Saturday, 11 February 2012

The mid-life crisis and finding yourself single after it: a woman's perspective.

 I would not profess to know any more about this subject than the next person, but if you're interested, here is what I've found. So what and when is a mid-life crisis?  Well for me, it was right around the time when I turned 30 during the mid 1980's.  I looked around one day and asked myself, "Is this all there is?"  The realization crept up on me that here I was in exactly the place I was supposed to be, but nothing looked like I thought it would ...The glimmer of mystery and intrigue that I thought the future would hold was growing dimmer every day.  All the eager anticipation and daydreaming of things to come which I had always taken for granted were no longer on sturdy ground.   Like how I was going to change the world. How I was never going to put up with what women had put up with long before my time. All the things I thought the world held for me from opportunity to wealth and importance ..were now NOT as firmly embedded in my psyche as they once were ..I was actually questioning their existence and by extension, my expectations of them in the first place.

I realize now that the mid-life crisis is something of a rite of passage into maturity.  I doubt there are many people who don't go through it.  I could be wrong, but it makes me feel better to say that.  I think during mid-life crisis, we mourn the loss of our youth and what was, as we look towards an uncertain horizon of what will be.  A whole new era of life will soon unfold and here you will be, standing at the pinnacle between robust youth and something else.  The full and abundant social life I had enjoyed both at highschool and university was followed by an engagement period of whirlwind wedding planning and starting a new career.   The excitement of setting up housekeeping, mastering a new job, and rearing children leaves us breathless.  The span from infancy to school-age is over in the blink of an eye and suddenly they are gone...our life starts to slow down. My baby was already five and my oldest was eight by the time I was 30.   The slowing down, the routine, and the calming of life was enjoyed for awhile, but the roller coater ride I had became accustomed to over the first thirty years started to look for a way to prove itself once again.

It didn't take long to come to terms with my new reality.  Men I have seen in this crisis may not show any other  outward signs other than to maybe buy a new sports car, a pair of sunglasses that look like aviator goggles, and a leather bomber jacket.  They may or may not start cruising up and down the streets.  Never accuse one of these men of being in a mid-life crisis because in my experience, they will only deny it.  I can't even speak for the behavior of other women, but I have seen some that start wearing skirts and sweaters a little shorter and tighter.  Their hair may turn an outrageous color.  They probably go for a few counselling sessions and start examining their faces for any signs of fine lines. I knew I had to go back to school.  After all, I do love learning.  Had anyone accused me of being in a mid-life crisis, I would have been highly insulted, so a good rule of thumb is to never comment on that fact to woman or man. 

Altogether, the total number of years I spent taking classes ended up being somewhere in the neighbourhood of 17, (remember, some years I only took one or two classes), so things stretched out.  I finally finished a master's degree when I was 55. I don't want to go into my credentials, but I have a couple other degrees and a few certificates and diplomas.  I could have been a doctor a couple times over, but I didn't want to go to school for seven years..... Those fine lines I talked about earlier?  They are now lines for which I purchase and use what I fondly refer to as 'crack filler'.  Never before have I worked so hard on keeping my face cleansed and moisturized, but there's no stopping it.  If you were a smoker like I was, you can expect to have wrinkles.   Businesses capitalize on this vanity.  Just turn your TV on and hear all the ads for women and anti-wrinkle products.  Do they even help?

Because I've been associated with post secondary educational training for several decades, I keep seeing  older women going back to school. They begin to broaden their horizons at an older age...particularly their financial horizons for whatever reasons.  I have always wondered why girls are in such a big rush to get married, to settle down, and to have babies first?  So many of us compromise our education right out of highschool when that time of our lives would be so much easier to be a student.  Imagine studying without the responsibilities of looking after kids and a family.  Yet some of us wait until after the mid-life crisis to wake up to the fact that one day, we may need to support ourselves in a very real way and move up the corporate ladder.  Those types of decisions I believe are partly animal instinct. We have an innate need to procreate and there's a strong internal push to get us there, even if we don't realize it.  If you know about Erickson's Stages of Growth & Development, you will know that from the late teens to some time in the twenties is the stage of intimay vs. isolation.  It makes perfect sense to me that establishing a family is the choice people make early on if they have insecurities about their abilities to find a desirable mate once they leave the biggest pool of single people they may ever encounter again....school.  Choosing a solitary existence over a family is often not a desired choice.

 I never really thought of it much, but I have classed myself loosely as either the dumper or the dumpee, and I would know these categories, since I've experienced both... and twice each. As a dumpee first, I was about 14 years old. I was crushed after a year of dating to think my life was over.  He had cheated on me with a girl I thought was my friend.  My parents watched me cry for awhile and then one day told me snap out of it because there were plenty of fish in the sea.   I did and there were.  The next relationship went on for two years again in highschool and I'm sad to say that I was the dumper.  He was sweet and shy and handsome, but I went away to work in the summer and didn't see much of him and we just grew apart.   My third relationship would be the second time I was a dumper.  In reality, we both agreed upon the decision.  I was 40, and that was probably another mid-life crisis when I look back on it.  At least, I've discovered that is when alot of people tend to separate.  My fourth relationship was the second time I became a dumpee, at the ripe old age of 56.  

