The Surprising Shape Of My Midlife Crisis
Some Personal News
When I think “midlife crisis,” I, like many, have been primed to think of men who may or may not be googling “hair loss remedies” and may or may not be in the process of trading in their sensible station wagon for something red and topless.
This is the tired cliché most of us have grown up with. Man hits 40. Man gets bored. Man cheats on wife and buys a shiny new toy.
And listen, there’s nothing hard to understand about the midlife crisis, as you’ll see when you review my completely biased, wholly unscientific assessment of life stages.
Childhood: ideally a free-for-all in which anything is possible but you’re too absorbed with yourself to even think about the future. The easiest time to live in the present.
Adolescence: Portrait Of An Id On Fire.
Young Adulthood: a time of peak delusion and illusion. Everything is possible! Everything is tragic! The world is your oyster! The world is a dumpster fire! You’ve made no choices that might permanently alter the shape of subsequent choices but definitely don’t understand that yet when you melt down over being fired from a random temp job at CourtTV!
Adulthood: CHOICES WILL BE MADE.
Early thirties - early forties: Choices will be dealt with.
40-50: Holy shit, I’ve made all the CHOICES and now I’m on a train it would be extraordinarily difficult to disembark and IS THIS ALL THERE IS?
50-death: a heady nirvana of self-acceptance, self-knowledge, wisdom, and awareness. A GIRL CAN DREAM, FRIENDS.
It should be noted that most midlife crisis lore centers the MAN’S crisis, which is funny to me when most 40-something men I know seem almost preternaturally comfortable. On the other hand, people with uteruses undergo an actual second adolescence during midlife - physically, mentally, emotionally, psychically. Hello night sweats and illusions of lion king grandeur. Hello ALL OF THIS.
Anecdotally, almost every woman my age is experiencing her own come to jesus moment. Whether it’s sexual, romantic, or work-related, we’re all looking at our remaining years and asking ourselves how we can (IF we can) taste any sort of thrill, adrenaline, surprise, or awakening now that so many big milestones have been experienced. We’re talking about how it’s bullshit that biology pressures so many women to make The Big Choices (romantic partner if applicable, children if applicable, community, lifestyle, geographical location, job) when we’re still not fully cooked as humans. We’re talking about how we didn’t even know which kind of sex was most likely to result in [our] orgasms at 25. We’re talking about paths not taken, we’re talking about so many of our best years being devoted to service of others. Employers, romantic partners, aging parents, um hi, CHILDREN.
It’s no surprise that so many women divorce during this stage of life, nor is it a surprise that so many women explore infidelity or non-monogamy. We know ourselves so much better than we did at 26 or even 30, and it makes sense that we want to live according to that hard-won self-knowledge. To me, the woman’s midlife crisis stems far less from nebulous yearning for some sort of frothy newness and more from simple logic. We should see a woman taking a pottery class or swiping through Feeld when we google “midlife crisis.” Not this guy.
My midlife crisis, on the other hand, is not something anyone could reasonably describe as logical.