The Roots of Midlife Crisis

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-real-roots-of-midlife-crisis/382235/?single_page=true

by evilsimon • 12 years ago

81 63 12 years ago

ilaksh3• 12 years ago

Basically "midlife crisis" is a way for people who are married with families to put down anyone having more fun or experiencing more freedom than them.

byEngineer2• 12 years ago

I'm married with family. It is something else: You need to turn yourself into a corporate-or-other slave to pay off the mortgage, cars, save for kids' schools, etc.

Absolutely no wonder that in "poor" countries they are happier. Living in constant stress about the job, with huge financial obligation, not even seeing your kids and spouse except for weekends and a week vacation a year -- compare this to my parents generation in communistic (then) Poland -- no debt, guaranteed jobs, free housing. Economically speaking yes this doesn't make sense. Psychologically - why they are looking (in the article above) in all the wrong places for explanations when it is so obvious.

dominotw2• 12 years ago

Absolutely no wonder that in "poor" countries they are happier.

what?

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

compare this to my parents generation in communistic (then) Poland -- no debt, guaranteed jobs, free housing.

Do your parents tell you how much they miss that? My parents aren't from Soviet-era Poland, but I've never heard a citizen of the Soviet Bloc wax nostalgic about their time there.

roel_v• 12 years ago

Yeah, that's why people are flocking to communist countries, to the point where the commies have to build walls to keep people from coming in. Oh wait no, it seems those wall are to keep people in, you know, just so they don't accidentally wander off out of utopia.

cryoshon• 12 years ago

Yeah, the whole "selling the vast majority of your life's time to something that doesn't matter" rings hollow very quickly.

The worst part is that some people don't see that there's any other way.

melling2• 12 years ago

What about people who aren't married and don't have kids? HN has way too many people who absolutely know something, and who are completely wrong.

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

I actually sometimes feel bad for people who for whatever reason don't end up having children. It may seem like the rational choice in the beginning but I wouldn't underestimate the long term upside.

ilaksh3• 12 years ago

I didn't say they didn't have children themselves. Someone married with children is actually more likely to be accused by their married friends of having a 'midlife crisis' if their friends see them having more fun than them (for example buying a sportscar).

CmonDev• 12 years ago

I feel bad for single parents. And couples with kids born unhealthy. Or good parents with kids gone bad. In the end of the day life can be a lottery.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

Feeling dissatisfied or frustrated with one's own life isn't equivalent to putting down those of other people's. You seem to have misunderstood the term 'midlife crisis'.

ilaksh3• 12 years ago

You seem to have misunderstood English. That's not what I said.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

I think there is an element in there about realizing ones mortality and vulnerability. In younger years there is a mentality of "I have an infinite amount of time left" and I can do whatever I want.

Later in years, a realization of one's mortality (an emotional/personal one, not just a theoretical understanding). Coupled with signs of an ageing body -- fractures take longer to heal, chronic diseases start to poke their head, etc.

mturmon3• 12 years ago

I agree, and I'd like to follow up on finitude.

No matter how successful you are, how much you figured out what you wanted and how well you did it -- there will be something within the sphere you've committed to that is left untried. Eventually it sinks in that some of those somethings will always be left undone. There will be no time for them. This feels like a loss, and letting go is hard.

One other side to this, even within our chosen area(s) of interest that we have worked hard on: Unless we are very unimaginative, we all ultimately must fail, despite many successes. As this sinks in, letting go is hard.

csommers• 12 years ago

On the flip-side, I find that "letting go" aspect to be somewhat...freeing.

Being able to acknowledge that there are things you won't be able to address in this lifetime is reassuring to me, as it allows me to focus more on the things that "immediately" matter.

guylhem• 12 years ago

TLDR : "the age U-shape in life satisfaction is driven by unmet aspirations that are painfully felt during midlife but beneficially abandoned and felt with less regret during old age"

Basically, most people hope they will do great, but instead fail miserably in their expectations and finally even let go of the hope.

Thoreau said 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.'. Apparently, this is wrong, as this would suggest even the song leaves them.

They live a life of quiet despair, then forget their dreams and - boom - happiness! Ignorance must really be bliss.

