Men/marriage in midlife - does it get better?

[fleurblu]

I have a handful of very close female friends, we are all late 40s/early 50s. Pretty much everyone seems to be experiencing issues in their relationships, myself included. Various stresses play a factor at this age of course - ageing or dying parents/challenging teens/financial strain etc - but broadly, we are all privileged people, not facing the serious problems that affect so many (poverty, war zones etc). And yet, no-one seems happy.

YES, people are going to say that menopause and perimenopause is the common denominator….but I know myself and these women, and another common denominator is this - the men who get to this age and seem to become difficult to live with.

There is so much grumpiness, irritability and unreasonable behaviour from the men. These are couples I know well - and while no-one is perfect, me and my friends are calm, straightforward and reasonable. We communicate like adults. Without fail, it’s us carrying the majority of the emotional load in our families - and often the domestic load too. Whereas the men seem to be having the midlife crises - if not affairs and sports cars, they’re behaving like petulant teenagers a lot of the time, questioning their life choices - ‘I hate my job and want to run away and live off grid’ kind of vibes. A lot of wanting to do things for themselves - hobbies/trips that take them away from home life. Flying off the handle over small things. Moodiness.

I get it - this age brings challenges. But it’s like a lot of these men hit 48 and suddenly thought ‘right, I’ve had enough of being nice’. People might argue that maybe women have their eyes truly opened as we enter menopause as all our tolerance/nurturing-causing hormones begin to decline, and we see the true side of our partners….

But from what I see, in my own relationship and others, it’s not us. It’s them.

I know so many women who are all saying the same things - anyone else? And do we think it gets better?!

But are you actually talking to the men? Do you know what they talk about with their friends about all this? Do you know their perspective on how they and their wives are changing?

Another thing I've noticed is that this kind of dissatisfaction seems most common in couples who've mostly only ever socialised with their own sex. Men who are only good friends with other men, and women who are only good friends with other women, don't just become disconnected from their partner in mid-life but from the entire other sex.

Which also means they start ascribing certain patterns as sex-based when they don't actually inherently have anything to do with being male or female. Like middle-aged grumpiness.

It's utterly bizarre to me when men and women talk about the opposite sex as some sort of fundamentally different alien species, and it's reflective of the fact that those people have never actually talked properly TO many members of the opposite sex (let alone LGBT people who can provide a completely different perspective on it all).

We’re fine as are most of our friends but there are a few men (no women) who have kind of disappeared. Stopped socialising and don’t want to do anything with the wives. No one really mentions it and they are free to do what they want of course but feels abit sad.

The wives are still vibrant and living full lives but without the dh coming to anything. Most other couples (as we are) are actually pulling together more as kids leave and we have more time to do things. Don’t think demonising either sex is helpful but there are definite patterns in the changes.

I love this song

@gannett - well, I can’t pretend that I’m a fly on the wall when DH meets his mates in the pub. I can probably assume they don’t discuss their emotional wellbeing quite as much as my female friends do. In fact, we are very close to one couple who are very much struggling with their marriage. DH tells me that he discusses it with his friend ‘a bit, but not much’, whereas his wife talks to me privately at length about the issues they’re experiencing.

My DH and I did recently have a conversation about how grumpy he has been, and he acknowledged that he is finding some aspects of this stage of life challenging. But he totally dismissed any suggestions about going to the GP to check all is ok on the health front, or indeed, talk to a therapist about some quite big unresolved issues within his own family (that impact his mood etc) - whereas when I’ve been unhappy in the past, I seek to fix it. I don’t take it out on him or our kids by being irritable and critical.

This is just my experience, but I see it a lot - women addressing personal problems but men not doing the same. Again, this won’t apply to everyone and I’m not trying to suggest that men and women are a different species to each other…but it’s what I see!