Neither dumper or dumpee feels very good when it happens.  The dumper generally has to live with the guilt of initiating the hurting of the other.  The dumper may have taken a very long time to make the decision.  Firstly, the dumper may be working through trying every other alternative possible to see if there's even a glimmer of a chance that the relationship can be salvaged.  Secondly, the dumper may have had many long, hard soul-searching heart-to-heart talks in the mirror, or sessions with a friend or relative trying to work up the courage to not only make the decision, but to find the strength to act upon it. 

Many would disagree, but from my point of view being in a relationship where there is significant unhappiness in the long run sucks the life blood out of all, and tends to do more harm than good.  You all know that divorce rates have climbed to something like one in four.  That is a sad state of affairs for the children who are always stuck somewhere in the middle.  A household of fighting or not becomes the choice.  Marriages and relationships are hard work, but sometimes there is nothing else to be done.   In past decades, women and men both would endure horrendous situations because of societal rules.  More importantly, women were often undereducated and needed the financial security of their husband.  I still know people younger than me whose fathers refused to pay for their education.  These men felt it would be a waste of money, since the girl would rely on her husband and not need to work outside the home.  The couple may have had a much larger number of children than today. If you took sociology, you will know that rural communities often have large extended families close by.  Couples tend to not divorce in these situations because of the pressures put on them by those around them.  Urban families tend to be more nuclear and somewhat isolated from their extended families, so divorce is more prevalent.  Society started loosening up, probably somewhere around the 1960's, because that truely was a decade of radical thought, sit-ins, hippies, flower children, women who burned their bras and more liberal thinking than ever before.  

Following each break-up, the time period to find a new mate changed according to my age.  At 14 and 17, I was still looking for a life mate and the opportunity to bear children.  Time was of the essence according to my internal clock which I didn't know I had.  The idea of a girl being an old maid was still very much alive and well and that prompted every girl I knew to do whatever she could to find a mate.  At 40, I was in the early stages of change of life, again not knowing it.  I had 20 years of marriage to get over.  It took a full year before I even thought about meeting someone else. This was 1994 and I had one child heading to university and another still in highschool. When I did find someone new it was by word of mouth...someone knew someone. I'm afraid for self preservation reasons, I kept that relationship at a physical distance and it didn't last.  It was over by the time I was 56.  The stage of growth and development is generativity vs self absorption. I had a hand in ensuring the next generation gained a foothold...both my kids received degrees from university. 

Meeting a mate in this decade is a force to be reckoned with, but now internet dating is the way of the world.  This is not for the faint of heart.  It's exciting, it's scary, it's fun. But, it can be dangerous, so please read the safety tips found on the sites.  There are scammers and some dating sites are 98% scammers...you might recognize them because they're English is most often not very good.  But sometimes, you can't recognize them at all. You will exchange phone numbers and meet new local people in a public place for coffee.  You will be enthralled by some and never called.. You will be shocked and turned off by some and then called and called.  You will wait and be patient and hope that some day you too will find just the right person for you.  Your friends will know someone and try to set you up on a blind date.  You might try speed dating, that could be fun.  By the age of 50, there are singles groups forming.  There is hope.  By the time you are 65, it looks like cards and dancing, potlucks and travel could be in your future.   Good luck.

By 65 or 70, we will enter a new stage of growth & development integrity vs despair. Within the next decade I will become a senior citizen.  I will retire from work  although that age is on the brink of being extended.  Statistics say that divorce rates decline in older adults because in order to live on their own, seniors often don't want to or can't live alone. They turn to their mate physically for help with household chores and for safety and security needs.  Having someone else in the house to call for help becomes important.  With emergency panic button technology this too is being overcome.  That means that the person I am looking for today at 57 is someone I want to live long term with...not someone I live apart from that I only see now and then because of a long distance relationship.  We have to be compatible, we have to be patient and have a sense of humour.

I realize today that I need not have worried about what life would hold when I hit the wall at 30 years old.   It's like I can see the view clearly now from 10,000 feet.  I feel as though I can see the big picture of what has gone on before.  I can make some sense of what happened.   I have made a difference in the world and it was for the better.  I have passed my heredity, knowledge, and love along to the next generation.  I have found out and continue to see that life holds wonder and I will always remain in awe of what is yet to come.  There is no predicting or harnessing life or what is coming in the future.  We have to hang on tight, ride it, and take it all in with dignity and grace.  We have to contribute, be thankful and realize the value of having faith, friends, love and caring because we are nothing without our relationships....they are everything.

No comments: