# Midlife - descriptions from the inside



## shy_guy (Jan 25, 2012)

I’ve seen several posts in several of the forums talking about midlife crises, or dealing with a spouse going through it. From what I can see, it is not unique to men. In one conversation, a friend suggested to me that there are 5 types of midlife crises … I’m always skeptical of categorization, though. I read one link to an article where a woman was explaining to other women what a man was going through … she didn’t come close to explaining what I dealt with in my midlife re-evaluation. Maybe having a thread where many of us can post will help understand the whole phenomenon better than dealing with it one person at a time … but we’ll still have to explain to each person, I’m sure.

I thought it might be helpful for those who may face it, or those dealing with a spouse dealing with it if you could post your own experience from the inside. I’ll post mine in the replies, too. As always, I think the more detailed you can be, and the better you can express what you though and dealt with, the more likely it is for someone to be able to understand it when that person needs it. 

Please post your experience if you’ve been through it, whether you call it a crisis, a re-evaluation, or any other descriptive term you can share with us.


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## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

I think "mid-life crisis" is a term used to put down a shift in one's priorities.

In "mid-life", the kids are finally out of the house, you have more disposable income and things you "needed" (like a minivan" can be replaced with things you wanted (like a sports car). 

In your relationship, maybe you held it together for the kids, accepting what was a less than loving relationship with your spouse. When they are gone, you self-assess and see that holding it together is no longer necessary.

You also realize that the "rest of your life" is a lot shorter at mid-life that it was a long time ago and you want to do things you never did before.

No one uses the term "bucket list" as a pejorative like they do with "mid-life crisis".


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## shy_guy (Jan 25, 2012)

It looks like I'll have to post the first experience on this one. I don't mind doing that. I hope I won't be the only one since I'm sure everyone is different. I think we'll need a variety of experiences posted and I hope we'll get them. Anyway, here's mine.

I usually refer to mine as a “re-evaluation” rather than a crisis, but I can’t deny that it was one of the more difficult periods of my life. 

Mine began when our first child graduated from high school, then left for college. I was approaching 40 at the time. It started calmly enough. I was in competitive athletics in my youth, and in the first stages, I started realizing that old goals I had would never be realized. I think I had long given up on youthful dreams of Olympics and such things, but as I began to think about myself now declining physically, not able to run as far nor as fast as I once could, and I began to realize I would never again be as good as I once was regardless of how hard I worked, it began to take hold on me. 

I started really evaluating my first half of life. I was happy in that first half, and everything seemed to have worked out well – maybe not the way I had originally planned, but it worked out well enough. But I began to wonder what I had done of any significance. I began to wonder if I died that day, would there be any reason for anybody to remember me. Would the world be any better because I had lived? Decisions I had made thinking they were good began to be weighed against what I had given up as I made those decisions. I was trying to find anything in the first half of life that that showed that I had been successful and had been the kind of person I wanted to be, but then, I began to question what success meant, and began to wonder what kind of person I really was.

Then, as I began to question, the real blow hit me. I began to question everything I had based my life on. Had I completely wasted all these years? In my case, I had been raised in a Christian home, and my life had been based on Christian values. I began to question how I knew any of the things I had based my faith and my life on. I began to question whether I would even believe there was a God if I had not been raised in a Christian home. For me, these thoughts, like nothing up to this poins, knocked my feet out from under me so to speak, and I had a desperate need to find this out. If I didn’t have any confidence in the most basic things I had based all of my decisions on, then what did I have to stand on? For me, it became a question that consumed all of my mental facilities. I needed to answer this before I could gain my feet and make any decisions on how I would proceed with the next half of life.

My mind was more than busy. My mind was almost paralyzed with thought. I had question after question in machine-gun rhythm hitting my mind, and I didn’t have any answers for them, In fact, every question seemed to only create more questions. I dealt with it with a job that took me off by myself 2 – 4 days/week for 2 – 3 weeks/month. In these times, I spent a lot of time walking and thinking, or sometimes going to the bar for dinner just trying to figure things out. I didn’t understand what was going on in my mind myself, so I certainly couldn’t explain it to someone else. What’s more, the pressure of the questions was so heavy on my mind that I couldn’t take time from thinking about them to even be able to speak about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about it to my wife (or with anyone else for that matter), but I couldn’t slow my mind down long enough to talk about it to anyone. I loved my wife SO MUCH, and she seemed like the one stable thing I had in my life since my faith was being shaken to its core. I really didn’t want to lose her, but I couldn’t express what was going on with me, either. I wanted to let her in when she asked me what was wrong, but I just didn’t know how to say it – not even to her. And think about it, she thought of me as a stable, Christian man who had things all figured out. How could I express to her that even the basis of my faith was being questioned right now? I thought even if I could find words to express it, she would not understand it, and it would shake her confidence in where she was, too. I didn’t want to shake her confidence.

