Why do people often have a ‘mid-life crisis,’ and is it just a fancy way of saying they’ve hit a point where they finally realize they’ve been doing everything wrong?
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A lot of people already mentioned the “you realize you have fewer years left ahead part”, and although that’s a huge part of it, it’s a little more complicated than that.
What it really is is a *combination* of many events that leads to a person struggling with their own identity and a transition period of self reflection and questioning who they are. This *can* be advanced age, but also watching friends and family get sick, pass away, or leave their lives, being unable to relate to anything current and heavy feelings of nostalgia, feelings of lack of accomplishments in the person’s life, dissatisfaction or losing their career or partner, etc, or even simply your life not working out according to your plan (which can happen as early as a person’s 20’s.)
What follows is a literal psychological crisis where the person struggles with *who they even are* as a person anymore. Some try and fill it they way most are familiar with; trying to act “young” or fall back in things that brought them comfort in their youth. But others experiment with things they either never tried or would seem “out of character”, be it clothing, hobbies, sexuality, drugs, purchases, etc.
Not necessarily that they’ve been doing everything wrong. More so just they realized they’re not satisfied with their life.
They realize that they’re not happy where they are and what they’re doing so they either get depressive (stop doing things, destructive behavior like obsessive drinking etc) or they do things they think will make them happy (buying fancy things, divorcing and remarrying young, affairs, etc).
It’s called a midlife crisis because it’s usually around 40 that they start realizing they’re not happy
It’s funny. When I was young and careless, I leaned into challenging death all the time. Stupidly. But almost irresistibly.
Now that I’m older, I’d never get on a motorcycle. Are you kidding? When I push myself really hard, physically, I’ll take a minute and rest rather than push to exhaustion. I am far, far, less inclined to fight if challenged.
Counter-intuitive. You’d think when you’re young, you have so much ahead of you, so you wouldn’t be so quick to constantly play chicken with death and injury.
When you’re at middle-age, you do take stock of a lot of life experience. You’ve experienced the range of emotions. (Usually.) You’ve been hired, fired, promoted, jaded, loved, lost, been fooled, got smart, and see things others don’t. Changes perspective.
It’s unique to each person, but the common them of these comments is the main piece: you realize your time to live is finite.
But also personally I feel the opposite of what usually seems to be the reaction of men my age. It seems like many men having a MLC have careers, money, and a divorce or 2. They realize they’re stressed out and wanna bang younger women.
So they change careers, get a sports car to compensate for not feeling as attractive to younger women, etc.
But I’m the opposite in some ways. Never had a great career, and don’t have much money now. Hooked up with plenty of young women, and now want to get married. Don’t need a sports car.
However I definitely realize I’ve got maybe 25 more years to live if I’m lucky, and the previous 10 flew by. I want to physically do things and have adventures while I still have the health. I want to have a real career and see what it’s like to make a bigger contribution, and hopefully make some bank.
So it’s different for everyone, but yes you realize you’re getting closer to when your health fades or you reach your expiration date. And other things like personal expectations of where you should be in life, feeling less sexually attractive, and so on and it gets interesting.
I think I had this but whether it’s a “crisis” depends on how you respond. Someone said something to me a few years before I really hit the “mid life crisis” that helped me when I did get to it…
When I was in my early/mid 30’s I was considering a drastic career change- walking away from what I went to college for and starting my own business. I was talking to my dad about it one day and said something like “They say most people quit only a year or two and those who do succeed take at least 5 years to get any stability. So by the time I have a real business I’ll be 40.” And he said, “You’re going to be 40 either way.” That perspective changed how I did everything. It made me see that it’s not too late for what I really want to do even though time is going to keep moving forward and I’m going to keep getting older. You get one go-around on this life so do it how you want. You don’t have forever. When you’re 40, 50, 60, 70, you’re going to have the life you chose, so choose what you WANT. Take (smart/well balanced) risks, and go fucking get it.
Dad was right. I did turn 40. And by that time, I had a successful business doing something that I truly love doing. I had also gotten much healthier, made some better financial decisions, and got rid of a lot of dead weight in my life, including some people who were a negative influence. To people on the outside watching me, it probably looked like a mid life crisis. It felt like more of an awakening than a crisis.
I think what happens to a lot of people in mid life is they realize that they’ve been marking time waiting for “later” and suddenly “later” is fucking here and they could’ve been doing more of what they wanted all along.
I think sometimes it’s realizing you haven’t done what you want to in life and are starting to run out of time, and it’s maybe too late to make certain choices over again.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you think you’ve been doing it wrong. I feel some midlife fear because even though I love what I do, I also wish I had more time to explore a lot of other paths in life. It’s just sad to realize how limited our time is
1: you realize how old you are
2: you see people younger than you doing better than you
3: you feel like your life has been wasted by doing something for a long time (dead end job)
4: you start spending money that you don’t have and try to make yourself young or attempt to make up for lost time
Overall, people hit midlife crisis when they feel like they are near the end of their life, and have done nothing to show for it
I turned 40 last year and found out why. You realize you are no longer young and that if 40 came this fast, soon it’ll be 60, then 70, and people die at that age, and what if I get cancer or some other fatal disease before then, like that girl Stephanie I used to work with who died suddenly of a heart attack, or my high school friend Katie who didn’t even make it to 40 because of cancer?!?! It’s very scary.
I tried to mentally prepare the entire year I was 39, but I’m still struggling with turning 40, and I turn 41 in a month!
I think it’s something you don’t really understand until you get to that age. I know I didn’t.
There are many phases of life-crisises for some people.
Some get them earyl in their twenties when they realize, they aren’t young anymore and can’t connect to young teenagers or young twens. Or when the everyday’s life hits with working, realizing it is sunday noon, and the weekend is over. another life-crisis is, people getting older, energy gets lower, hair recedes, people aren’T that much horny anymore, the everyday morning wood becomes and once a week morning wood. another life change is, the own kids move out of the house, and now those people have a lot of time and don’t know what to do.
I think it’s a point where you realize you’re getting old and fight some weird fight to retain whatever you associate with youth. It’s quite a sad time.
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