Mid life crisis - your tips on how to survive please

[tiredandgrumpy]

I'm nearly 38 and feeling pretty depressed about getting older. I've been with my husband since we were 21 and I think we've hit a long dull spell. I'm not even sure I love him any more, though suspect this is more to do with the stress of having young children & everyday life than a sign our relationship is doomed.

Generally I just feel as though life has passed me by, that I'm getting older, saggier & whilst I can secretly lust after other men I'm sure they wouldn't be interested anyway. It's not that I want to have a fling, affair or whatever, it's simply about me feeling older and no longer attractive, boring and stuck in a rut.

dh works long hours and rarely gets home early enough to give me time to get out. What do you recommend I do to give myself a kick up the backside & feel good about life again?

Do you work?
Can you take it to another level?

I started an MSc when I was 39 and it has been one of the best things I ever did-bloody hard work but an amzing experience and i can honestly say it has reinvented me at age 42.

How about the dreaded hobby, sports or voluntary angle?

What moondog said.

I do work, in a job which was a change of direction a couple of years ago and which I enjoy. I'm studying for exams to get a relevant qualification and am enjoying doing these as I feel more empowered. Am also discovering that I do still have a brain which has not gone completely mushy.

The trouble is, though, that my career is very limited as I am the one to manage both children. dh has a long commute & simply cannot factor in drop off or pick up. I therefore have to accommodate both ends of the day which restricts the amount I can take on at work.

A new interest of some sort is probably where I need to go, but I really have no freedom as dh is simply not around during the week.

Sorry to sound so negative.

My dh is never here (he works abroad for 6 weeks at a time then home for a week before buggering off again). I have a choice; moan about it or get on with my life.

I study, have a small business as well, do some exercise 3 times a week. Get organised and don't let life pass you by.

I'm 41 and admit I am having a total mid life crisis, mostly for the fact I hate being old and miss my carefree days. The thing that keeps me going is that I have a great network of friends. Nights out with the girls take me away from the drudgery my life seems to be at the moment, at my age it's not wild clubbing nights but get togethers in the pub or meals together. Just time to laugh and be myself and not just a wife/mother.
I have also had a fling, but don't recommend this route. While it is exciting and makes me feel young and wanted, it's an emotional roller coaster. If I knew then what I know now about how it would play with my head, I would have never had gotten into it.

I'm another who went back to study at 39. Did my masters and just finished my PhD at 47. I have a 4 yr-old and prefer not to use full time childcare but did have a childminder 3 days and now 2 days/week. I've already asked to work 4 days/week if/when I get a postdoc so I can pick up from school 2 dasy/week. Could you afford a part-time childminder to open up your career options?

Also, can you afford an occaisional babysitter to get out in the evenings. Is there any way you could get your dh to commit to being home at a more reasonable hour consistently even one night/week? Best of all - could you BOTH go out together? We have only just started having an occaisional babysitter and it is worth the money - you don't talk the same when you're both slobbing/choring around the house.

roxi you sound like me, and i agree re rollercoaster but it's difficult to stop, and it's not to be recommended.

I'd also love to know the tips on how to survive because i'm in a classic mid life crisis myself. I hit 40 and it hit me like a sledgehammer!

I'd already decided not to be fat at 40 so at around 38 i finally did something about my weight and dropped about 4 and a half stone. Suddenly i could fit into my size 10's again, (or size 8 if i shopped at matalan and decided i was bored, stuck in a rut and needed excitement.

So i turned into a party animal, going out all the time and when my oh got fed up of that i stayed in and found a lot of fun to be had on the internet instead.

Had a few online steamy sessions and thought i was being careful and deleting as i go, but my oh is in IT and found out exactly what i had been getting up to.

We had a huge talk about it, with him crying and me telling him that i needed to be me, not someones oh or mum, just a few times a week. Initially he said he was ok with me talking to these blokes, but now he doesnt think he can handle it which is understandable.

He's asked me to cut down and i will try but its like an addiction that i just cant seem to shift at the moment. Sometimes life just gets you down and its nice to slip into fantasy just for a little while.

Oh dear, so no-one's got any answers then!

ime the last years of thirty are grim because all you can think about is getting older

even subconsciously stuff, goes through your head - I wanted to do this that or the other before 40 etc etc

after 40 things are better because you are already "old" and you don't need to care about it any more

and you can just do all that stuff anyway -- you worry less about pleasing people and more about pleasing yourself, having the result of everybody pleased because you are happier

a sort of "seize the day" feeling takes over (not to be confused with desperation )

i don't think you need to do anything except decide to have fun, and it's true that 40 is a club, a big secret, that it's actually excellent

you won't believe it until you are 40 though, you just think it's people making the best of it, poor them

It's true what mmrsceptic says --- turning 40 can come as a relief, and things that seemed stuck start to move again, often in ways you might never expect. I had an awful time in my late 30s, bingeing on clothes, wasting money and energy, and feeling miserable. By 41, things were quite different; I took up running and hiking again, regained my fabulous teenage figure, had various attractive men paying me attention despite my wedding ring, and conceived (with DH) my DD, who has brought so much joy to all the family, but especially to me, tho I had previously never wanted children.
What helped me out of the rut was tapping into that physical energy that lurks there even when we think we are worn out and dried up. If you can evoke that, lots of other interesting things might happen. At the very least it will give you some mental clarity. There is this amazing woman who lives near me, is in her late 40s and has 10 children (most still living at home) and is a marathon runner! How??? She has a quick kip when she gets home from work, then gets up in the middle of the night - like 4am! -to run, and is home by the time the kids are waking up.
Meanwhile, please please please count your blessings. You have children. Lots of folks miss out on that. I have a 45-year-old friend, single, who is desperately trying to adopt a child before she is deemed too old. She is so grief-stricken and wishes now she had just shagged anyone to get sperm while she was young enough to conceive. Now THAT is a real midlife crisis.
One last thing --- have you noticed that 40 seems to be the new fashionable age? It must be rather awful for teenage girls to have Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Kidman, Kylie Minogue, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cate Blanchett et al constantly held up to them as icons of style. I bet you have style too, tiredandgrumpy, tho it may have got lost for a while. Have fun finding it again!

I can relate to the party animal comment too, that's how I have been, I'm out at every opportunity.
Knax, if you have any tips on how to stop, can you let me know lol! it's hard to think about life without the excitement now.
I'm not handling my mid life crisis very well.

sorry re lack of capitals, child in arms.
brilliant advice from groover and sceptic.
and no roxi, none from me i'm afraid. i agree with you re the excitemnent. am 37 and have thought pathetic stuff like must do this whilst am still fancied. gonna try and follow wise advice from groover and sceptic though (and you roxi, stern emoticon

I amm going through something similar, going out at every opportunity and behaving like a twat, it is actually just making things worse, because you have to come back and be wife and mum and the more I do it the less i want to come back. I have decided today that i am not giong out anymore. might as well just get used to the groundhog day, because I can't cope with the lows that follow the highs.

Oh thank god... I'm feeling a bit more 'normal' now... My M.L.C. is in full flow... today I have posted on the Telly addicts Talk bit (on Being Human New Series Thread) the following: I am almost 39 and a (generally) very sensible woman, mother of 2 and Childminder to 4 others. But a very strange thing has happened to me of late... I have become OBSESSED by Mr Aidan Turner in a very big way: have been recording episodes of Being Human to watch during the daytime uninterrupted when the kiddies are at school/nursery, keep on Googling for pics and You Tube clips, ordered both Being Human series 1 and Desperate Romantics on Amazon, have made a special screensaver of pics for my phone... it is MAD! I am behaving like a teenager, yet deluded and pushing 40! But there is one really major difference between my teenage crushes of years ago and this: I would now know EXACTLY what to do with him. Have spent ages daydreaming about the man... in a really very sordid and lustful manner. Yikes! What the heck is going on? Anyone else there going 'loopy' too?

I suppose this is a 'safe' way to handle it all, rather than actually doing it with a real-life attainable 26 year old. Doies my head in a bit though... wastes sooo much time daydreaming.

TiredandGrumpy first of all, I don't think mid-life crises are a bad thing although the term is unhelpful, in my view, since there is a tendancy to be slightly dismissive of such things.

I think that there are times in your life when you are supposed to stop and take stock of where you are, who you are, what you have in life and how that compares to what you want(ed) and this should not just be when you are 80 with one foot in the grave with regrets about all the things you did not do and have now left too late.

I think the difficulty arises in either not recognising that you are having a mid-life crisis or not knowing how to deal with some of the conclusions which derive from the taking stock exercise and potentially entering into some of the damaging/self destructive actions which have been raised by other posters.

I suspect that your new job and qualification has also highlighted for you how much more potential you have.

You really need to talk you your DP. There has to be a solution to this - as you say new interest, new hobby, new "together" time for you and your DH. If you are feeling trapped/unhappy then surely your DH can make the effort one evening a fornight to get home on time so you can go out and a baby-sitter can be arranged once per fortnight also giving you some time each week since just the getting ready to go out and have something to look forward to and something new to tell your DH about when you get home might help (FWIW, I did wine appreciation at my local sixth form college - completely fun and as unpretentious as wine appreciation can get). Then hopefully with some effort/compromise you can get some time on the weekend too - perhaps to spend with your DH. I know that my DH would respond to a reasonable request like this from me if he understood that I was feeling troubled and unfulfilled and if your DH does not then this justifies how you are feeling. It is then not a mid-life crisis but a genuine recognition of the absence of a required give and take in your relationship which suddenly sounds less likes something people would tell you just to "get over" doesn't it?

