ML/NJ
Posted on 06/12/2018 12:50:54 AM PDT by Cronos
The midlife crisis was invented in London in 1957. That’s when a 40-year-old Canadian named Elliott Jaques stood before a meeting of the British Psycho-Analytical Society and read aloud from a paper he’d written.
Addressing about a hundred attendees, Jaques claimed that people in their mid-30s typically experience a depressive period lasting several years. Jaques (pronounced “Jacks”)—a physician and psychoanalyst—said he’d identified this phenomenon by studying the lives of great artists, in whom it takes an extreme form. In ordinary people symptoms could include religious awakenings, promiscuity, a sudden inability to enjoy life, “hypochondriacal concern over health and appearance,” and “compulsive attempts” to remain young.
This period is sparked by the realization that their lives are halfway over, and that death isn’t just something that happens to someone else: It will happen to them, too.
He described a depressed 36-year-old patient who told his therapist, “Up till now, life has seemed an endless upward slope, with nothing but the distant horizon in view. Now suddenly I seem to have reached the crest of the hill, and there stretching ahead is the downward slope with the end of the road in sight—far enough away, it’s true—but there is death observably present at the end.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
>>have any of you gotten through the mid-life crisis? How did you?<<
I wisely chose a wife with a great head on shoulders and a huge heart.
We might have moments of acrimony but marrying her 25 years ago was the smartest decision of my life.
Man is just a befuddle tool creator. He looks around and asks how he can make things better. But absent a loving partner those “things” are shallow and meaningless.
When a man finds his spiritual partner and sanctifies his relationship with her forever via marriage it all becomes clear.
When the driving force in your life after “mid life” (whatever the heck that is but I will go with 50 years) is someone else then it all makes sense.
Guys with kids will hopefully weigh in. I was too old to procreate back when but the looks on my siblings’ faces re:their kids speak volumes.
Oh BTW: I got over the sports car thing in my 40s. Now I just get off on gas mileage.
Yeah, I was 48 and realized that I had done hardly anything for the Lord, all for myself. Became a missionary to Ukraine until 9/11.
Spent some years doing DoD stuff and am now working in a church in Sierra Leone.
I desperately desire to NOT go to my Lord empty handed.
You handled it well. I’m getting antsy in my career at age 40. I think I’m being silly
I’m at the front door of it. Bracing for the storm.
Took up bicycling at age 43
I want a fast sports car to be more sexy. I figure, i will probably end up with a corvette. Maybe spend my inheritance on it. Am i bad?
Hallelujah!
I couldn’t afford a Corvette so I got a Dodge Challenger. Driving it is the only thing that makes me feel 20 again :-)
I am 55 but in my 40’s after busting my hump in sales and making good money, accumulating the toys and 5000 square foot house, vacation home, etc I realized this was nonsense and scaled back and rekindled my love of Catholicism and the Latin Mass and focused on my wonderful wife and children. That was my wake up call or mid life crisis.
When I was 12 y/o, I wanted 20 y/o women.
When I was 20 y/o, I wanted 20 y/o women.
I am 43 y/o, I want 20 y/o women...(I don’t try anymore though)
No no no.
To journalists, nothing exists until you give it a name.
Then it is suddenly created.
Before the name, no existence.
I know the girls that I pass, they just ain’t impressed
I’m too old to give up, but too young to rest
The Who sum it up rather well.
ML/NJ
That’s what I’m thinking of - pay off the last of the home loan and then scale it down. And focus on the Church
Best decision you will ever make is to pay off your mortgage and eliminate all debt. Also finding a career or job that you can envision yourself doing until you die is a good idea. This idea of shelving yourself at age 62 or whatever is for the birds.
When I was 12 y/o, I wanted 20 y/o women.
When I was 20 y/o, I wanted 20 y/o women.
I am 43 y/o, I want 20 y/o women...(I don’t try anymore though)
I married a 19 year old woman, and decades later she is still gorgeous. If you stay with one woman and share lives together it changes the whole perspective.
Also, when my peers daughters started hitting college age, I naturally stopped viewing 20 year olds the same way without thinking about it. (I always thought the peak was 23, anyway).
You know what staves off the gnawing, devastating awareness that death approaches?
Knowing that when I get out on the trail on my mountain bike I still can and do beat men half my age, and beat them soundly, and without reserve.
Their Millennial sadness makes me happy. Is that wrong?
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