Shucking Oysters: Crisis Management
By Alex Allen
Is it really a crisis getting old? Traditionally, the midlife crisis for men is pretty cliché: you hit your 50s, realize you’re not young anymore, go buy a corvette, leave your significant other, and do something to prove you’re still young at heart. It’s really a mixed bag for everyone.
The term midlife was first coined by Canadian-born psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques in 1965. He described it as: “The compulsive attempts, in many men and women reaching middle age, to remain young, the hypochondriacal concern over health and appearance, the emergence of sexual promiscuity in order to prove youth and potency, the hollowness and lack of genuine enjoyment of life, and the frequency of religious concern, are familiar patterns. They are attempts at a race against time.”
The key to whether we experience a crisis in middle age I believe is really down to what we feel we are supposed to have achieved by this point, and what our potential can achieve later. If we feel we’ve reached the pinnacle of our lives now, the rest of it may very well look a bit bleak. But what if the best of us is yet to come?
Perhaps the most public midlife crisis is that of Jeff Bezos. The usual MO. Had an affair, left his wife, shaved his head, got pumped up, married a Boobtox queen and took up a few luxurious hobbies, like sailing and outer space. Aging with absurd wealth brings its own weird optics. As Zoe De Leon wrote, “The inhumanly smooth and shiny result of Bezos’ midlife re-brand isn’t ageless so much as surgically suspended. That’s because Bezos isn’t chasing timelessness – he’s buying time.” Another public midlife crisis: 58-year-old Keith Urban. Had an affair, walked away from his 19-year marriage to Nicole Kidman, fired his band of 25 years, and moved in with a 26-year-old rising country star. Meanwhile, 62-year-old Brad Pitt, now dating a 33-year-old said recently: “You get older, you get crankier, and comfort becomes more important. I think it’s as simple as that.”
Research suggests that “midlife” is more a state of mind than a specific age. We have crises at every stage of our lives, apparently. While the timeline for a midlife crisis is fuzzy, many people experience some level of restlessness, regret, or re-evaluation at some point in their lives. We’re not supposed to have it all figured out by midlife. It’s OK to change, to try something new, to want more. It’s not the end of something – it’s the beginning. It can be an opportunity to either panic about where we are or to pause and reflect.
For many, the crisis isn’t about staying young, it’s about a fear of the future. As most of us live longer, and chase our youth ever more frantically, the question of how to manage that “presumed midpoint” just becomes more urgent. Psychotherapist Frank Tallis and author of Wise: Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life says things begin to change when we “shift into a time when the goals are not quite so clear, when they have been achieved or clearly missed, and when mortality, in the form of aging bodies, dying parents, illness, becomes harder to ignore.” Everyone needs their methods of “terror management” – the problem arises when those methods are “too flimsy, too excessive, too narrow, or in some other way unfit for purpose.”
I haven’t left my partner, got a sports car, or started going to the gym yet. But I did get a sweet sailboat and jokingly called her my mistress. The irony is that my back and knee can’t handle climbing in and out and my hands are so compromised from wear and tear that I am challenged with doing anything on the boat. I wouldn’t call this a midlife crisis, but it’s painfully turning into that. My options are limited, but my inner child is not willing to let go – yet.
Most if not all of midlife crisis literature is on the male experience, but women experience it too. And it’s not menopause it seems, it’s taking a pause from men. “I lost 50 lbs, an alcoholic husband, got a new career, and stopped living for everyone else.” “For me it was 10 lbs, a narcissist husband, and took control back of my friendships and love of travel.” Where once women often stayed in unhappy marriages, more and more are walking away.
Society still tells women that essentially once they are no longer in the prime of their supposedly fertile years then they don’t matter anymore. In a podcast, Myths About Women in Midlife, Kara Loewentheil noted: “One of the things I hear middle aged women often say is that they feel invisible. Which is also just fascinating because it’s often based on things like I don’t get sexually harassed on the street by construction workers anymore. Which is like the idea that what we have done to women’s brains is teach them that being visible and valuable is indicated by being sexually harassed. And that if that’s not happening you are therefore invisible in a bad way.”
Research shows the traditional midlife crisis is largely a cultural myth. Only about 1 in 10 people experience anything resembling a true crisis, and studies indicate most adults actually experience increased happiness, stability, and emotional regulation in their 40s and 50s.
Trevor O’Hara of Interlude Cafe wrote that many psychologists now prefer terms like “midlife transition” or “midlife evaluation” to reflect the more balanced reality that aging brings. If we focus on the opportunities, midlife can become less about chasing our lost youth and more about reinventing ourselves. Forget the sports car; try pickle ball. It’s not a crisis it’s just a flippant excuse for impulsive behaviour.
