A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘mid-life crisis’
We’ve all heard of a man having a “mid-life crisis” during which he does things like buy a sports car and try to look and act younger in an (ultimately futile) effort to stave off feeling like an old man. This happens to middle-aged men all the time, but lately there is a new phenomenon that affects women who are in mid-life: the Walkaway-Wife Syndrome. I have been seeing more of this recently in my marriage counseling practice. (The term “Walkaway-Wife Syndrome” was coined by Michelle Weiner-Davis.)
Walkaway Wives usually initiate divorce within a year or two of the youngest child’s graduation from high school, when the home has become an “empty nest.”
Remember that during the early years of a marriage, the wife is typically the primary caretaker of the relationship. As the years go on, if she is unhappy, and her husband is unresponse to her concerns, she may eventually give up on the relationship and “check out” emotionally. However, she keeps this decision a secret because she wants to hold on until all of the kids have left home.
Then one day, “D-Day” in a way, she tells her husband that she wants a divorce. He is taken by surprise: “I had no idea you were unhappy. Why didn’t you tell me?” In fact, she had told him many times, but eventually gave up because he was unresponsive.
At this point, a lot of men will spring into action in an attempt to save the marriage. He’ll get in shape, losing weight and going to the gym. He’ll start to go church. He’ll read relationship books. He becomes very attentive and responsive to his wife for the first time in years.
Now the wife has a dilemma. Are these changes genuine, and will they last? Or will her husband go back to his old ways once she decides to stay in the marriage?
This is a very delicate time in the relationship, and marriage counseling can help the couple navigate through it.
Many couples don’t talk much about their goals. Well, maybe they have a goal to own their own their home or the desire to retire by a certain age. But beyond that, people seem to be so busy with daily life: job, kids, chores, and paying bills that they feel like they don’t have time to think about their goals. Yet, these are the marriages that can be at risk when their kids leave home and the nest is empty.
So, how to avoid the empty-nest crisis? One good method is for you and your spouse to cultivate a deeper sense of shared meaning. In other words: what are you two of you about? What’s your parable? Do you have goals as a couple?
Those of you in business, I’m sure, know about writing a business plan. A business plan describes a company’s goals and expected course of action for some time period, perhaps over the next few years. You usually need to show your business plan to investors or to lenders. I say that if this kind of planning ahead is such a good idea in business, why not apply it to your personal life too? Why not sit down with your spouse and write a marriage plan, or maybe a family plan? You’ve just given yourselves a new shared meaning. And as you work to achieve those goals, you start to feel more like a team then just two individuals.
Some marriages of couples in their 40s or 50s are in trouble, and the couple is in marriage therapy, because the husband is having a “mid-life crisis.” But what does that term mean, exactly? It’s usually thought of as the man realizing that he is in the second half of his life, that he is not going to live forever after all, and that he’s not going to be rich and famous like he always dreamt he would be. Supposedly the guy wakes up one day and asks himself, “Is that all there is?” And then he goes out and has an affair with his 25 year-old secretary in an attempt to make himself feel young again.
But does the midlife crisis really exist? Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist who writes a column in The New York Times, wonders if it might just be a handy excuse for the impulsive behaviors of a middle-aged narcissist. Friedman writes,
…you have to admit that “I’m having a midlife crisis” sounds a lot better than “I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.”
As a marriage therapist who sees men in self-declared midlife crises, I’m a bit skeptical about the ”crisis” being an actual emotional condition. I fear that it tends be used as an excuse for behavior that should be inexcusable.
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