Hey! Just a question.

Does anyone see a MLC <mid life crisis> as part of their problems? I visit other sites (love me some MB) and it is not addressed here.

Just wondering

I think a MLC is just an excuse to act like a fool. People need to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame it on some stupid, "I want to feel young again" stuff.

MLC is a perfectly legitimate event. It doesn't, however, give one cart blanch to act like an idiot. MLC happens when people start to feel their mortality and recognize they have limited time here. They start to question their situation, ask themselves if this is all there is. They wonder if they've made the right choices and often an individual will become hyper self focused. And this is where some problems can arise. Families don't often benefit from one partner/parent thinking only of their needs and not the needs of anyone else in the family.

I sure wish I could:

Still run a sub 4:30 mile.
Be ready for round two in the SF department in a minute and a half (instead of a day and a half).
Eat four plates of food at every meal without gaining weight.
See well enough without my glasses to at least find my glasses when I take them off.
Stay up till 3 and get up again at 6:30.
Drive 90 MPH without worrying about what it will do to my insurance rates.
Spend my whole paycheck on a Christmas gift for my wife.
Wear shorts and a tee shirt to work.
Climb 450 feet in the air without wondering if someone will have to come up and carry me down.
Look at that cute girl in the short skirt that works across the street and not wonder what her mother was thinking (or drinking) when she let her daughter leave the house dressed like that.
Remember 400 part numbers and the cost and minimum retail prices for every one of them without looking things up.
Read a 300 page novel in 4 hours without stopping and without getting a pounding headache and being interrupted buy the dog wanting to go out or come in or eat or whatever she wants now.
Read a book or magazine without the 4 year old granddaughter coming to me with A Cat In A Hat or Green Eggs and Ham saying "Pawpaw, will you read to me?"
Go back to college and actually major in something besides euchre. (I minored in girls who majored in guys who majored in euchre, BTW)

Of course something happened that ended all of that stuff...

I grew up and got married and had kids and bought a house and a car and a pickup truck and a vacation home and...

Ah, to be young again...

Sitting in class with a hangover that would hospitalize me today.
Driving in traffic at 90 MPH on bald tires.
Climbing 450 feet in the air and unhooking my safety belt so I could reach further from the tower without it restricting my movements.
Playing euchre instead of going to class.
Following that cute girl in the short skirt around hoping for the wind to pick up (while keeping one eye out for her father who is wondering just what the hell her mother was thinking when she let her leave the house dressed like that.)

Yes I was pretty much an idiot...

MLC = Excuses to act like you're what you aren't and probably never really were.

A MLC happens most often, I believe, in a marriage that was children-centric, when the kids are all out on their own (or at least able to fend for themselves most of the time). Husband and wife became Dad and Mom and lived the next 25 or 30 years sacrificing themselves and their own relationship for the kids. When the kids are gone, Dad and Mom become strangers or at best roommates. They can't do the things they once did and blame each other for what has been lost. They each feel entitled to having their own turn at life...

They want to feel 16 again.

They try to recover lost youth by doing things their kids have already outgrown...

And the results are predictable.



A MLC is nothing more than an attempt to excuse acting like an idiot all over again.

JMO.

Mark

I agree that a MLC is a real event. I also agree that it's all too often used as an excuse for exceedingly bad behaviour. We choose our actions, and our reactions.

I'm having a sort of mid-life crisis. I was rapidly approaching 40 and asking myself if I wanted the rest of my life to be like the first 1/2 (I actually plan to live past 80, but the marketing got to me) and it prompted me to make changes in my relationship, and be prepared to walk away from its dysfunction if things didn't change. It prompted me to go back to school as a "non-traditional student" and change careers, going back to the field I love, even though I have a good, stable, well-paying job now. It's prompting me to get serious about paying off my consumer debt so I'm not enslaved to it and (now that my marriage is back on track) my H and I can proceed with our semi-retirement plans in 10 years or so.

In stepping back to look at my MLC, I think these are all positive things and healthy responses to the MLC. A number of people, namely my family, are convinced the career thing is sheer insanity, but...