This is just my experience, but I see it a lot - women addressing personal problems but men not doing the same

Yes, what I'm saying is you see it because you're mostly talking to the women in question. You've assumed your husband and his friends don't talk about it, or don't address it - though firstly, your husband may be hand-waving just how much he talks about his friend's issues because they were discussed in confidence; and secondly, you underestimate that for some people (maybe this is more male-coded) unspoken communication (and consequent support) is more helpful than long verbal analysis.

I've had close male friends for most of my life and I've never really hesitated to talk to them about what it's like to be a man (and frankly I expect them to be interested in what it's like to be a woman, and us all to be interested in the experiences of our LGBT friends too). Mostly what I've learned is that while the social pressures we feel (consciously or otherwise) are very different, the way we react to them isn't defined by our gender - we're much more similar than received wisdom would have you believe.

Very-very good points by @gannett above. Assuming things is never helpful, it just gives us a false sense of being right. We all want to be right, but drawing conclusions based on a select few examples from an echo chamber. And this thread proves the very truth of this. There are plenty examples above who see the opposite, those who don't see the problem highlighted, and everything it between. What is important is self-reflection and realise that we are more similar than different in most ways.

Being child free is the best. Not worrying about every penny is also good.
Probably one of the reasons I hear this about husbands for the first time.
(Married for 22 years).
The contempt towards spouses is rife here, both ways.

Am I one of these men? 😂 I'm not grumpy, I'm wiser.

@gannett

Your insinuation is that being child-free is "unnatural" but reading this it underlines that it's actually a cheat code to enjoying life. A feeling I often get reading MN.

Not sure how you’ve read my post and come to this analysis - I never suggested being child free was an unnatural state? I was just answering in the context of the OP which assumes that those individuals who want children get together initially for that fundamental purpose. No offence or criticism intended

Personally this is the other way around for me. I work in a male dominated role with mainly men and participate in a sport which is also predominantly participated in by men and although lots of them are great friends of mine and have been for years, I imagine I have seen / listened to far too much and am growing a bit weary of the attitudes of many men as we all get older and perspectives on life start to shift.

I agree with you OP, as a tendency, and not a rule.

My DH is 62 and increasingly grumpy and critical. This applies to the world and everyone in and includes me, there are special rules for me.

On balance he is a very good man and a good husband, and I have annoying traits. However he has definitely changed in the last few years for the worse in this respect and others have noticed it. Some of it is exaggeration of inherent character flaws like inability to say sorry and a tendency to respond to the smallest implied criticism or request with a tit for tat attack.

The most common thing, undramatic, but it really colours life, is that if he mishears something or misunderstands something I say or mistakes the context or disagrees with it, and I’m talking about the most trivial things, he reacts immediately as if I’ve squatted and curled one off on the floor and if I or anyone else points out his mistake there is no apology. He literally stops dead, scowling and looks at me with disgusted incredulity. Even when he’s right and I have got the day we saw Jess and Lucas wrong in a sentence like - When we saw Jess and Lucas on Tuesday they were so … - his reaction is completely disproportionate. In the reverse situation I’d either say something like - Oh! I thought it was Wednesday because I was out at my class on Tuesday - or, more likely I’d not even bother correcting him because it’s not usually material to the conversation whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday. I know a lot of couples who bicker about this kind of minutiae in front of other people and I never get it when it’s not important to what they relating. Whenever I talk to him about this I point out he’d never react that way with his friends.

It’s got to the point that I’ll let him miss an exit on the motorway rather than tell him we need to take it when he’s obviously not noticed. We once had a tense exchange of this nature when he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t understand why his suggestion of when we’d watch a match would work. He got increasingly agitated and scornful until I finally got the space to explain it in a way that it clicked (involved an international time difference) and then it’s just an Oh! and a look of mild irritation. No acknowledgment of what a dick he’d been or that he was wrong and I was right.

He frequently nitpicks and comments negatively about minor things I do that he also does, but if I point out the bigger pile of “shit” he has beside his bed but on the floor not on the bedside table then he escalates and brings up historic complaints. He’d lose his mind the other way round.

