Midlife crisis support board
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Midlife crisis support board
| Tue, 02-24-2004 - 11:44am |
I notice that most of the people here (one or both partners) are either in their 30s or above ...classic timing for midlife crisis to begin...where you feel life is passing by...the worry that you may end up with the wrong person...the worry that you do not have the right person to grow old with....the worry about the things that you wanted to do in your life and you never did so the affair substitutes in as the replacement for the excitement that those life long dreams might have brought you...and yadda yadda....all the other classic midlife crisis symptoms.
Just a thought! Midlife crisis support board may be a better name for this place :-)
PG

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Just a thought which perchance throws a wrench in this. While I am certainly what would be considered mid-life in age, I don't think a crisis is the case necessarily for most on this board. I am quite successful and feel very fulfilled with most things in my life. Great kids and job, etc. Married someone I was not in love with but I had given up on love after losing high school sweetheart and my wife was a good woman who loved me. Now- I have come to realize that I cannot live without having certain emotional needs met: affection and passion between 2 people. Working at a soup kitchen or gliding most certainly will NOT fulfill this for me. While it may take my mind off of feeling lonely for a little while, sooner or later it creeps back up on you. I also think it is a possibility that mid-life crisis is just a catch all phrase that we throw around anymore when people decide to make life altering decisions. Lord forbid people actually decide to take risks in their 40's??? No crisis- I am doing my best to take care of my family but know that I can't live like this forever. I want to be with someone who returns affection and emotion who I can adore. I call this getting in touch with who I really am- something I consider a positive, not a crisis. Now granted, it does suck meeting the woman of my dreams while we are both married, but this too shall pass because we are both calm and considerate people.
JMHO
Edited 2/24/2004 1:53:54 PM ET by julietsfate
I am all for finding the right person to spend your life with but when for 5-15 years, that person that you were with seemed perfect and now everything seems wrong…that feeling needs to be looked at with greater detail.
JMHO
PG
Alas Philly- this is where your logic fails. If you took the time to carefully read most of these posts I don't think you'll find poor misguided souls who purport to have been in good solid relationships for the last how-many-ever years. Speaking for myself I honestly believed I could come to love the person I married. But the biggest lesson I have learned is- there is a difference between loving someone and being genuinely "in-love" with someone.
Take a look at omahamm's post- his counselor spoke to him of a pyramid- most likely referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Man has evolved quite a bit since there was a need for arranged marriages: to make sure that our daughter's security was guarenteed- a time when we believed that our children weren't able to make important decisions like marrying someone who was stable and secure- young people tend to run off with whoever strikes their fancy. Well we no longer live in a time where basic human needs like food and a roof over their heads matter. I have all my physical needs well met- I have provided for the physical basic needs of my family- a time has come where I am now looking for much higher needs- emotional ones. I believe a time has come where I am quite tired of providing for everyone else and would like some affection and touch.
You know there are also evolutionary studies among animals which show that the females of a species- when they are of breeding age- tend to be more attracted to mates that have dominant physical features. Males tend to be masculine, strong, with perfect genes. This is who the female breeds with to give birth to perfect children. However, females who are of caregiving age tend to settle down with more androgynous males for long term. Animals that are more likely to have a mate for life look for those more similiar to themselves and who have more feminine characteristics- emotion, caretaking, sensitive- even in physical form.
You must also be very very careful when spouting statistics to prove your case. Statistics can be a very tricky thing- you see someone has to actually admit to something in order for it to be a number. And more importantly, someone has to be asking the right question for it to be true. Example- expectant fathers are 5 to 6 times more likely- if 1% of fathers have affairs then 5 to 6 times is only 5 or 6%- not very convincing to me. Also, they are having affairs because of the sex factor? Really? It couldn't have anything to do with a multitude of other factors I suppose like feeling overwhelmed with the possibility of bringing a new life into this world? Better yet- that statistic you throw out doesn't even confirm that these men are married- did you know that 1 in 4 african-american women are single mothers? Here are quite a few expectant fathers, unmarried, who may be out with other partners- do I think it has anything to do with a mid-life crisis. I've got one for you that is a classic- did you know that when ice cream sales increase so do murders- with your examples I'd like to propose that ice cream causes murders.