As another commenter said, "Basically "midlife crisis" is a way for people who are married with families to put down anyone having more fun or experiencing more freedom than them."

Agreed. I plan to have fun without encombering myself with things that would reduce my freedom (and I'm sure a lot of people will hate that and say that's not responsible, etc)

Doing without kids will be a good start, so that the life/energy/money is invested on my projects intead of another biologically related person.

EDIT: I'm not bitter, I just want to avoid a potential problem by making adjustments. I would consider giving up on my hopes and my dreams a much more serious issue that trying to adapt myself to a problem

jayvanguard• 12 years ago

Wow, you actually sound bitter towards the fact that people on average get happier later in life.

bigtunacan• 12 years ago

I was thinking this as well. Parent also sounds like they are bitter about not having children while trying to simultaneously dismiss them as a burden.

rsl7• 12 years ago

good luck with that.

melling2• 12 years ago

How old are you? People's views do change.

“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”

― Muhammad Ali

elpachuco• 12 years ago

So if I thought that at 20 religion was a farce and I still think that at 50, have I wasted my life. In the mean time I have learned and discovered lots about the universe. Have I still wasted my life. And also, I still dislike having kids the same as when I was 20 as I do now that I'm 50.

I guess I wan't to know what point are you exactly trying to make? People may never change their mind about having kids and yet still may grow and enjoy life immensely. Who are YOU to judge me?

mturmon3• 12 years ago

"I plan to have fun without encombering myself with things that would reduce my freedom"

Be careful with that. It sounds like an objective function heavily weighted toward one particular conception of one value ("freedom") among many. It might be smart to diversify your portfolio.

conanbatt• 12 years ago

Deciding not to have kids to get more freedom is an oxymoron. You are just saying you are not free to have kids and pursue other ventures.

projectileboy• 12 years ago

FWIW, I'm married with three kids and I really like my wife and kids. I certainly don't think it's for everyone, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand on the assumption that everyone who has a family is miserable (although I admit I may be an outlier...?). I say this only because you might deprive yourself of something you may enjoy.

heygiraffe2• 12 years ago

I believe studies have generally shown married men, on the whole, to be happier than unmarried men. I'm not sure about women, nor about how children affect things.

Regardless, you are not an outlier. Huge numbers of people with families are happy about it. It's fashionable for men in their 20s to talk about marriage entirely in terms of loss of freedom, but that doesn't mean their ideas are in accord with reality.

dominotw2• 12 years ago

Articles on 'happiness' are a staple on HN. We see Western fixations – such as obsessive individualism, technological fanaticism, and economic intoxication – as the height of human progress. Analyze everything with the scientific method regardless of the problem at hand( Mapping happiness to curves and parabolas. really?).

We have tuned our minds into advanced scientific grooves but have an underdeveloped psychological mind unable to grasp its own misery. Its like riding on chariot drawn by mismatched horses.

deeviant2• 12 years ago

So what are you suggesting?

Contemplative meditation?

Spirituality?

Religion?

All these may or may not increase happiness, but they certainly to not increase one's closeness to the truth that is reality, although they certainly seem to have the effect of making some people feel like they are closer to the truth. But if these things do uncover truth, why does there seem to be so many difference versions of the truth?

As for my thoughts on the matter, people get overwhelmed by reality, and that's OK. Life is such a harsh and stark thing at times no one can be blamed for feeling the weight of a limited existence.

kirse2• 12 years ago

they certainly to not increase one's closeness to the truth that is reality

I have to admit, I'm impressed you have this level of confidence in such a fantastically deep and generalized assumption. Even more interesting is how you rationalize your assumption by stating that those who have derived truth about reality from spirituality or religion are just feeling it to be true.

I'd at least appreciate your vastly superior insight on various topics such as love, justice, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, gratitude, contentment, etc. I never took a science class on those subjects, and I fear that I may just be feeling closer to the truth on those matters.

drcomputer• 12 years ago

We have tuned our minds into advanced scientific grooves but have an underdeveloped psychological mind unable to grasp its own misery

Nah, it's just one side of a coin. Underneath the sophisticated abstraction, lay a deep and profound sadness. Sounds beautifully poetic, doesn't it?

mikeash2• 12 years ago

What's wrong with applying the scientific method to happiness? It's the best technique available for figuring stuff out. Do you have a better idea?

toyg• 12 years ago

Yes he does, but he won't write it because he knows he'll be laughed out of the room. I bet it's God or something equivalent.

cdoxsey• 12 years ago

It's the paradox of happiness. Pursuing happiness as your goal in life is the one sure-fire way never to achieve it.