I questioned all the things I had done, working with youth, adopting a child … every detail. I tried to determine if I had done those things with a pure motive of service to God, or if I had done them selfishly. Every one of them was difficult to figure out as I went back and forth between thinking I had done them just to gain something from God, then thinking I had done them right, then questioning whether God existed, and if He did, then it meant (I would find something good, and something bad, and argue with myself about them) … I went back and forth about what things meant if God existed, and if He didn’t … sometimes even thinking I was a selfish jackass if I could be made to feel comfortable because I would be let off the hook if God didn’t exist in a case where I would have been held accountable if He did … I literally felt like I didn’t have anything solid to stand on, and if I couldn’t find anything solid to put my feet on, then I didn’t have anything to build on or base any decisions on. The most important question for me to answer was whether or not there was a God. I didn’t want anybody’s pat answers. I didn’t want anybody mindlessly telling me what science proved, either. I didn’t want anybody else’s opinion or input. I wanted to figure it out for myself, or with myself and God if He would help me … but was He there? That’s what I couldn’t figure out. If he wasn’t there, then I couldn’t even figure what significance life was, much less what of significance I had done.

There was a point where I saw a seemingly simple and insignificant little symbol of love written in the sand on the beach. That started my mind thinking about the evidence of intelligence. Instead of looking for physical evidence, this seemed to speak to me of what evidence of intelligence looked like. I had been thinking for a while of the “4 letter alphabet” used to write words, sentences, paragraphs, and instructions of life. We call these instructions in this 4 letter alphabet DNA. It also wrote our history, and suddenly, my mind seemed to explode in thoughts in a new direction because of what I suddenly thought this meant. For several months, my mind worked out detail after detail of how perfectly men and women were made for each other. How not just our anatomies, but even the delivery of genetic material, and the hormones and pheromones as well as the reactions to those pheromones were all necessary, and all had to work together perfectly even in order for procreation to be possible. I worked through in my mind whether the “blind watchmaker” paradigm could work fast enough for these things to all fit together and allow us to adapt and allow life to continue. I began to see the evidence of intelligence in the 4 letter alphabet, and how it was used. Eventually, in my mind, I decided it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to believe in a creator of the universe, and I decided that scientific discovery did not disprove the existence of a God any more than the discovery of pen and ink disproved the existence of an author. In the 4 letter alphabet, I began to find the evidence of intelligence that spoke to the existence of a creator. When I began to think like that, I began to find something solid to set my feet on again. Once I had some footing, I began to find some stability, and began to have something to build my thinking on again. (I wonder how many other people were convinced there was a God by sex.  )

That was just the beginning of coming out of it for me. I probably had another 4 – 5 months before I really began to get things sorted out, and began to think of what would be important for the second half of life. As I set these things in order, I began to put more emphasis on my wife and my kids, and began to feel like that was where I really needed to invest myself. I began to think that anything that was left behind would be left behind in my children, and in the other kids I had an influence on. I realized how happy and good the first half of life was for me, and I realized how big of a part my wife played in that happiness, and my attention and focus turned more than ever before to making her happy, and showing her my love for however many years we have left. Things like accomplishments at work began to fade in importance to me, and my family became more important than ever before. As my kids left home, I found I wanted to turn the energy I used to spend on them to other service just because I thought that was what God wanted me to do. I found my concept of God was different from what it was prior to my midlife time, but I found my Christian faith again, and this time, I knew it wasn’t because someone taught me that way. 