Things that apply generally:

• Short fuse and ranting about minor day to day annoyances

• Occasional mean and uncalled for remarks about or to people who don’t deserve it; people who have annoyed him on the road or in a street or shop. We are both quite sweary but expressively rather than critically and I do pick him up when he describes someone as a stupid bitch because they’ve walked across a supermarket car park without looking. It’s the venom that takes me aback. It’s not just directed at women. It might be stupid cunt or stupid old/fat cunt if it’s a man. It’s occasional but pretty awful.

• Increased stubbornness

• Increased dismissiveness of things that don’t interest him or that he doesn’t like, so he can’t just say “No. I didn’t get on with Traitors” it will be “I tried but I can’t be doing with that reality shit and the morons who go on it.” totally shutting it down and by implication insulting the taste of everyone else in the room who has just said it’s amazing. Presumably all the reality TV he does watch like DIY SOS are the apogee of cultural sophistication and populated with geniuses.

That turned into a rant. Thank god he hasn’t gone down the conspiracy theory route or started foaming at the mouth about immigrants like some seem to.

I know plenty of men in a similar age bracket who haven’t done this but quite a few who have. It’s hard to know though because you’d only see this side of DH if you spent a LOT of time with him and me. If you played paddle with him once a week and had a few drinks after you wouldn’t recognise most of my description. That annoys me because it means he has awareness that it’s not nice and he mostly reserves it for strangers or for me, his wife.

I don't think it does. Also, I think you should consider that this may not be anything to do with age specifically, but that the novelty of your relationship has worn off, and now you're seeing his true self.

She figured it was because life gets easier for women as they age

Another way of looking it is that life doesn't necessarily get easier for women, just that is returns to the normal baseline of their youth before they had to raise children or before they met their husbands.

Also 'grumpyness' is often just a low level anger problem. Calling it grumpy cuteifies or diminutises something that's very corrosive in relationships, so watch out for that.

Mine has less patience but then so do I. We are late 40s and teens are tough going.
We are discovering us again. Finally getting back to dinners out, spending time together

Because you started it "from nature's POV"? No offence taken though. But all the evolutionary psychology/biology is our destiny stuff on MN rarely takes into account child-free women (or LGBT people).

Have all these couples been together since their 20s? First marriages? Because people change and develop - and often not in the same direction. I got divorced at 40 with two children - ex-husband had a year-long affair that started when the younger one was 1.5 years. But to be honest he had changed in many ways and really only wanted to be a part-time father to fit it in around all his other hobbies and interests. Also turned out it wasn't the first affair... I have now been in an 11 year relationship with a wonderful man, we are 51 and 53 respectively. We met when we were "fully formed" so to speak, have some interests in common and are just very compatible. And I see this pattern around me. Second marriages or significant long-term relationships fare better. Mainly because people by then knew what they wanted - or really didn't want.

Mine is only 36 and already like this so I've got no hope. Having kids didn't suit him. He hates sharing the attention, blames me for absolutely everything and has extremely low tolerance for apparently anything and everything. We've got a very elderly dog and the way he speaks to/about her is vile (she cant understand luckily but it'll be his elderly parents within the next decade)

He's got slightly better with the kids as theyve got older (& therefore easier) but its like he thinks his opinion is the only one that matters, hes never wrong, and everyone else is.an idiot.

Im counting down the days til the kids are 16-18ish and I can get out of here. But it's still a good few years away. It's sort of.a relief to see I'm not alone though.

So sorry @Sponge321 , sounds like your problem is slightly different from hormonal/physiological/mental changes that occur over time.. This is not a matter of becoming more irritable over time. You just simply married an absolute moron of a man. Sorry, manchild. I have no respect for people who think it's only their word that matters, and especially those who talk to or treat those who they have "power" over with disrespect - kids, animals. I hope you can get out of it as soon as possible.