MLC's shouldn't be about trying to be 16 or 18 or 20 again. They should be about evaluating where you've been, where you are, and re-mapping where you're going.

I think there's a huge difference between a mid-life re-evaluation and a MLC. Mainly it's the 'crisis' part. You can shake up your life at 40, 50, without going into crisis mode.

Mark, that was way too illustrative. For which I thank you.

I guess I was wild in my younger days, too. I remember the spontaneous road trips. Why, I used to drive 20 miles, clear into the next county, mind you, just to buy gas; you see, it was $.25/gal. cheaper in the next county...

I remember one wild Saturday night when I was about 19 that I played a Slim Whitman LP at 78 RPM just to hear what he would sound like if he was breathing helium...

Ah, to live those days again...

Wait a minute...

I still am...



To me, though, the real MLC sets in when I'm looking at that cute girl in the short skirt that works across the street and realize that, HOLY CRAP, I'M OLD ENOUGH TO BE HER FATHER!!!

It's even better when I discover that I know who her father is, and he's younger than me. Now that's an MLC, I tell ya.

YEEEESH!!!

I knew I was getting old when I noticed the cute girl getting out of her car in the high school parking lot and then realized it was the FACULTY parking lot.

And then there was the customer that called and said he wanted to talk to "that older guy."

You're as young as you feel...

Oy vey! I'm a hundred and three!

ETA: When I think about the stuff I did when I was 19 I realize how lucky I to be alive.

I wonder what we would say if the label MLC didn't exist. My FWH said his EA was MLC. If the label didn't exist what would my FWH say? He made poor choices and behaved badly. Some people are prone to those decisions because of enculturation and experiences that make up who they are. There have been a lot of BH here lately who complain of WW's behavior - reverting to teenage behavior. Is it MLC for women or is it enculturation and experiences that make up that particular woman? One guy said his wife is immature (she's 40). Is she going through MLC or is she making bad decisions because of what she's made up of that has allowed her to reach 40 and be immature?

Gg

To all you beautiful people here

Tashi deley !

Mid-life Re-evaluation is a good thing.

Mid-life Crisis is when you failed to evaluate, and suddenly react.

I don't buy into this stuff about "male menopause" (obviously a mangling of Greek medical terms ). I do see more than a few women having MLCs, especially career women.

I guess MB teaches to be aware of what you are doing, so you shouldn't be reacting emotionally and spinning into a MLC.

gg, I looked that up, Tashi deley. Thanks! And retread, thanks for your take on this, too. If you're making your decisions asking yourself, am I enthusiastic about this, taking your taker to the table, it makes sense that there won't be some moment of revelation that your life has been a lie down the road.

barbiecat:

I don't usually put much emphasis on MLC because it tends to be a distraction when trying to solve a marital problem in the most efficient and effective way possible. For example, if a man has an affair, some might argue that it's due to a mid-life crisis which should be treated first. The therapeutic plan would then dictate that he resolve the issue creating the crisis (he's unhappy about the way his life is turning out) and then address the affair itself. Since those having affairs usually want to delay ending them, they like the idea of extended therapy. But the time it takes to complete therapy for midlife crisis usually results in a wife and children long gone.

Granted, when a man has come to my office deeply depressed, wondering if his life's worth living, even I have used the term, mid-life crisis, to help describe what he's going through. Sometimes, in an effort to rise above his depressive state, he uses alcohol and drugs, and very rarely, infidelity, to treat his depression, which invariably makes him even more depressed.

The problem of mid-life crisis, and the resulting deep depression, is almost always due to a man's career. But if he's using drugs, alcohol, or having an affair as a way to treat his depression, my first order of business is to rid him of these self-destructive measures, and then to treat the mid-life crisis. His short-sighted solutions are far more damaging to him than the problem itself.

Why isn't the issue of mid-life crisis mentioned more in my articles? Because it's a very rare cause of infidelity, but a very common excuse to avoid prompt action to end an affair.

Best wishes,
Willard F. Harley, Jr.