More than that, the cold, calculating, statistical logic of a utilitarian hedonism that you see so much of in a "scientific" approach to happiness, fails to account of the difference between kinds of happiness: Is it better to be a pig satisfied or a Socrates dissatisfied?

Scientism is what transforms a beautiful piece of music into lifeless vibration frequencies. There's more to reality than what a mere scientific description can tell you.

michaelchisari• 12 years ago

'Cause before you know it, it's done. Nothin' but babies and memories. You hear me? Babies and memories. Smile, sweetheart. Give us a smile. Say "Mojo." Say "Mojo." - Friday Night Lights

I wonder how much of the concept of a "Mid-Life Crisis" is based on economic stability. You used to be able to get out of high school, get a good union factory job, get married, have kids, buy a house, all before you were 30. Then, at some point, you have some kind of existential question of whether having followed the script was the right thing to do. The whole counter-culture of the 60's and literature like Revolutionary Road approach this idea.

Nowadays, though, you come out with a Masters degree, and work retail. You switch jobs four times in two years. You don't get married until you're 35, if ever. You have kids, maybe. You see much more of the world, whether through the internet, or necessity.

It would seem, if there's any sort of crisis these days, it's about realizing that you'll never have the kind of stability and predictability that the generations that experienced a midlife crisis had en masse.

dgacmu• 12 years ago

Nah - that's why it's interesting that the article focused on a tenured professor. Speaking as one of the same, I can confirm: Stability does not equate to subjective perception of happiness. I know a lot of profs who've _left_ guaranteed, stable, tenured jobs to run off to industry within a few years of getting tenure. (Ok, so they all went to a startup or to Google, but still: They gave up security with a very reasonable, if not industry-equivalent, income.)

Retra2• 12 years ago

I've had some problems with security in happiness: I generally feel like that security is just idling -- that the stuff I _really_ want to do if being inhibited by the drudgery I have to do to have security.

I don't want a stable job unless it feels like an adventure and we make _progress_, not products. That's a feeling I get out of school, not out of work.

johngalt2• 12 years ago

A midlife crisis is simply when all your 'someday' bills are due. Someday I'll go back to school and get my masters, someday I will move to X place I'd prefer to live at, someday I will visit my old friends or relative, someday I will take the time to spend with my kids. All the things you promise yourself to get through the workday.

Then in the span of about 5 years, those options all close at once. Too old to meaningfully start over in a different career, roots down in the area you live, the relative you always meant to talk to now has dementia, you long ago missed the chance to read one last bed time story to your kids.

Someday never happens. Guard against desire. Don't make promises to yourself you can't keep.

GuiA• 12 years ago

This sounds spot on. At 25, I find myself thinking these thoughts. Someday I'll finish this project. Someday I'll take this trip. Someday I'll spend a full week at my grandparents.

And I'm realizing, as you aptly said, that the mere act of telling yourself "someday" is enough to comfort you that it will happen, that you shouldn't worry about it, until it's too late.

My grandfather fought in WW2 in the French resistance, leaving his family at the age of 17 to live in the wilderness for 3 years, stealthily blowing up Nazi trains and doing various things like that. He got a fairly prestigious military decoration for it at the end of the war. He never really talked about it when we were kids though - he probably wanted to keep us blissfully ignorant.

For about 2 years, my cousin and I talked of taking a few days to sit down, ask him questions about it, get him to share his story - and film the whole thing and produce a short oral history documentary out of it. We kept putting it off because I live in the US, she lives in Switzerland, my grandpa lives in France, and occasions were rare.

Then he died last February. Despite a few surgeries, he was in fairly good health at 88 (still drove around, gardened, fixed stuff around the house, etc.). On a Monday morning he felt unwell, on the Wednesday morning he was gone.

