Anyone going through midlife crisis? (1 Viewer)

[DustinLC]

OK, I'm not sure if I'm serious or not or even know what that is.

I'm 35 and have a 3yr old girl who pretty much has been tearing me up physically and mentally since birth .

I know I have ahead of me tons of work to raise her.

I feel too young to act old and too old to act young

Not much in terms of work since all my energy has been with the family and ponder if I should have done more earlier.

Not much in my marriage since the birth of my darling child. It's like being single again but not single if you get what I mean .

Feel ugly and unattractive. God I sound like a pregnant woman .

Body don't feel the same. Been finding too much white hair.


So is that it? Any experts out there?

 

[ChristopherG]

Yeah - sounds a bit like it. The good news is that you are about to turn a corner with your child reaching 4 - they start to get a bit more independant. Don't do anything crazy to fill any voids you think you have right now. Invest more energy into yourself and your spouse (if applicable - hard to tell from your note).

Stop and look at your family and your life and count all your blessings - you never know what's around the next corner.

Chris

 

[Carl Miller]

Kinda does sound like it..especially the part about pondering if you should have done more earlier.

I went through something like this about 2 years ago (I'm 40 now) and for a short time thought a lot about how my life could have been different had I done this or that instead of what I actually did.

It didn't last long though. I with the wife, two kids, stable job and house complained to the wrong friend one day and he pretty much whacked me on the back of the head, told me to snap out of it and reminded me not to take my life granted.

You have a lot of great times ahead of you being a father to that little girl of yours and being a parent can be a real blast if you let it. You've also got many years and plenty of time to do the things you want to do, but haven't yet.

Like Christopher said, count your blessings each and every day, and also look forward to the future too. Lots of great things are yet to come.

 

[DustinLC]

Thanks guy.


Very good advice. A lot of people in this situation will do that only to look foolish in the end once the crisis passed. Tom Cruise anyone?

 

[Carl Miller]

You will!

I don't know where this comes from, but my former boss who is 46 got a bad case of mid life crisis a few years ago. He gave this to me a couple of years ago:

"A mid life crisis starts the first time a man hears a beautiful 21 year old woman call him sir.

He realizes at that moment that he probably reminds the gorgeous woman of her father, not Johnny Depp. So he goes to the drug store and buys Grecian Formula for the gray hair, or he calls Hair Club for Men to inquire about new hair. From that day forward, every time a gorgeous young woman calls him sir, he does something else to rebel against his age.

He listens to his kids music and plays air guitar to a rap song as if he was listening to Led Zeppelin. If his kids are lucky, he doesn't do this in public. He changes the way he talks, and calls a babe, a fox---instead of a hottie. He calls his boss, dude, even though he knows deep down inside that the boss dude won't be pleased.

He tries to get hip in the eyes of his kids, and buys them jeans that are so last year, they're practically vintage. If his kids are really lucky, he won't buy those jeans for himself and wear them in public. If he does, they might have to move.

He throws his golf clubs to the back of the garage, goes out and buys a basketball and heads to the park for a pick up game wearing gym shorts over sweat pants and a sweatshirt. He puts his baseball cap on backwards, instead of sideways.

He starts to tell everyone he should have been a doctor, or a lawyer instead of what he is, even though everyone who knew him back in college remembers him as a guy who never did have any interest in those subjects.

If he's really far gone, he'll turn in his Mini-Van for a sleek sports car that goes 0-60 in 5.3 seconds and gets 7 miles to the gallon. He drives it to work in bumper to bumper traffic, blasting his kids music out of a car stereo with bazooka subs, wearing his baseball cap backwards again and sitting slanted to the side with the seat fully reclined.

Eventually, he'll probably come to his senses and come to realize that he is who he is---A husband, a father, a valued employee. He'll start to give all his mid life crisis changes up.

He'll let the gray come in or go bald in a dignified fashion. He'll go back to classic rock and hopefully give up the air guitar all together. He'll call a good looking woman a good looking woman, and his boss mister or sir. He'll go back to his Levis, and will never wear gym shorts over sweatpants. He'll give the basketball to his kids, take out his golf clubs and he'll wear his baseball cap like a baseball player.

And if he's smart--really smart, as he's giving all these mid life crisis things away, he'll come to his senses one more time. Just in time to keep the sportscar."

 

[ChristopherG]

Dustin,

I do very much understand where you are coming from - for me I felt like I wasn't even alive, just going through the motions. You might even have a touch of depression so you might want to talk to your doctor about it.