I’ve settled in, and am comfortable now that in all likelihood, I’m in the second half of life. I’m comfortable with what I’m doing, and the direction I have. I feel like I have a better handle on what’s really important in my life, and what’s not so important. I feel like these are the best years of my life right now – I’m enjoying them more than I ever enjoyed life when I was younger. And although I always loved my family, I think I love now more than I could before. I’m comfortable with my mortality, and I’m on the lookout for what kinds of things I want to leave behind when I leave this earth.

Maybe you’d call it a crisis. I call it a re-evaluation. It shook me to the core, and I couldn’t talk about it when it was happening to me. Now, on the back side of it, I think I can express it, and hope it is helpful to someone else.


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## southern wife (Jul 22, 2011)

shy_guy said:


> It looks like I'll have to post the first experience on this one. I don't mind doing that. I hope I won't be the only one since I'm sure everyone is different. I think we'll need a variety of experiences posted and I hope we'll get them. Anyway, here's mine.
> 
> I usually refer to mine as a “re-evaluation” rather than a crisis, but I can’t deny that it was one of the more difficult periods of my life.
> 
> ...


Wow, I just have to say this brought tears to my eyes!


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## DvlsAdvc8 (Feb 15, 2012)

That doesn't read like a mid-life crisis to me. That reads like a crisis of faith, and the "requires more faith to be an atheist" is straight out of a book, and actually... it doesn't. It requires the same amount of faith. Either the laws of the universe/multi-verse/existence are fixed and we can make sense of them, or they are not and something like a God can exist. Every aspect of our lives but purpose (why) is now based on the assumption that the former is true. The truth is that nothing can answer to the "ultimate why" but you. 

Don't take this wrong, as we all believe what we believe and I'm happy with that, but to use the 4-letter-language-is-a-sign-of-intelligence analogy... then God wrote War and Peace to tell a story the size of the itsy bitsy spider. I'm a programmer, and if what's encoded in dna was designed to produce the end product from the start (us), then its horribly written with all sorts of orphan code like "grow appendix". Even if you posit that it was designed to evolve thereby leaving legacy bits of code, most mutations are harmful and the process is pretty error prone. Its really not a great case for design if that's what you're wanting to find. I mean, its estimated that nearly 50 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriages (estimated because many early miscarriages are not reported). Genetic problems are common, often debilitating (anyone need glasses?) and sometimes downright deadly. Back to being a programmer, if I was looking at human genetic code the way I do software... and I was responsible for maintaining it, I would immediately start thinking "its time to gather requirements for version two... this legacy software is a mess".

That doesn't prove that God doesn't exist, but its a pretty good case for either he isn't designing or is a bad designer. It would be like a human engineer designing an automobile with attachments on the front for horses. If you want an automobile up front, an intelligent designer would just design what's necessary for an automobile.

I get asked all the time what will happen when I die. I always answer, "The same thing that happened in the 14 billion years before I was born".

Some say that's depressing. I think its beautiful. If it is rarity that makes something precious, what is life worth if it is eternal? The idea kinda brings into focus why we're all so concerned with having done something in our lives. In truth, whether you believe or disbelieve, the meaning of your life is the meaning you decide to give it.


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## shy_guy (Jan 25, 2012)

I'm not taking it wrong. I'm just not debating it here. I'm describing what it was like for me. Would mid-life crisis and crisis of faith necessarily be mutually exclusive? Or are the things that were the biggest influencers in your life more likely to be what surfaces when you are dealing with mortality and evaluating the first half of life?

I'm a software engineer by education and in R&D by trade. I'm not seeing much in the way of parallel beginning with the requirements. Just my perspective on it. If the questions were that easy to answer, it wouldn't take much thinking ... there is a limit to how much I can put here. I just wanted to give the perspective on what it was like from the inside.


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## LovesHerMan (Jul 28, 2011)

Roger Rosenblatt wrote a touching essay about a mid-life crisis, "Captain Midlife Sends a Valentine." He summarized the feelings this way: "Debts pound at the door like crazy firemen; responsibilities rise like dunes on the Cape; girls in their 20's call him Sir." 

Another quote by Garrison Keillor that I liked:

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. 

I reviewed all of my mistakes, wishing I could re-live my life with my middle aged wisdom, and get things right this time. It eventually dawned on me that it was my mistakes that resulted in hard-won wisdom, and they made me who I was.

I gave up my illusions that I would do something great; I was now happy to appreciate life, that even an ordinary life was precious and full of meaning.