I'm trying to minimize those "somedays" now so they don't hit me in the face 100x when I'm 45. And yet it's always so easy to just say "someday".

LordKano• 12 years ago

I had what can best be described as a pre-midlife crisis. The summer before I turned 30, I was in a relationship in which I was not happy, my career had stagnated and my younger sister had just graduated from college.

It felt like someone lit a fire under me. I went back to college, changed my career trajectory and ended the relationship. I spent 6 of the next seven years in college. I picked up two AS degrees, a BS degree and an MS degree. I roughly tripled my income, I enjoy my job and I'm now engaged with three children.

"Someday" can happen but only if you make it happen. Don't wait for it, figure out what you need to do to make it happen and then do that. For me, the big incentive to get out there and make it happen was my angst over that digit on the left changing.

heygiraffe2• 12 years ago

A midlife crisis is simply when all your 'someday' bills are due.

I'm sure that's an important component of it. But it is not the whole story.

For example, incidence of clinical depression peaks in the late 40s. This page has a graph:

http://www.medicographia.com/2010/10/the-timing-of-depressio...

(I've seen more detailed graphs, but I can't find any right now.)

Also, I read about a study that showed that predictions of husbands having extramarital affairs could be made more accurately based on the age of the wife than on the age of the husband. The authors hypothesized that husbands looking elsewhere for sex, was, in part, a natural response to the wife going through menopause. (I can't find the study now.)

DennisP• 12 years ago

That's partly it. Sometimes another part is that you find yourself with the ability to do those things you wanted to do someday.

I always feel a bit sorry for guys in this age bracket who buy expensive sports cars, only to hear everybody call it a midlife crisis. Maybe they wanted a car like that since they were 18, and just couldn't afford it until now.

Personally I'm 48 and just resigned from my comfortable, well-paying job to spend a year on my own trying to build my own variation of Xanadu. Maybe it's a midlife crisis. But it's something I've wanted to do for over a decade, and I didn't feel financially comfortable doing it until now.

But at the same time, in the back of my mind I'm also thinking that if I don't do it soon, I won't ever do it, and I'll always wonder what might have been.

There's an alternative to guarding against desire because someday never happens, and that's to make it happen. Read that bedtime story, talk to that relative, get that masters, do that startup.

judk3• 12 years ago

Buying expensive toys is adults acting like spoiled children.

pasbesoin• 12 years ago

Things also start changing physically (physiognomy), for men as well as women.

Believe older people when they suggest you do some things before this happens.

And, make your own physical health a primary personal priority, to help minimize its impact.

Too many people and places will, directly or indirectly, try to get you to place them first (at a corresponding expense/detriment to yourself and your own health). This is a slippery slope.

IndianAstronaut• 12 years ago

I try not to waste my time on the trivial. Watching some random tv show or article. But I do make an effort to hang out with friends and family and other meaningful things.

judk3• 12 years ago

Trivial activity with family is always better than trivial things on your own?

judk3• 12 years ago

How is that all in a span of 5 years? Life is an ongoing series of psychological crises.

johngalt2• 12 years ago

Life is an ongoing series of psychological crises.

Exactly. Commonly we tell ourselves things to get through them. "I have to work late and miss johnny's soccer game; but someday I'll leave this crappy job and do better."

How is that all in a span of 5 years?

In your late 40s, your children are probably approaching independence while your parents are getting hit by senescence. Your career has peaked and meaningful progress in another field is unlikely. Obviously not everyone is the same, but it's statistically common for things to happen along a certain schedule.

Experiencing a mid-life crisis is realizing two things simultaneously:

1. Large parts of your life/identity are over or changed permanently.

2. Loss of the ability to use the 'someday I'll do this right' as a tool to get through the day.

A large psychological crisis combined with a removal of your normal method of coping.

jmgtan• 12 years ago

This is spot on! While I don't have problems financially, but I feel very much unfulfilled with my day job working as an architect for a big enterprise software company.

Right now I do a lot of side jobs (architecture consulting) to get my creative juices flowing and keep me updated, and I always dreamed of starting my own boutique consulting company. I always say someday this someday that. It's hard to take that first step.