Finally- cause I know I have really become a wind bag in this post LOL- honestly take a look at the posts here. Most people seem to be looking to fulfill a need that is not being met which they honestly have. They are with someone in an affair who makes them feel good about themselves, who gives them attention which they crave so desperately. Perhaps a society which feels individuals should settle for one partner for the rest of their life is very outdated- after all we can't expect one person to fulfill our needs and desires forever can we? Or perhaps we are meant to grow, to change and evolve. As such, our needs also change and evolve. And quite possibly not everyone is lucky enough to be married to someone as enlightened enough to evolve with us. I sincerely hope you manage to rationalize yourself into happiness with your husband- I really do. As for me I have decided I need more in this lifetime and my current partner has refused me these things- so I have made my decision to move on in life and find that which makes me happy and fulfilled. I can't live on wondering why there is such emptiness and void in only one aspect of my life- my relationship.
Hi PG,
I've never thought my EMA was a mid life crisis... hell! I'm going to live to 100!!! *lol* but I honestly believe that my EMA was partly 'the 7 year itch' which I've had once before... although that wasn't an affair thing... and also just that I finally grew up... and I knew what I wanted... or at least I had to find what I wanted.
I never think the world is passing me by... rather that I watch it go on by... now! I take part in it every single day.
luv and hugs
Sweet
Co-Community Leader My Affair Support
Email me
"Friends are quiet angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly"
"Happiness is like a butterfly, if pursued it is always out of our reach. However if we sit quietly, it comes and rests gently on our shoulder"
Sweet
Co-Community Leader My
To summarize, once you see a newer nifty car in the market you sure will find something missing in the one you are driving. Does it always mean something is wrong with the one you are driving? Probably not!
If one had entered the marriage for the right reasons (note the Ifs), if everything had been once fine, if you still feel that the spouse is a good person (although you “love” them and don’t feel “in love”) and if you don’t have very serious burning issues undermining your marriage, chances are that the marriage has a good chance to survive if one does think both sides of a pictures and maybe attribute the worries one feels around middle age to the particular mental and hormonal state one in. The burning hot passion that one feels with a newer person (remember we felt it with our spouses once) always settles down to a quietly burning (not that apparent to some) passion later on in life. That’s human psychology for the mind to adapt and not feel the newness any more. It will happen with your new love. Give it a few years and many rounds of house, car, kids and bill repairs. Maybe it wont be that bad since your middle age will already be behind you, the kids are not little, the house is already there and paid for, financial worries are passed through, yadda yadda, and thus so you won't be questioning everything so much.
Out to walk and get some fresh air.
PG
PS. Sorry for the smugness and generalizations if any of the board readers felt that way :)It was intentional.
Now I am going outside for a breath of FRESH air.
Thanks.
I too thought that the stats were a little off about expectant fathers who cheat. I always think that reports that use statistics for socio-cultural studies had a wide margin of error in them. Goes to prove that Mark Twain's " that there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics" in this category. LOL I am very careful of stats - because nobody gives you disclaimers on how wide the margin of error can be of what kind of data was being used. Good point!
Juliet
Edited 2/25/2004 10:44:56 AM ET by julietsfate
I'm not saying you don't have some valid points that apply to many people. I just think you're trying to fit us all into this one scenario and that isn't fair or accurate.
Example- the biggest one I hear thrown around all the time- how marriages from an affair fail 80% of the time. I have seen other websites claiming its a 90% fail rate and Dr. Phil recently claimed that its a 95% failure rate. Now just where are these people getting their facts from?? We certainly don't have to report to the government when we get married the circumstances leading up to that marriage, do we? No- these stats are coming from social workers and therapists who work with clients. Now do you think perhaps that it is possible individuals who are seeking out marriage counseling and therapy might be more likely to end up divorced??? Most couples don't seek out counseling when they are happy and satisfied! And to keep this all in persepctive- the government which actually keeps track of these things indicates the about 40% of first marriages end in divorce and second marriages overall end in divorce over 70% of the time.
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