That’s a very, very good point. Even reading that, I could feel a difference in how “grumpy” and “low level anger” were landing for me.

I’ve been very alert to this today, and it’s occurred to me how often I react with a sense of responsibility to his moods. I think I learned that hyper vigilance in my childhood with another ageing male.

This hasn’t been a problem in our friend group, but very sadly two of the husbands have passed away - one committed suicide and one had cancer. I think that has made everyone grateful for what they have.
My own husband saw the impact of his own father’s angry behaviour - a marriage breakup that left him renting a flat in his early sixties. He’s always been determined not to end up like that.

Nothing to do with menopause. Women just have enough after years and years and years of carrying the mental load and it makes them lose respecr for their partner. I am divorved and incredibly happy, as are my other divorced friends. The mood of my house is not ruled by a grumpy man. Women over 45 support each other and have a cracking time together, they ooze positivity - because we have done so much for the family and when it eases off we appreciate the free time we have.

We have invested in our female friendships over the years and it comes to fruition and is highlighted as you get older.

Mine had been like this for a long time and I should have left him but I was always trying to make things better and back to how they were. I was exhausted and getting nowhere really by being extra nice and accommodating. Luckily, I hit perimenopause and lost all my fucks and the blinkers fell off. I decided I was ready to live alone. I didn’t want to get divorced if I could help it but I was certainly ready not to live with him anymore. (Even the kids had suggested we buy the neighbours house when it went up for sale for him to live in 😂)
He saw a difference in me and knew it wasn’t going to be tolerated anymore. A lot of talking later and he sought help - he was suffering from depression, anxiety and was diagnosed with ADHD. Medication, therapy and a lot of self reflection later, and although not perfect, he’s approaching 48 and he’s the best he’s been in probably the last decade.

He’s lost a lot of friends 40-55 year old to suicide and we’ve talked in depth about the changes that happen in a lot of men at this age so it’s definitely a thing. He’s now volunteering in this field because he feels so strongly about it. It’s too much to go into on one post but many are really struggling even if they don’t realise it.

So in my case, yes it got a lot better.

I’m so sorry for your loss. I agree about the co creation though the playing field isn’t level.

Read this thread with some interest as a 45M, who's been fighting this to a degree. I've noticed for the last couple of years I have to actively fight against being irritable and disillusioned a lot of the time, despite having a great partner and cushty life on paper. I have had depression on and off throughout adulthood, but I feel this is a mostly seperate issue - more like a personality change...that I don't like. Definitely getting more "set in my ways", being rigid, and wanting my own space more (and this is without children..).

I believe the biggest change for me has been giving up sport through age/injury. It left a large hole socially and physically. If I don't wear myself out like a dog at least a few times a week, these issues worsen fast. So I've made exercise, sleep, and a decent diet paramount - helps tons.
But there is an overall feeling of jadedness, and I've felt a distinct lack of zest for new experiences.

Mens test doesn't drop that fast (about 1% a year from 30-40) so it's unlikely that reason for most. Unless was low to start with.

My opinion is for most of us we are simply not living in accordance with our biology. We need hard physical graft often, and far more in person connection than we get.
Wfh consistently is definitely terrible for mental health also, imo.

Other than that we are all in the grind, and not relishing working until we possibly drop. It takes its toll on all.

Whereas the men seem to be having the midlife crises - if not affairs and sports cars, they’re behaving like petulant teenagers a lot of the time, questioning their life choices - ‘I hate my job and want to run away and live off grid’ kind of vibes. A lot of wanting to do things for themselves - hobbies/trips that take them away from home life.

I feel like it is often the opposite. Well maybe not at 48, maybe later in life? Men don't want to do anything. They want to stay home, be grumpy, not want visitors, don't want to go out and see people. No need to keep their wives happy. Wives have to get all their social interactions from their friends and children cause husbands don't want to do anything.