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## This is me (May 4, 2011)

My wife did the text book Walk Away Wife, which is one of the female versions of the MLC. Stealth plans for leaving the marriage, dramatic changes in apperance, lost interest in religion and detachment from commitment to her marriage. 

She became infatuated with self just like the teenager.


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## lovinmyhubby223 (Jan 31, 2012)

The closest thing to a mid-life crisis I’ve had was at the age of 36. I can’t really say what brought it on. It just seemed to explode inside me one day. I started thinking “_is this it? There’s got to be more than this_”. I realized I was bored and not just bored, I mean I was crippled by boredom. Nothing in my life had worked out the way I’d planned. I was nowhere near the place I thought I’d be by this stage in life. I told my H I needed to do something, break out of this stifling rut. I remember really freaking out on him one day, crying uncontrollably, telling him I was stagnating, that something had to be done. He just stood staring at me with this confused yet worried expression on his face. I later thought that particular episode could have been hormonal but the overall feeling of stagnation and some undefined lack of fulfillment still remained. So I uncharacteristically did something I’d wanted to do since I was 18 years old. I got my breast done. Went from a 32A to a 32DD and I love them and my hubby loves them. 

I partially blame my mother who was a very strict woman, very judgmental, very conditional in her relationships with me and my sister, also very, very conservative. She was a daunting presence in my life until her untimely death three years before my “break down”. 

But upon full retrospect I think it was looking at the first half of my life and having gotten virtually nothing that _I_ really wanted, not having much control over my life, I wanted to take control. Make something happen that I wanted to happen just to get that feeling of “_this is my life damn it, and I have control over this if nothing else”._


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## SunnyT (Jun 22, 2011)

*My wife did the text book Walk Away Wife, which is one of the female versions of the MLC*


It's also a male version. And it doesn't even mean midlife crisis. It COULD just be done with a marriage/relationship that is for whatever reason not fulfilling. Of course it could be worked on in a productive manner... but sometimes, the walk away spouse feels like they DID try. 

My ex was a walk away... he explained how he did try. I never saw anything he did as a real "try"...and I was doing my damndest to save that marriage. 

After that, I spent quite a bit of time on a midlife crisis forum. There are ALOT of instances that the left-behind-spouse labeled the abandonment as a midlife crisis. Alot of times, it seemed NOT to be a crisis for the WAS, but only for the LBS. Soooooooooo.... crisis is in the eye of the beholder isn't it? The WAS often sees it as a midlife CHANGE.... a positive thing, thought out and desired. Changing their life for what they see as valid reason...even if we never understand it. 

I think psychologically, we all go thru something.... transition, introspection, crisis whatever.... and MOST of the time, we come out just fine, hopefully just older and wiser and more committed to living up to our own image of how life IS. An acceptance I guess. It's normal...another stage of life. 

Crisis is more like when you spin out of control, making bad choices that affect you negatively as well as those around you whose lives intertwine with yours. Crisis is when things just fall apart, with no compassion or introspection on your part. Crisis is big, heavy decisions, thoughts, changes, flings even... that you aren't prepared to cope with, or inclined to LEARN how to cope with. I think crisis is directly linked to poor coping strategies.

It doesn't have to be a crisis.


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## DvlsAdvc8 (Feb 15, 2012)

shy_guy said:


> I'm not taking it wrong. I'm just not debating it here. I'm describing what it was like for me. Would mid-life crisis and crisis of faith necessarily be mutually exclusive? Or are the things that were the biggest influencers in your life more likely to be what surfaces when you are dealing with mortality and evaluating the first half of life?
> 
> I'm a software engineer by education and in R&D by trade. I'm not seeing much in the way of parallel beginning with the requirements. Just my perspective on it. If the questions were that easy to answer, it wouldn't take much thinking ... there is a limit to how much I can put here. I just wanted to give the perspective on what it was like from the inside.


They may not be mutually exclusive, but the post reads as though the faith crisis was by far the most dominant aspect. Maybe its just me, but when I think mid-life crisis, I think of someone who just realized they're getting up there in years and gave up a lot along the way. The crisis is the sudden lurch to re-find yourself and do the things you didn't do, before you're too old to do them... or to come to terms with what you gave up and find contentment. The earlier sacrifices were made often out of practicality, but who sets out to be practical as a young man/woman?