Some great cerebral reading that really helped me get through a very bad patch:

"The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife", by James Hollis.

I highly recommend it. He is a Jungian Analyst, and his take on midlife was pretty-much spot-on for me.

I like this 'seize the day' thing, i'm a bit late as ever but i turned 43 last year and suddenly realised that i was also bored of what my life had become. I don't think this energy is necessarily a bad thing either, i decided to learn to snowboard over Xmas, which meant i had to go to the gym to get fitter for it, and the Xmas season gave me an excuse to reconnect with a lot of old friends. So i'm not exactly going out and partying all night long but have a new attitude about regaining some of the life I had, before children.

I think that when you have kids you put your needs second for a long time its just a matter of putting yourself first again. Can you do things in the day? - otherwise, get a babysitter, go to the gym, learn something new, it all helps.

I must be a late developer but I think I belong on this thread too. At 49 I am struggling with the big 0 coming up. I have tried throwing myself into activities, had a very foolish but enjoyable affair I am now living to regret, and taken up new challenges at work, studying etc etc.

I have jumped off cliffs done adventure races and made the adrenaline whizz round. Now I am going to a psychotherapist but at the end of the day nothing really masks the feeling of dissatisfaction underlying it all.
I guess eventually I will settle down and get old gracefully but right now I don't want to! I think this may be payback for being such a very well behaved hardworking teenager.

If there is an answer I want to hear it too.

I am having a mid-life crisis too because I know I have wasted my 40's in a miserable marriage having no fun or freedom. I am studying and want to get back to work. After being a SAHM for the last ten years I realised that my H has just got on with his life with me just being his back-up so he can do what he likes in life.

Sorry - I sound a bit bitter!!!!!!!!! I have had two wonderful children during my 40's, however.

The big 50 approaching is definitely on my mind alot - but I would like to make it positive, instead of the negative way I looked at turning 40.

Any suggestions - other than 'get a life'!!!!!!!

Study, hobbies, change of career, a new sports car?

I think that I have deal with a lot of my mid life crisis by trying to stop looking or acting my age. I am just taking more risks (calculated ones) and I feel more alive.

ro ro mummy- I laughed so much at the Aidan T urner thing,I thought it was just me, I am even older than you.My husband thinks I,ve lost the plot.He half thinkks I am gonna start dressing as a goth and getting into marilyn Manson next. I to put into a nutshell just want a more rockn' roll lifestyle iyswim.

i am 40 this year. I have always looked younger so it is hard to come to terms with it - and the fact that time (and wrinkles and grey hair) is catchinmg up with me. I have had to chivvy my dh thorugh his midlife crisis and we have had the most terrible year last year with financial disasters and frustrations and schoolproblems and issues with our kids etc.
So this year the corner has been turned, I feel really relaxed and comofrtable with myself. I have friends in their 20s and friends in their 60s which gives me all sorts of social activities and opportunites from the odd chance to go clubbing, right up to craft evenings.
I work part time, but I am making more effort to make th emost of any opportunities and experiences which come my way (given money and time contrainsts)

I have a horrrible feeling my midlife crisis will hit hard in my 50s, when I have less energy and less self confidence

Those of you with school age kids are going to hate me for saying this but it's par for the course really - you put your life on hold to a certsain extent while you are raising children.
When they bugger off to Uni gain independance, your life starts afresh and you can do all the things you always wanted to , either together as a couple or alone.
Take the holidays you want rather than them being child friendly, go out for the day , have lunch/whatever without one eye on the clock, have a whisky or two at night because you're not on taxi duty - all those little things that mean freedom.
We joined the National trust last year and had a great time, we were out every weekend during the spring and summer visiting loads of nice places - I was surprised just how many families with young kids were doing it too, nearly every house had a decent kids play area, so the NT isn't just for pensioners.
Those few years with children go so fast honestly, it seems a long time coming but you do get another chance at a "grown up" life and it's great. I'm looking forward to being 50, not least because the mortgage will be all but paid off, so more money for holidays!

I'm also bang in the middle of my mid-life crisis. Drinking too much, going out too much, having an affair.

Partly it was down to my dh treating me like part of the furniture, but I am also feeling that soon I won't be attractive anymore and I should make the most of it now. Having said that, I was really encouraged to see It's Complicated with people having lots of fun still in their late 50s!

I am enjoying myself, but know it can't last. One day soon I'll get a job and have to buck up my ideas. Amazing how many female MLCs are going on..it used to be the sole preserve of the male...