Unfortunately, I don't have the answer, and just last week I closed another side project (which made me happy because their problem was very interesting), on the other hand, office politics is really stressing me out.

b_emery• 12 years ago

Being in my early 40's a lot of this article resonates with my thinking as it was a few months ago. The piling up of setbacks, aches, the 'is this all there is?'. One day, I was on the porch, trying to wrestle my kids into the car, and a neighbor, in his 80's, health conditions (who was walking laps around the neighborhood for exercise), asked me how I was doing. I said 'surviving'.

"Surviving?" he said, "you're living!" with a raised fist.

Seeing myself through the eyes of someone much closer to the end has given me some very valuable perspective. Sometimes I think of myself as an 80 yr old man, and think about what it will be like. Makes me pretty damn glad to be alive now, and pretty appreciative of what I do have. Crisis averted.

kelukelugames• 12 years ago

Turned 31 a few days ago. Hair has been falling out steadily, when does it stop?

christiangenco• 12 years ago

When it's gone.

fizixer• 12 years ago

Okay I haven't read the article but I don't need to. I can tell you in pure and simple terms what midlife crisis is:

It's the time when we confront, what I like to call, the reality of biology.

That it's all downhill from that point onwards no matter what we do. Every birthday is in reality a 'sadder' birthday instead of a happy one, although we never put it that way because for us first-world denizens, political correctness is the utmost virtue. It's our "all the king's men" moment! All your riches, your amazing family and friends, your lifetime of successes are sooner or later going down the drain for you and there's no way out. And this is after you already had gotten used to the idea that you're not "young" anymore, a realization for which you paid a heavy emotional and psychological price and then told yourself "it's going to be fine from now on".

And some of the typical reactions to the crisis are easily explained away if you think this way. Either you conclude about the meaninglessness of it all and become irresposible in one way or another, socially, maybe in terms of health, etc. Or you submit yourself to it and start thinking of yourself as "a coach for the next generation", for your children, for the youth around you, what have you.

However there is a kind of reaction that almost no one adopts. And it's encapsulated well by Dylan Thomas's poem, 'do not go gentle into the good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light'.

Essentially the problem with the submissive approach is, it's too much of a coincidence that we get used to the idea as soon as it hits us. We realize we lost our youth, and we get used to the idea. Then we realize that sooner or later we're going to loose our existence, and we again get used to the idea.

(A nice video related to the ideas I've expressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-OYmHVchQ)

So what is this "third" reaction?

It's the realization that biology is a scaffolding on top of the physics of reality. Biology does not dictate everything. Physics does. And if there is something that physics allows but biology doesn't, something can be done about it.

Luckily we're living in the second decade of the twenty first century. Much of what I say might not have made sense a hundred years ago, much less a thousand years ago. But we're here, now. And now is exciting and full of promise. The revolution of genetics, rejuvenation biotechnology, and nanotechnology, is opening new doors everyday, and as a result, blinding us to the glare of possibilities.

Except that most people find it off-putting. And that's where the coincidence I mentioned above plays its role. To a very good approximation, the whole world's population can easily be divided into two kinds; the ones who are (psychologically) unaware of their existential bummer, and the ones who are aware but are completely okay with it (because they got used to the idea almost at the moment it struck them). And when you try to shake them up, try to awaken them from their deep slumber of submissiveness, they feel offended. They feel being dragged out of their comfort zone without their will. And they end up resisting whatever you say, even when it might be in their best interest to support you.

I don't know how to conclude this comment but I'd say this, we're living in a very empowering era as of now (2014). We could choose to give one strong push as humanity and get rid of many of the shackles of biology. Or we could choose to prefer tradition and conservation and live many more decades with the idea that the reason the way things are is because it's natural, and because it's best, and because it's the way it's meant to be.

PeterWhittaker• 12 years ago

Perhaps you should read the article, for it offers not only a better explanation of the "dip" in the 40s but for the subsequent increase in satisfaction/contentment/happiness that then lasts until near the very end of life.

It's a long article. I have no summary. Other than "period of adjustment to changing values, none of which are related to mortality".

chrismealy• 12 years ago

Are there any countries that don't have a u curve? Is this just an American thing?

The Roots of Midlife Crisis

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