I view it as resolving the dissonance between one's over idealization in youth verses the reality to that point in your life. A mid-life crisis seems to me to be more about "you" than about God.


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## shy_guy (Jan 25, 2012)

DvlsAdvc8 said:


> I view it as resolving the dissonance between one's over idealization in youth verses the reality to that point in your life. A mid-life crisis seems to me to be more about "you" than about God.


If you missed that this was more about me than about God, then please read it again. I think it is pretty clear it was about me, and where I was in life.


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## southern wife (Jul 22, 2011)

shy_guy said:


> If you missed that this was more about me than about God, then please read it again. I think it is pretty clear it was about me, and where I was in life.


I totally get that it was more about you. It just took a long process to get there!  Kinda like going around your @ss to your elbow.


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## shy_guy (Jan 25, 2012)

southern wife said:


> I totally get that it was more about you. It just took a long process to get there!  Kinda like going around your @ss to your elbow.


My long-windedness again?


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## southern wife (Jul 22, 2011)

shy_guy said:


> My long-windedness again?


:rofl: :rofl: :lol: :lol: :iagree: :iagree:

Nothing wrong with that; you're in the right place for it!


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## DvlsAdvc8 (Feb 15, 2012)

shy_guy said:


> If you missed that this was more about me than about God, then please read it again. I think it is pretty clear it was about me, and where I was in life.


I thougth it was about you at first, but then the next 5 paragraphs were about faith/God. I guess your MLC coincided with (sparked?) a crisis of faith and that was a huge thing to you.

So did your crisis actually involve any urgent acts or changes on your part in recognition of your age or was it all reflection? And it ended with you the same as you were, but now satisfied with it? You had a remarkably smooth, well adjusted MLC. 

I'm disappointed in MLCs now. I at least want to get a convertible out of one.


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## shy_guy (Jan 25, 2012)

DvlsAdvc8 said:


> I thougth it was about you at first, but then the next 5 paragraphs were about faith/God. I guess your MLC coincided with (sparked?) a crisis of faith and that was a huge thing to you.
> 
> So did your crisis actually involve any urgent acts or changes on your part in recognition of your age or was it all reflection? And it ended with you the same as you were, but now satisfied with it? You had a remarkably smooth, well adjusted MLC.
> 
> I'm disappointed in MLCs now. I at least want to get a convertible out of one.


I did say I called it a "re-evaluation" rather than a crisis, but changes were made. Mostly in the type of job I wanted and priorities in life. Some things are not so obvious such as: I am Christian after all of it, but don't minimize what I meant when I said my concept of God had changed. That brought about some pretty big changes, but I don't want to get too long winded again.  But after re-evaluating and deciding that life hasn't really been that bad despite mistakes I've made, I didn't find I wanted to change the things that a lot of people seem to want to change.

(If you want to start a discussion on what you were asking about what I said about God in the description, then if you start a thread in the appropriate forum and invite me to it, I can go into that some - especially about your requirements documents. I might have a surprise or two for you there . I can't debate it endlessly, but I can invest a little bit of time on it.)

No convertible for me ... those types of things were never anything I thought I was missing out on .


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## Mavash. (Jan 26, 2012)

After 18 years of marriage I almost became a walk away wife. I was 43 years old. My husband is a good man but he was emotionally unavailable and I longed for more intimacy, more connection. As a homemaker he supported me, gave me everything and thought that was all the effort he needed to put forth just like his dad did.

I began to want more out of life and was no longer content to 'settle'. I went back for round 3 of therapy and began this total tranformation of myself. I gained enough self confidence in myself to finally....finally believe I deserved to be loved and cherished. I was willing to let him go if thats what it took but once and for all I wanted to see ACTION. I was tired of talking about how I felt and having nothing change. I started calling him on every BS excuse he gave me because I was sick of it.

My new attitude woke up him and now he is bringing his A game same as me. I am going after that life of my dreams and my thought is he can either join me or step aside. His choice and I can't make it for him.


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## diwali123 (Feb 17, 2012)

I just realized in the last few days that from the day I turned forty I started to get depressed. I went from getting married to the love of my life, going on a honeymoon (the first trip away from my daughter for more than two days) and then got back and it was like everything just me.
In addition I realized the job I had taken was completely the opposite of what it was supposed to be, started to have panic attacks and part of it was getting really hot. I thought I was having hot flashes. My H has a vasectomy and I really do not want to have another child.
We have three between us and when I see babies all I can think is "thank god I'm over that." But sometimes I do feel sad that I only had one or that my H and I will never have a child together.
So lately I've been thinking about getting a dog so we can sort of raise something together. He isn't so into that so I'm not going to push it.
I just think that with my grandmother dying last year, and finding out my stepfather has severe kidney disease and my MIL having a serious illness, it was just too much for me. It's been really hard because my H and I have been going through a lot of other stress at the same time. 
I feel like I get through one thing and start dealing with it and another one pops up, and this mortality thing is always in the back of my head. Sometimes I see women in their 20's and think I hope that they appreciate their bodies and what they look like, not having gray hair to worry about, not having aging parents usually, or kids to worry about.
But my twenties weren't so great. I am so much more self confident now, I love my daughter, I love my family and my husband. I just wish I hadn't wasted so much time being with my exhusband who was abusive but what can I do about it?
I'm trying to find a way to lift myself up out of this. What really sucks is my h is three years younger than me and I'm so afraid that he's not going to be ready when I do go through "the change". His ex was younger than him so who knows what he thinks.
Ok I'm done with my babbling. I guess I haven't done anything exciting or weird to get over it, just trying to maintain the course at this time. I mean I did get my first tattoo right before my birthday but it didn't help me to stop from feeling instantly OLD right there on my birthday. Like going from thirties to forty was more like a twenty year difference!


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## Halien (Feb 20, 2011)

shy_guy said:


> I did say I called it a "re-evaluation" rather than a crisis, but changes were made. Mostly in the type of job I wanted and priorities in life. Some things are not so obvious such as: I am Christian after all of it, but don't minimize what I meant when I said my concept of God had changed. That brought about some pretty big changes, but I don't want to get too long winded again.  But after re-evaluating and deciding that life hasn't really been that bad despite mistakes I've made, I didn't find I wanted to change the things that a lot of people seem to want to change.


If mid-life results from a re-analysis of "self", then our marriage, our faith, and even career are a part of it. I dropped out of an aggressive executive career succession track during my midlife. Also realized that I had become more focused on the outward symbols of my faith, and not what it should say about who I am. While I did really step up my awareness of how I dressed for work and home, I began to really dislike the showy signs of wealth, like expensive cars. For the first time ever, I not only talked about divorce, I asked for a divorce after coming to grips with the fact that I given my wife a free pass on building a mutually supportive relationship due to her bipolar depression. We have since reconciled.

To me, the strangest thing about it is that I came out of the midlife feeling young, more optimistic and full of energy. For years, I had learned to keep my past behind me, as something that no longer defined me. But the same childhood experiences that taught me to stand up for myself also led me to be successful in my career, and I feel like I'm made peace with my past.

When I moved to my current city, I had found a little hole in the wall gym where people sparred and trained under the tutelage of an old boxing trainer. I poured myself into training during the midlife, focusing more on exercise than sparring, since I'm not young anymore. Several coworkers started going, and the owner now has the money to reach out into the youth around the gym. It has turned into more of a MMA culture, so it is much more punishing, yet invigorating, even though I now only go on the weekends. The experiences of my midlife made me feel like I woke up from a long dream.


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## waiwera (Sep 8, 2009)

I don't know if it was a MLC but my priorities changed around the 40 yr mark.

H was running his construction business and had up to 20 blokes working him. It was stressful but he was earning alot of $$$ and seemed quite driven to earn more and more.

I've never been overly materialisitic and enjoy simple pleasures in life.

My biggest fear was that this would be a defining moment in my marriage.. what if H wanted the big houses and the flash cars and I wanted to grow pumpkins and raise chicken and pigs? Could we find a common ground?

We talked about it... then H said he was only after the $$$ because he thought it was his job to earn as much as possible and that I expected it from him.

So now we have our farmlet, H employs 2 blokes and works half the hours he used too which means we can spend lots and lots more time together. The lack of funds has been an issue..but heck you can't have it all!

Still waiting for H's MLC...


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