This post is from another site - the link is below:
http://fortysixty.invisionzone.com/It was very appropo for my situation and perhaps the situation other readers find themselves in...
"It isn’t enough!"
He says: “We have the house, two cars, the summer place, and all of this but I’m not happy and I haven’t been for the past two years. I need my space. I feel trapped. I want to get away. My job sucks and it has for a while; I feel like I’m at a dead end and I feel crowded in with our marriage…” Hang on women you are in for one ****** of a ride!
This man is primed for a mid-course correction and it is going to take some time.
We receive letters daily from wives of these men that have visited
www.fortysixty.org and have not joined the Forum, seeking some kind of help so that they can help their husbands. Nearly all of these letters end with the question: ”what can I do? If I feel that the person may be open to some dialogue I will ask if they meant “what can I do for him?” or if they meant “what can I do for me?”. The correct question is the latter but I often suspect they have meant the former.
So, what can you do for him?
The quick answer to that question is “absolutely nothing”.
Wives tend to want to “fix it”; but this cannot be fixed by a wife of a man in mid-course correction or by anyone else for that matter. He must face this alone.
What would happen if I just frankly spoke the truth?
If I was in your living room right now and had your earnest attention and was free to speak my heart into your heart, what would I say?
If you can bear my honest answer then read on.
If you don’t feel that you are ready then hit your “back button” and visit another thread.
Does this seem reasonable to you?
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Okay, I assume that anyone reading from this point on is “with me” on this. Here is my heart-to-heart:
When your husband outlines to you what I wrote in my opening paragraph or variations of the same – you are now in your own crisis at midlife. I don’t believe so much that only a man enters a midlife crisis but rather that a couple enter a midlife crisis. Many of the women who have dared to examine themselves through the MLC Quiz on our website will find that suddenly they appear to score high themselves in the results. Many, many wives report that “I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t do anything to deserve this, and now I’m hurting and in all of this pain”. Dear One, he has said the same thing but he never vocalized it to you. His “sudden” slide into midlife crisis has triggered your own of a different sort. Hear me out …
What we know as male midlife crisis is really a mid-course correction for men. Daniel Levinson describes three essential tasks for men at midlife that begin with his Reappraisal of his life to date along with his choices with an eye to the future. Mixed into this reappraisal is the testing of these choices and the establishing of new ones that will survive the second half of life. The questions that he might ask are nearly the same as a young man following puberty:
1. Where will I live?
• How has my choice of location affected my life and should it change?
• Is this home a good choice for our future or has it been the thing that binds me in this career? Oddly enough many men renovate, build, or purchase a new home prior to the above speech.
2. What about my job; my career?
• Is this what I want to be doing 15 years from now?
• Am I happy in my work?
• I feel trapped in this hamster wheel; what if I had the freedom to change jobs?
• What would I do if I could make new job choices just for me right now?
3. What about my marriage?
• Will I stay married?
• What if I had a different partner?
• What factors about our marriage affect the way I feel right now?
• Is she my soul mate? The only one for me?
• Will I be happy the rest of my life in this marriage?
• Will I regret my marriage choice when I’m 65 years old?
Do you see what I’m getting at? A midlife crisis is a time of midcourse correction where he will test these former decisions in the light of how he feels now and in view of his future. Tell me, how many of these same questions have you been forced to address in recent days for yourself?
Let’s talk about hormones.
The sullen reality for a man in midlife is the decline of serum testosterone in his body that has encountered a sharper drop around age 40 – 50 and has triggered the mood feelings that he has never encountered before along with its corresponding male depression. I have always said that what we call midlife crisis is really a euphemism for midlife male depression and more so the antidotes we employ to assuage it. Thus if we could write this into an equation it could appear something like this:
----- > 40ish ---- > andropause ---- > depression ---- > midlife transition ----- >
What of your own hormones? You too have needed to deal with the hormone changes at midlife.
Can we agree to some measure then that you too are in a crisis at midlife?
My frank advise:
• Address the same top three life decisions that he is facing for you – Where will I live? What about my job? (Financial future). What of my marriage; will I remain married?
• Begin immediately to plan your life as though he were not in your future.
• Detach. He wants his space and will find one way or another to get it. Don’t resist it at the expense of your own well being. Begin now to reinvent yourself in view of your own independence.
• If he commits adultery and is engaged in the life of another woman contact an attorney and initiate divorce proceedings without delay. Secure your marital property, retirement funds, savings, and finances by court order. Do not wait until these have all dried away with his midlife foray. Lavish spending is an earmark of men in midlife crisis.
• Become self sufficient. Train now for job reentry if you have not been employed outside of the home. Find work to supplement your income. Prepare your future as though he will never again be in it.
• Become involved and not only a reader of the FortySixty Forum. One needs only to follow the postings of those that have been posting here most frequently to acknowledge the difference in their lives. The support in both the forums and private messaging and mentoring is second to none in the world; believe me, I have looked. Your silence creates an emotional trap of its own; you need to voice your feelings and your growth – do it here, do it now, do not delay.
Does this mean that you give up hope for him and your marriage? No!
It means that you have capitalized on the most adverse trial of your life.
My research indicates that the average duration of a midlife crisis is presently standing at between four and five years - at the outsides as little as two weeks and as long as ten years. By doing the above you preserve and better not only your self but preserve the potential physical structure of the marriage. We do not need to recite case histories of waste and mismanagement of the finances of men in midlife crisis; there is volumes already written. When he reaches up from the bottom of life one of you will be well positioned to avoid making this the restart point of rebuilding your marriage. I’m not asking you to take this responsibility on but rather suggesting it as a pragmatic approach to holding on to hope.
Thank you for inviting me into your living room today that we might be honest and talk. And isn’t this a lot better than just crudely saying as others might “He’s gone, its over, get over it and get on with your life”.
So tell me how you feel right now about this.
Newman
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It’s about Putting Yourself at Risk
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly . . . who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.
— Teddy Roosevelt