Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Have you had a midlife crisis?

249 replies

Mylaststraw · 25/11/2017 15:15

I'm in the right age range for it, never imagined that kind of thing would happen to me, but following events about a year back I've realised that life wasn't quite what I thought, relationship wise, for quite some time. Career is in the pan, not sure I can rely on dh being a team in the future, I feel like the past 20 years have been a mistake, regret things and wish I'd made different decisions - classic stuff. Working on it, but... Well, it's hard to move forward with life/shit still happening...
Is it just a stage ppl go through? Have you pulled through the classic midlife crisis and realised it was just a stage of doubt? Or did you bail and regret it? Or even come out the other side better for it? How??
I feel like I'm slowly edging towards a big change, not sure what but I seem to be taking one step forward and two back with life progression atm.

OP posts:
SummerKelly · 25/11/2017 20:22

I am maybe a bit, late 40s and I have little energy left anymore for work (I have developed health problems) and thinking that I am no longer motivated by my career, but still have to work as a lone parent, whereas before I imagined prioritising my career for another 10 years at least. Also I was fine being single whilst I was well but it's shit being single and ill, my XP is being lovely to me and I'm wondering whether I made a mistake ending it with him when it felt as if we were in a different place career-wise and with different lifestyles when perhaps those things aren't really important. Everything is great with my DD, doing her GCSEs, but I know the time until she leaves is going to go quickly, and then what? I'm trying to get out more and "diversify" my life to create new opportunities and relationships.

LaughingLlama · 25/11/2017 20:24

Yep. Im in the depths of a MLC.
Right now i pretty much regret every decision in life I have ever made. Im having a real confidence crisis. I feel trapped in a life I dont want, nor satisfies me. Every aspect seems and feels wrong and failed - work, marriage and motherhood. I feel invisible.
A big part of me wants to shake myself and tell me to get a grip. i have it better than lots of people. On a bad day I wonder why I bothered to fight my cancer 2 years ago - i wouldnt be missing much nor do i feel my absence would ve greatly felt.

I fantasise about running away almost daily. Except when I try to plan the detail in my head, I cant work out where to go.

Im not suicidal nor depressed but just feel im surplus to requirements in every aspect of my life. Im not appreciated and the thought of my life being life this for ever terrifies me.
I have made changes in recent years and started to put myself first more but im constantly up against circumstances & responsibilty that means more often than not i cant do things and have to cancel stuff freqently.
Just wonder what the point of it all is. My life is certainly not enjoyable with much to look forward to.

Soerynfor the drab post. Its hard to put into words how it feels.

JustWonderingZ · 25/11/2017 20:34

Turtle Cavalry, my H also ‘pulled me in’ ‘from the edge of the abyss’ so to say :) I now appreciate him more than I ever did before. He has always been a lovely bloke and a good father/partner.

OP, try to look at the situation with a fresh glance and re-assess who is the new you and what is the direction you choose to travel from now on. Making something an active and voluntary choice is miles different from feeling bound with chains of responsibilities and having a duty to perform. This last never worked for me. I need to feel I want to do something and to choose to be with someone, although it may well be the same thing at the end of the day. Forced by moral duty never worked for me.

JustWonderingZ · 25/11/2017 20:49

What I took from it is you absolutely need to re-invent yourself, your relationship, career etc several times during your lifetime. It is like being a child and going through the teenage years to find your identity. Remember how painful that was?

Then having your first child, remember how tough it was and how everything changed?

Then midlife crisis when you finally get everything sorted, but is it all there is to life?

The next one, I suppose, is children flying the nest. I know so many couples who divorced at that point, they just couldn’t forge a meaningful life together without the kids to care for.

The next big one is retirement, especially if a big part of your identity and self-worth is tied up in your career/job. Suddenly you find a big part of your life missing.

It is a crisis, but it is up to you what you do with it: whether you let it crush you or create a new, better reality out of it.

flynn80 · 25/11/2017 21:22

Wow, Ive found my thread. I thought maybe i was too young to blame what i'm feeling on a MLC, But seem's i'm not. Im 37, 1 ds, 1 very long term relationship and for the past year or 2 i've been constantly questioning my life. Not brave enough to leave him, but constantly wondering is this it? I think I want more.

Im looking at 20 somethings and getting really jealous of them, dating, meeting new people, the opportunities they have etc. Im not sure im happy being settled down, I want to be out dating again and having fun. dp is a good man, but for the past few years hes been battling depression and its seriously affected the way I look at him (as harsh as that sounds its how I feel).

Im not happy with my work life - im self employed and it can be very stressful, I find myself wishing for a part time job doing anything just for the social life aspect also. I take ds to school then come home to an empty house and start work, dp is now at uni retraining, living it up with teenagers and i'm sat at home like old mother hubbard.

Usernamechange67 · 25/11/2017 21:27

Oh yes! An absolute humdinger of one lasting 4 years. In that time I have had two flings and 4 emotional flings on line. I am totally ashamed of myself. I actually felt out of control like a different person had infiltrated me. Deeply unhappy in my marriage but circumstances are very complicated. It started when my father died. It ended about a year ago when I almost had a full nervous breakdown. I have absolutely hated my 40's. Can't wait to be 50 next year! What a mess.

TopOfTheCliff · 25/11/2017 21:28

JWZ those are very wise words and I am sure you are right but please don't make me go through another upheaval like the last one! I am so happy now and enjoy my job my home and my huge blended family. I will concentrate on making sure DH is as happy as I am.

flynn80 · 25/11/2017 21:31

usernamechange Im glad you wrote that, Im doing the same right now. Ive been messaging someone else online for the past few months, in April my stepfather died and I think that set things off in my head.

It feels naughty but more than anything exciting, like I have a bit of life in me again. I dont get that at all from dp. glad to know its not just me anyway.

ferrier · 25/11/2017 21:41

Count me in too. Feel trapped, dream of a life on my own, no idea how to get to the stage of being in a job I like. I have done the weight loss and getting out more though.

JustWonderingZ · 25/11/2017 21:46

Lol at Topofthecliff Grin

Seriously when you think, much is made of teenage years crisis or getting married/ living together. But not about later stages in life when a lot more is at stake: your children, your partner, your career, the wealth you have built up. Surely it is more of an upheaval midlife and later?

Mylaststraw · 25/11/2017 21:49

Makes for very sobering reading going through this Flowers for everyone!
I can see a lot of myself in many descriptions.
My main resentment I think is that the whole thing was precipitated by finding out dh had on a number of occasions seriously put him first in the shit you pull when you're young and immature (think secret inappropriate relationship), which I only recently plumbed the depths of. So it feels like missed out on this thrill. There'd have been no problem right now if he'd have been honest and left when he fancied trying his luck elsewhere. At least then I would be with someone who'd had a clean slate in the relationship iyswim.
And now all the careers/kids/relocation/lack of direction etc stuff has piled in, as everyone says... Then there's menopause to look forward to! Smile
I really don't know where to go from here...

OP posts:
Usernamechange67 · 25/11/2017 21:50

Flynn. That's how I felt. Alive. I very much had a life is too short feeling after my dad died. Looking back it was horrendous but at the time it didn't feel like that.

flynn80 · 25/11/2017 21:55

yes username I remember not long before he died he called me one sunday morning, I was full of cold and sounded dreadful, and he asked me why I was up, I said because ds was up and someone needed to be with him,, and he asked me where dp was... he was livid that he had stayed in bed having yet another lie in whilst I was up feeling crap.

Dont know why that has stayed with me so strong but its maybe the 1st time I realised that other people could see how selfish he could be, and once my dad had died I just keep thinking life's to short to be stuck with someone who depresses you. Its just so complicated if I leave my own parents split and I promised id never do that if i ever had children, but then they're not the ones stuck with dp, on a hamster wheel doing everything in the bloody house. I know id be fine and it would be him who would suffer emotionally and financially, but I never want ds to say to me why didnt you try harder. Ive been trying for the last 12 years.

JustWonderingZ · 25/11/2017 21:56

I have done the weight loss and start being selfish for a change routine (and thought but not acted upon all manner of crazy stuff)

It made me realise we ARE the reality around us. Nothing changed outwardly, but it has all changed so much. Why was it so boring, dull and hopeless before and is so wonderful now? The only thing to have actually changed was me.

WhatsGoingOnEh · 25/11/2017 22:05

I love this thread. I know that's a weird thing yo say when it's full of us all feeling miserable, but I'm just so glad that I'm not the only one feeling like this.

I'm 46, and have been having those "Is this all there is?" feelings for about 3 years. I think they're getting better, but it's been pretty rocky.

What's helped me is work; I lost my old, amazing, job and had to find something else. The job I got was so not "me" and at first it was so complicated and strsssful that I was in tears a LOT. But recently, we've changed my role and I'm suddenly doing the work I'm best at. We're getting a ton of new clients, my boss and I are getting on amazingly well (it's just the two of us in the office most of the time, and we have nothing technically in "common" but we've discovered we can tease and banter and be honest with each other all the time, and it's fun) and I see possibilities again.

I also entered and won 2 awards lately!

Maybe what happens in your 40s is that you stop having changes. My childhood, teens, 20s and 30s were full of changes. At 42 I married again and life seemed to stop. That's when I got depressed. But meeting new people and changing jobs has helped.

I still feel like an ugly old bat who would definitely do everything differently if I had my time over again! But I no longer fel that everything's over.

lilathewerewolf · 25/11/2017 22:32

I honestly feel, especially reading some of these, that I am having one, just early.

I'm in my early thirties and trying to adjust to life after rehab as I went in for treatment for valium addiction last year. Since coming out I am plagued with 'is this all there is?' which I feel incredibly guilty for as I know I've been given another chance at life free from substance abuse, and yet sometimes I find myself wondering why I bothered getting sober as life is the same unrelenting and pitiless void in recovery as it was when I was swallowing enough diazepam to knock out an elephant.

I feel like an awful bitch for even writing that.

When I was in treatment I junked my LTR, good job and lovely house. i now live in relative poverty and find myself questioning those choices even though I would never have survived life as it used to be without picking up the drugs again. I have no career to speak of (just a tough as nails grind in MH nursing) and no children. I constantly fantasise about running away but wouldn't know where to go. I am slowly realising that you can work hard on yourself and be a good person and love and serve others and there is no reward or happy ending and the prize for digging the best hole is being handed a bigger shovel.

Reading that back I honestly don't know if it's a MLC or if I'm just depressed. Sorry for the essay everyone.

Mylaststraw · 25/11/2017 22:50

I am slowly realising that you can work hard on yourself and be a good person and love and serve others and there is no reward or happy ending and the prize for digging the best hole is being handed a bigger shovel.
Absolutely. (well done on kicking the Valium btw lila)
Seems a key to getting out/moving on is being able and motivated enough to identify and work on a change...and being able to do it without someone having your back. How? Was there any one thing that gave you sufficient kick up the bum? Along with other pp, I'm floundering - can't see how/what to change (things I've tried haven't panned out anyway) and have little motivation...

OP posts:
pinkdelight · 25/11/2017 23:19

There's a good podcast with Adam Buxton interviewing Miranda Sawyer about her MLC that I found helpful. She talks about how even some animals have this slump in the middle of their lives so it's not just a circumstantial thing, it's a very real biological event that we need strategies to deal with. Still tough though, I know the feeling.

WhatsGoingOnEh · 25/11/2017 23:39

Motivation is the key to this, you're right. I don't know what the secret is. Often, having a horrible sudden change (like a breakup, or a health scare, or losing your job) thrust upon you is the only way you change; because you literally have no other choice.

Which isn't ideal, obviously. :)

lilathewerewolf · 26/11/2017 00:08

Thank you straw Smile

Im looking at 20 somethings and getting really jealous of them, dating, meeting new people, the opportunities they have etc

Oh my gosh flynn me too, it makes feel just dreadful but we were driving past a uni the other day and I pulled a sour cats arse face and my OH asked what was wrong and I said 'imagine being young and delusional and full of hope' and the poor man looked at me like I'd grown another head. It's all making me horribly bitter.

WhatsGoingOnEh · 26/11/2017 00:20

Lila, did anyone at your rehab centre talk to you about dopamine? Your levels are probably crititically low now you're off Valium. If you could find ways of raising them, you'd feel a lot better.

Mylaststraw · 26/11/2017 00:27

I said 'imagine being young and delusional and full of hope'
Ha, that's the kind of thing I say... Remember back in the day, when you had dreams...? Grin

OP posts:
Koala72 · 26/11/2017 07:14

Yes, of course.

And it's a healthy thing, I think. Question everything. Make sure you're happy with your path. Change what you have to and understand that it's a positive thing, a strong thing to do.

Use the energy to change things. Don't be afraid of literally throwing out what isn't good in your life. You know instinctively what feels wrong and negative.

I found that when I started thinking like this, a different type of man starting looking at me in the street. I didn't act on anything, but I felt empowered by it. We as women in our forties have a very big challenge to deal with - the changing of our fertility. For some it's fine, they aren't bothered - they have the children they want, it isn't much of an issue. For others it's a horrific reality. But all of us have to work it out somehow.

I mention that because it's a process which shows us very clearly the inevitability of our physical limitations. On some level, it shows us that as surely as each of us will one day no longer be able to reproduce, also one day we will not be here anymore. That is a massive kick up the backside - at first it panics us, and then it pushes us into this phase of questioning all we do, and wanting things that perhaps had been our dreams or visions of ourselves when we first because adults, in our teens, and we feel the need now to make sure we are ... ourselves.

When we are stripped of what we had just got really comfortable with - our physical selves as fertile adult women - we then know we will be left with what we had to start with, even back to our early teens: ourselves before periods and contraception and the rollercoaster of monthly hormonal changes. We will need the essence of ourselves, and to remember who we are.

I know as I write this that of course there is a huge scale here - there are women who've dealt with this change earlier in life, or who have had fertility issues, or who haven't been bothered about it for one reason or another. But I think that in women, the 'mid life crisis' is much intensified because of this additional challenge.

A lot of women question whether their partner is right for them. Because they feel they are moving into a phase which will be cruising until the end, and they don't want to be cruising with the wrong person, or in a way that is depressing/unfulfilling. The same goes for career, really.

I have always been someone who takes comfort from everything being the same and not changing, but I've had to face up to the fact over the past 3 years or so that things do go in eras. In our 40s, it feels like the coming to an end of a massive era. And so it is, really. But actually the philosophy of not being attached to physical things, of understanding that nothing is permanent, of being free to live each moment as happily as you can arrange for yourself, is very life-enhancing. Tbh it's pretty much the only way to go.

My wake-up call was also several people who I had never imagined would die just actually dropping dead within a matter of days. Ages ranging from 23 to 59. This has been the final thing to really push me into understanding that there is no time for fxxking around with things or people that aren't good for you.

What was good for you at 30 is not necessarily what is good for you at, e.g., 45.

I know part of your question is whether this drive to question and change should be heeded, or whether it's just some kind of madness and if you ride it out, all will settle and you'll be happy again in your current relationship/job/home/etc.

I think only you can make that judgement, but I would say just look around at the stories who have made drastic, and positive, life changes in their 40s. Of course there's also all the men who've left their families and then ended up either happier or unhappier with their new 22-year-old wives. ... Whether you will be happier to change or not is up to you to find out.

My single most important lesson has been that it's essential to take control of your life. And I would start with just sitting cross legged on the floor and looking at your hands and flexing them up and down and really feeling in control of your body. And delighted with it.

Our bodies are are homes. If we've got into our 40s and are still here then we should start by loving who we are and the body that we are in. Start with that, and you'll get a very quick response from your own body. And it will tell you what is good to be around, and what not.

I'm sorry - I probably sound like an idiot.! : ( Just sharing a few of my reflections, as a result of my own experiences. I hope some of it helps.

YoshimiBigfuckingsigh · 26/11/2017 07:22

Great post Koala. Going to re-read!
Some very wise posts. Feels reassuring to put the feelings in context.

Koala72 · 26/11/2017 07:30

Thanks and sorry for a few typos! Hope it makes sense overall Confused