Carl,

That's pretty funny. I am getting ready to buy a replacement vehicle (driving the old family mini-van) and find myself tempted by Mustangs and Chargers. Given the hellish commute I often make these would be bad choices, still.....

Chris

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Time to buy a motorcycle

 

[Mort Corey]

It all passes too quickly anyway..enjoy your crisis while you can Next turn in the road is grandkids which is even better......they go home after your done spoiling them

Mort (who did the Firebird TransAm and new Harley at the same time before he got over the hump)

 

[Joe Szott]

Dustin,

Sounds more like you're having a mid-life adjustment instead of an actual crisis. More specifically, you just had a kid and I'm guessing you hadn't been around children much up until then (like little siblings or babysitting.) So it was almost like a 9.0 earthquake for your lifestyle. That true?

I have what I call the rule of 2s for life and relationships. After every major life change, it takes 2 years to come to terms with it and fully integrate it into your person. This IMO is why you see so many people divorcing 2 years after marriage, couples splitting up 2 years after a child is born, or 2 years after a child leaves the house (for say college.) It takes a year to figure out what the hell happened to your life and a year to build yourself back up into the new life. Sometimes, people discover that the person they have become is too removed from who they were to have all the same realtionships and emotions towards others that they had before.

So now that you have your feet a little from your first child, ask yourself (thoughfully please hehe): do you still love your wife? Do you want to get back into shape again, or is that no longer important? Do you like your daughter (not love, but like)? How important is work to you compared to these other areas? Once you can figure those out, what to do from here would be pretty clear IMHO.

And don't worry the gray hair, that one is inevitable and you should be really, really happy to keep your hair at all. I would trade prematurely bald for prematurely gray 7 days of the week (and twice on Sunday.)

 

[DustinLC]

Carl, that is indeed a great story.

It sounds to me there's going to be another midlife crisis for me when my girl is a teenager and I'm going bald.


Christopher, that's definitely me right now, going through the motion. I do the best I can to be cheerful and be as normal as possible until this pass. At the same time avoiding some of the silly things Carl's former boss did, and like you said, don't fill the voids. I have thought about a lot of things to make things better so I feel more alive and happier, but realize it's just my silly chemicals in me that's talking.

Thanks for me cheering me up with the stories and experiences.

 

[DustinLC]

Uh oh!

 

[MarkHastings]

LOL - I just turned 35 last week and I feel exactly the same way. I'm not married, so whenever I meet a female, it feels like she's either WAY too young, or WAY too old.

And not having children makes this hard. People my age, have families and I don't want to be doing the "family" thing (i.e. hanging out with them) because I'm too "single" to be doing those kinds of things, but at the same time, when I go out, it's all young people so I feel like the "old" guy.

It's so hard to feel like I fit in. I don't fit in with the older people and I don't fit in with the younger people. :frowning:

 

[DustinLC]

You my friend are going through midlife crisis. Hee hee.

Mark, you know what I did when I felt that way when I was single? I got married .

Then I fit into the out of college married crowd.

Then I went and have a kid and fit into the "let's get together and talk about how to dress your kid" crowd. :frowning:. This is only fun for your wife!

Fitting in is overrated.

 

[MarkHastings]

I was afraid that was the answer

 

[Jon_Are]

I trained for and ran my first marathon last year at the age of 46; didn't realize until I was well into the training that it was an MLC.

That same marathon is coming up again in October. Am I gonna run it again??? Naahhhh...I'm cured.

Jon

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

"Sometimes I wish I were older"
"Older?"
"Yes! Dirty old men get away with murder. I'm at that awkward age."

--- Neil Simon, Barefoot in the Park

 

[ChristopherG]

Jon,

That's pretty good and reminds me of this exchange with my father while watersking last summer:

Dad: "It's getting harder for me to get up on one ski these days".
Me: "Getting old is a bitch".
Dad: "Yeah - but it beats the alternative!"

Dad is 75.

Chris

 

[MarkHastings]

I'm paraphrasing here:

Fraiser Crane: "I'm OLD! I'm going through a midlife crisis"
Fraiser's dad: "That's nothing, try having a SON that's going through a midlife crisis."

 

[DustinLC]

You guys are hilarious!

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I've been considering a mid-life crisis. Right now, it's a toss up between buying a red convertible, riding my bike across the country, or becoming an action movie hero.