Women, Midlife Crisis, Men, and Music

I've been sitting here listening to Depeche Mode all afternoon. I woke up thinking of all that great, sexy music--and the prime of my life, before the last ex. I don't get morose about it though. I enjoy thinking about those days for a number of reasons--not just to remind myself that I used to be a size 8, but also to remind myself that I'm no longer bound to the level of strum und drang that infects us when we're in our twenties (and sometimes carries over into our thirties.)

So, when the Today show had a segement on women's midlife crisis I had to listen out of morbid curiosity (Beware of the link: the commerical is one for PerfectMatch.com--as if that's all we need....)

There's been much made of men's midlife crisis--probably because women often find making fun of men's foibles, well, fun. There are times when men certainly put the "oi!" in foible....

Maybe, though, we're trying to find something funny in what can be a really bad situaiton.

Men in midlife crisis want to be adored, and look ouside their lives for that adoration--hence the (usually) much younger girlfriend. Women, on the other hand, get "introspective," want "respect" and want to do the things they never had persmission to do when they were younger.

Now, we may have seen our fathers go through it, but how many of us ever saw our mothers go thru midlife crisis? Honestly, I think there was less of it in our mother's generation for lots of reasons. So why are women flipping out in such a modern-man kinda way: According to a report in the WSJ's Career Journal:

This pattern of female midlife crisis is emerging now because, to put it simply, women are different today. For the first time in history, women not only face more of the kind of stresses that tend to bring on midlife crises, but they also have the financial muscle, the skills and the confidence to act out their frustrations and resolve them. In a sense, women are having midlife crises now because they can.

Essentially, both men and women are saying "fuck it"--but women usually think about it first.

This may have something to do with what precipitates the crisis in men and in women. For men, the WSJ report says, it seems that they find complete fulfillment/accomplishment sometime between ages 35-49. For women, this is the lowest ebb of our lives--when we feel least fulfilled. Now, I can see where this would make a woman turn around and say "what the fuck? I'm doing everything right, and I still feel like crap. Screw this."

Which is kind of what I did.

Between 50 and 64, more women report to have a sense of "dream fulfillment" or accomplishment, while men of the same age just can't get it together. (in all fairness, though, this is also the time when many men lose jobs in a market that no longer values the wisdom that comes with experience and age.)

So, now it's a little clearer why men need that admiration to restore a sense of power....it's also a good explanation for curmudgeonliness in men of A Certain Age.

Guess that's why a young curmudgeon is really a misanthrope.

Knowing this now, women should, at least, be a bit sympathetic. Don't just point the finger and go "ha-ha! you're in midlife crisis! nya-nya-nyanya-nya!" And we should look at our own introspection.

What, though, are some of the hallmarks for women? I found another article in More magazine that explains it this way:

"It's a time of profound psychological turbulence that usually occurs between the ages of 38 and 55, and often results in dramatic life changes. It can last from 2 to 12 years; the defining symptom is a sense that the values that have guided you for many years no longer hold meaning. The next stage is identifying old parts of yourself that you've suppressed. Those needs and desires can become very important at midlife. They start to take on great power, and it's easy to do damage to your existing relationships and career."

It seems, though, that midlife crisis is about integrating all those parts of ourselves--finding a way of becoming whole. I know that's been a big part of it for me. I've written here before how I'd split myself up into different personnas to be able to do all thes sorts of strange and wonderful things I've done. How else could someone be a rockabilly punk and work prim and proper among theologians? Back then, I used to think it was fun to spin off another personna....

But I don't think that spinning off another personna just to fit in is the way to be. That fractured feeling might be fun at 25 (well, only in the short term) but it's not all that good for one's overall mental health.

Besides, there are roles I really don't have to play--I don't have to play the happy wife. I don't have to play the role of someone's mom. I might get stuck in a certain role, but changing perceptions of others is easier than exorcising peopel from our lives. So, more than other women, I've got a lot of freedom. I'm not gloating about it though. I've always known that with freedom comes responsibility.

If I'm granted a whole lot of freedom to become who I know I am, where's my responsibility (if not externally imposed by other people)?

Well, there is a responsibility to be genuine--to not throw on a personna to suit whomever or to fit in whereever. That's tough--there are still old patterns and old demons that love to plague me and still work to make me feel incomplete and inadequate. Maybe the answer then is to be more of me than I ever had to be in other situations.

And there's the particularly maddening responsibility to actually follow through on being all that I can be. There are no excuses. Yes, there's some financial excuses--I don't have the money I *should* have because I spent my thirties being quite ill and getting educated--but other than that, there are no major reasons nor excuses for me not to push the envelope to be the type and kind of woman I thought I might be when I grew up.

Oh, sure, there are going to be obstacles. There's always obstacles. One of those obstacles is the same thing that gives me the freedom--middle age. The World will always have a problem with grown-ups who want to do things other than humbly crawl into obscurity.

I've also discovered that The World has a problem with persons who, for one reason or another, have been more the astute observer than the one, like them, out there in the trenches. But I think that being knocked out of the workaday world caused me to turn introspective and philosophical well before I was supposed to be that way. This is, perhaps, why I'm always one to see where and when the human condition is either left out or not considered in connection with both tech and the media. In a sense, maybe, I'm more sensitive to the human condtion because, through my own failing health, I had no choice but to see more of the human condition than had I been working that whole time.

Sometimes I think protracted illness is underrated. We understand how children impart perspective to adulthood. It's odd to say I had illness when other people had children. Does kind of make me feel a bit freakish....but maybe there's a way to spin it to my advantage that I haven't figured out yet.

I'm looking at the cover of the last Depeche Mode CD I bought--Songs of Faith and Devotion. And I realize that, less than a year later, Nine Inch Nails comes out with The Downward Spiral and so many things changed in my world. It's fun to sit and listen to the past--get introspective a bit. But there's a whole future that I just started having fun with--so these little spells can sometimes amount to a big waste of time if I take too long in them. I've got things to do now that I never could have, nor would have, dared to do. Mabye it's time for some new CDs, too.