Midlife crisis support board

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2004
Midlife crisis support board
53
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

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-14-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 11:18am
I find your analogy almost sad. Who would compare their choice of a partner to their choice of a vehicle. I understand what you're trying to imply, but the relationship between two human beings is far different from our desire to have a new vehicle. My problems with my W have nothing to do with her age or how she looks. They are about feelings and needs.

Also, regarding your second paragraph, you mention that the marriage has a "good chance to survive". In what form? Survive despite one person's needs being unmet? Survive for the sake of the children? My parents had difficulties when I was young and they stayed together "for the children". The result was my dad was horrible to be around and I never had a relationship with him at all until they finally divorced 15 years later. I think it would be great if all people who had difficulties could work through them. But the reality is sometimes people think they get married for the right reasons, but they didn't. We aren't always as smart as we think we are. In other words, not all marriages should survive. The key is to go to counseling and get to know the person you are and the person you want to be. It's unfortunate we can't all do this before getting married, but sometimes it takes years before we are mature and self-aware enough to recognize things about ourselves. But if the person you are and the person your spouse is aren't compatible, then odds are you should both try to move on. It isn't about "burning issues". Sometimes it is about the core of the relationship itself.

Again, I think the problem is you're generalizing in such a way that it is demeaning to all men and women who take themselves and their relationships seriously.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 11:30am
The middle life crisis term is somehow reserved for the 60 plus bald guy (with a paunch) driving the red Porsche or Mazda Miata. That impression is not true. It’s ordinary every day people like you and me who pass through it. Our parents are on the front line with the grandparents already dead in many cases. That worries us and many other things that I talked about.

I should also clarify the expectant father statistic. The survey was from a general population of fathers who had newborns or were expecting. The question was if they had considered cheating or had cheated when their SO was expecting (or later on when the baby was born) as opposed to the conditions before the baby was conceived. So the population remained the same. And yes not just because of the lack of sex thing but also because of all the other worries that go with it that the guys might have considered cheating or had cheated.

The funny thing is that if you observe hard enough you will observe a pattern among (most NOT all of) us who have considered an affair or are having affairs or had affairs but many chose to not analyze it and simply attribute it to a bad marriage. Another thing I notice is that many of us will ignore the obvious that, YES, I were once greatly in love with my spouse. Most will just say that “hey I was never in love”, “she was just a good woman’ or “he was just a good man”. Come on. Yours saying that is just like a 45 year old married woman who comes out of the closet after 4 kids and declares that she was a lesbian all along and even when she was 2, she could remember looking up the skirt of her teacher. Just blanking out the details doesn’t make the truth go away.

I am accused of oversimplifying but hey this is a message board (where people have short attention spans) and not some literary psychology site where everything needs to be accurately quantified :-)

Bad marriages exist but we do need to look at all the other factors in our life that is making us make a life-altering decision before taking a plunge.

Again IMHO :-)

PG

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 11:36am
Omahamm,

I totally understand what you are saying. I am not talking about couples who were not compatible from the start. I am mostly referring to marriages that were stable and happy all along (for many years) until when the people entered thier middle age (around mid 30s) and started questioning everything that happened before that and in most cases there was another person on the scene.

PG

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-14-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 11:40am
Again, I don't think you're presenting anything new. You seem to be just saying the same thing over and over again. If an argument is bad, repeating it won't make it better.

I WILL tell you that I was once in love with my W. I wouldn't have married her if I wasn't. But you should know that love is not enough to make a relationship work, not even close. It is entirely possible to fall in love with the wrong person. Especially if you're young and not aware of compatibility issues. And once you're in the relationship and things aren't so bad, you think you can live through it and maybe it will get better. But eventually, these things tend to come to the surface and then you either have to face them or continue to live your life unhappy. Love is not a cure all for a bad relationship. And believe me, I will go into my next relationship with my eyes wide open and recognizing what my needs are. As difficult as all of this is, at least I have learned from it and I know in my heart I'm a better person now. Take that for what it is worth.

I agree with you that people need to look carefully at their situation and make sure they're doing things for the right reasons. That is true in getting married as well as leaving a marriage. If anyone who is reading this is considering leaving their spouse and haven't gone through counseling and learned about themselves and their spouse, I urge you to reconsider. I almost did the same thing and although my instincts were right on, had I left without counseling, I know I would have questioned myself later. Now, not only am I validated in the problems I believed existed, I'm able to correct the parts of my own behavior that could jeopardize any future relationship.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 11:48am
In order to validate your particular situation you cant just say that an argument is bad.

JMO

PG

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-16-2003
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 11:51am
"I should also clarify the expectant father statistic. The survey was from a general population of fathers who had newborns or were expecting. The question was if they had considered cheating or had cheated when their SO was expecting (or later on when the baby was born) as opposed to the conditions before the baby was conceived. So the population remained the same."

Well could you clarify whether they were asked if they had cheated or they were considering cheating? Two are different things you know. Considering it might have been a whim or passing fancy. I don't know why they would formaulate such a question, you know because we will never know the exact truth.

Juliet

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 12:00pm
Juliet,

It was if "they had cheated" or if "they had considered cheating". Thats why the end result was that the same population during or after the baby was at a "higher risk of cheating" (note doesn't imply if they had cheated or not..just implies higher risk since both responses are grouped) as compared to the same population before the baby was conceived.

Again this is not a generalization, just a thought that something else may also be at play.

PG

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-16-2003
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 12:06pm
Still I think mixing the questions up into one group seems to be that whoever is doing the reasearch that they are little over-zealous to prove something. You are right, there might be something else in this report that we don't know of - who sponsored it and who intrepreted it..... JMHO

Also just bcoz its an A support board, doesn't mean you can't have some intelligent conversations. Its doesn't ALWAYS have to do with sex and enticing people away.


Edited 2/26/2004 10:59:39 AM ET by julietsfate

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 12:20pm
"Also just bcoz its an A support board, doesn't mean you can't have some intelligent conversations. Its doesn't ALWAYS have to do with *f***king* and enticing people away."

Hugs to you for that comment. Our neighbours on the betrayed spouses board sometimes call the people here a bunch of airheads. Now this could make them reconsider that opinion :)

I think this a type of support for people having or considering affairs because its not condemning them, just asking them to broaden the issues that they are looking at while considering cheating.

Also about the survey: I feel that they grouped the choice "had cheated/considered cheating" together since it appeared safe for the person to answer. Just imagine if it were separate who would feel comfortable answering such a question in case if somebody had actually cheated.

PG

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-14-2004
Wed, 02-25-2004 - 12:24pm
Well I believe I did present a valid argument. My argument doesn't mean yours doesn't apply to certain people. I just think you're making a mistake by making sweeping generalizations and implying they apply to "most" of the people on this board. Clearly your heart is in the right place and I think a lot of what you say does have validity in certain situations. It is more your wording I have a problem with. And frankly, I wasn't trying to validate my particular situation to you. I know my situation is valid.