friend doesn't agree that her husband is lovely.

I had one. Moved countries. New job. New opportunities. It was liberating. I'm back in my country of origin now because of family commitments. But moving then was the best thing I ever did for myself.

I’m possibly having one, or I’m sure that’s how it’ll look.

I’m separating from (abusive) dh, everyone bar a couple of people who know the truth will be shocked to the core. To them it will look like I’m leaving my “lovely dh”. He’s not lovely at all. I’ve been seeing another man. I’m looking after myself more and dressing better because I was sick of feeling shit slouching around in gym gear every day. I’m going out more and starting a couple of new hobbies. Considering another tattoo! I’ve stopped doing everything around the house and being a slave for everyone else - I just don’t really care as much any more. I’ve realised no one does anything or really gives a crap about me.

But I see it more as reevaluating my life as I’ve reached a certain age and don’t feel like taking this shit (from him I mean) any more.

Ive wondered if it’s a kind of depression as I do feel very lacking in emotion but I don’t feel sad - I keep feeling excited (but also scared) about the future.

I think maybe declining hormones mean we give less of a shit about looking after others/caring what people think and it makes you mad/bad/brave! I know of several others my age (40’s) going through the same.

Maybe your friend doesn't agree that her husband is lovely.

I did wonder if there was more to it - but she's not one to mince her words and she still says he's lovely but that she settled with the nicest guy who came along first and now she feels trapped in something 'nice' but so dull and predictable. I guess that also isn't uncommon.

also @betterangels can i ask did you move for the job or take the leap into a new country first?

@WhenWereYouUnderMe and @Loonylooops definitely relate to both your posts too

I really relate to what @SecondChancesAtLife said about it being possible hormone related.

I do feel quite flat, and like I've intentionally switched off a lot of my emotions, specifically at home due to difficult stuff happening here. On the other hand my stomach is constantly in knots because all of the stuff I do feel excited about is nothing to do with my husband or kids. It's all a big mess really.

I don’t know why it has to be called a mid life crisis. Surely it’s just a mid life reinvention? We don’t stop learning and evolving till we’re dead. It’s okay to do fun shit.

Maybe @Pigeonqueen but it feels sometimes quite crisis-like to me!

I mean, it's fine to go out with new people and find yourself in new ways and all that good stuff, but it does have the effect of throwing what that means for your existing life into question.

If what you want is all new and different, what does that mean for your past or current life, and the people in it? The impact on them could be awful, and they have no control over it.

There's been times I've been willing to do things that would chuck my marriage out the window, yet if you'd said this to me a year ago I'd have laughed in your face.

It can be entirely a mentally healthy journey I'm sure - but it isn't entirely positive for me.

All my threads I'm on at the moment are about this basically
So yes OP I feel you
I feel completely stuck
Just spent morning in bed scrolling as dh has taken kids to a match
I am self employed but not earning much as have been so depressed, affected by rebound headaches
My sleep patterns are buggered
I am def perimenopaussal, cycle all over the shop
I too have a knot in my tummy a lot of the time
Covid and COL has completely fucked our finances so we live month to month and have nothing spare for any level of fun, hardly anything:

We have been in economic straits for about 5/6 years any my tween dc didn't know how to behave in a clothes shop as we had never taken them as they pretty much live in hand me downs.

I did have a job to move for but applied for a new and better one with another company after four months (no visas involved), was offered the position and stayed in that job for several years.

I think it depends on how you've handled life so far. In my experience people who have lived life recklessly in their youth then had a wake up are far less likely to experience it in mid-life. They've already seen that life is fleeting and usually live with either trauma or an awareness that life is what you make it.
I've seen some very sheltered people marrying for money, taking jobs they hate for prestige. In general these people have rarely had any traumas in their youth (or they've been pushed by pushy parents with ridiculous high expectations to live a life they couldn't) and make choices they think give them some power, when really it just makes them very dull and unhappy. I'm generalising but yes, if you choose people and jobs and houses and live for the wrong things, you are more likely to wake up one day and realise it isn't making you happy.

I've been looking at jobs which would require me to be away one or two nights a week. Haven't told DH. This is no coincidence.

If a man posted on here saying all this he'd be ripped to shreds, and rightly.

I had a midlife crisis the same time as having two young kids. Had my first age 40.

A terrible combination as I had a feeling of being trapped with young kids (single mother to boot), as well as a despairing stuckness. But it was the trapped feeling that was the worst. I was snookered and couldn't move.

I travelled a lot pre children, worked in various countries and was a free spirit, and a prestigious job as well.

It's taken me ten years to get out of the feeling, Am now 54 and ready to start my life again, this time steering the course myself. It's liberating.

It’s a mid life crisis when it’s a man, and he’s sad and pathetic and trying to re-live his youth

when it’s a woman it’s a new phase of life, a re-invention. Spreading her wings. To be celebrated.

What makes it a "crisis", does it have to be bad decisions, or just wanting a change?

I'm nearing 40, from around 25 I've had spells of feeling bored, stuck and "i haven't lived", to feeling more content. I imagine I'll have a "crisis" over the next few years as recently a feeling of general "is this all that there is" keeps growing inside.

I put it down to always doing the sensible things in life (with education), and never having travelled, got piercings/tattoos, been to festivals etc. Mostly due to no money, but also a fundamental religious upbringing (which I'm out of now). I finally have stability with a good job and a house and I'm left thinking "what next"

I think that's usually because men do tend to date women half their age, buy toy cars and get so drunk they vomit when it hits them.

Women tend to go on retreats, travel, give up dating and live in a less competitive way.

Not always, but it is commonly so.

@mehyeahok Exactly, men do it in grim ways.

So the posters on this thread saying they are likely to have an affair with a younger man, or saying they’re willing to do things that chuck their marriage away. It’s only the men being grim?

and buying a car is grim but spending on travel
is enlightening?