Mid-life crisis

Recently, a friend met with an old flame (both parties now married, to different people) and the events of their meeting was a classic case of mid-life crisis. Both parties briefly relived their independent pasts through the conversation.

They may have been transported back a couple of decades, experienced old feelings, felt good about themselves and tried to stay in the zone for a couple of hours. It’s this desire to go back in the past and experience something from your younger years that’s a sign of you going through some form of mid-life boredom?

I’ll call it a crisis if you acted on it like in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, but otherwise, it’s a pretty regular emotion that most people experience at some point in their lives.

In my 20s, I remember cribbing to a friend about something (I can’t remember what now) to which she responded that I am experiencing quarter life crisis. I didn’t quite understand what that meant, except that I have exhausted quarter of my life already.

Over time, may be in my 30s, this went from being quarter-life crisis to mid-life crisis. Now that I am in the thick of my mid-life, it is increasingly seemingly like every adult problem we experience gets classified as a mid-life crisis.

• You find your job boring? must be midlife crisis.

• You want to have kids? must be mid-life crisis.

• You have nothing to talk about except about your kids? must be mid-life crisis.

• You’re exhausted from raising a family? must be mid-life crisis.

But what is this mid-life crisis anyway?

Is it a sudden realisation that all of our life’s efforts aren’t actually going to culminate into some grand prize at the end? is this a realisation that you are turning out to be just like your parents, and that life is a bad trip? or is this a general disillusionment in life?

If there was a single definition of mid-life crisis, I think it would be this - it’s that point in your life when you go from wanting to grow up fast to becoming nostalgic about your younger times.

Different people deal with a mid-life crisis differently. Some people give up and lose all interest in life, while others desperately try to wind back time, trying to recreate feelings and experiences they once relished, but are long gone and the rest try to understand it and come to terms with it.

By the way, I don’t think this is confined to married people, but since it is a field of interest, I am going to pontificate on why this happens or how it manifests in the life of married people.

Marriage is a scam

… at least I’ll say that based on how it’s sold.

The way marriages are pitched to us is like this - you find yourself the best cricket bat, there’s nothing in the Universe that can stop you from being Sachin Tendulkar.

But see, at least Sachin Tendulkar exists and you know what its like to be a Sachin Tendulkar, but a great marriage is a mythical creature - it doesn’t exist. So we’re after this vague idea of what a perfect marriage is supposed to be like and we’re always double guessing if we are in the right relationship or with the right partner?

Why do married people have a mid-life crisis?

You’re told nothing about life after marriage, or how to conduct yourself or the relationship effectively so it can positively add to your life.

If only we put a tenth of the time, money and effort we invest into the wedding day on preparing people for marriages, I am sure we’ll have far better outcomes as society. I think the pre-marital mandatory courses offered by the Catholic Churches is not a terrible idea for a start.

It’s like seeing the syllabus for marriage, it gives you some insight into what’s in store, whether you’ll enjoy it or not. Now, this doesn’t guarantee success in any way, but if nothing, you don’t go in with misplaced expectations.

About 20 years ago, a friend got married. She’d been married for 4 years by that point, and I remember asking her when they plan to have kids. She responded “oh we’re still getting to know each other.”

I was thinking “wait, what does that even mean? what do you need to know about him to reproduce? I don’t understand!”

Because in my adolescent brain, I thought you automatically have your first kid as a second year anniversary present. I’d gathered this based on the data points from the previous generation - you see, that was our source of relationship education.

How does it manifest itself?

Among the several crowd-sourced tit bits about marriage, there is one about a certain adjustment period in a marriage. Although they don’t tell you how it will manifest itself or how long it is supposed to take, or what you are supposed to do after.

Once you’ve grown comfortable with each other, and entered a steady state, nobody tells you that it’s expected and nothing to “worry” about.

It’s in this period of “lull” that people first start freaking out. They think they are not attracted to their partners anymore (familiarity breeds contempt, you see!) or that their relationship is doomed.

If one of them suggests procreation, it is likely that the other might be pushed off the edge. This happens because we view steady state in a relationship as a bad thing. Even people around you will say things like how a child can “brighten up” your life at this point as if it’s a crime to focus your energy on anything personal.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this advice doesn't work as well nowadays - thanks to our complicated careers and lower fertility rates. So data points about when people have kids in this generation is all over the place, and hopefully that means we don’t burden future generations with random templates?

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The next unexpected stage in a marriage is as soon as you have your first child - this creature that was supposed to brighten up your life. Suddenly you find yourself exhausted, with little to no patience for anything else in life.

All your physical and mental energy is being directed towards this new person in your life, and all that love and excitement for your partner has vanished. This hits men harder than women, because they’ve spare physical energy with no direction. So men have the time and energy to think about the disappearance of excitement.

You begin to question your life choices, reminisce younger times and start craving feelings that you once experienced for your partner, or anyone for that matter. This desperation to feel things you once felt that made you feel alive can make you do a lot of regrettable things.

Mid-life crisis is the prime cause for infidelity in relationships. People feeling bored of themselves, and wanting to feel things they once felt, as a younger version of themselves. Personally, I think it’s a very high price to pay for nostalgia.

So, most people end up doing relatively less damaging stuff - watching porn, masturbating more often, stalking their ex on social media, chatting them up or quietly leching at other people.

As I said before, if nostalgia is driving you to do things to feel things you once felt before, then it’s usually a sign of mid-life crisis (or whatever life crisis). You can try going back in time, but it doesn’t always end well.

But remember that this is very different from “moving forward” in life.

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Marriages require work to keep them healthy and well-oiled. But as I’ve mentioned several times before, the effort varies greatly based on whether you are experiencing a relationship transition or steady state.

When you’ve been together very long, and don’t have avenues to direct your spare physical and mental energy, you can start to question the health of your relationship quite often.

Have you noticed how some retired couples fight more often about banal things? It’s because they’ve spare mental bandwidth, and don’t have much to direct it towards.

Having worked on one project together for years - some people realise that they’ve either lost the ability to operate independently or are incapable of delivering on a radically different mandate as a team.

How do you avoid the crisis?

Simple answer - by having the right expectations for your relationship.

I meet couples at various points in their relationship - when they are just married, when they just have kids, when their kids are past toddler stage and independent, teenagers or have left home.

If anything one must know about marriage is that no single skillset (briefly alluded to this in my post about ADHD and marriage) is going to carry you through various stages of it.

There will be unexpected frenzies and lulls, depending on the path you both choose to traverse, and only agility, curiosity and a commitment to learn will get you through the various stages of a marriage.

If you want to be together, then you will find a way to address your issues before they can be a full-blown crisis. And if you can’t, there are plenty of qualified folks who are able to help you get started today.

The only thing that could stand in the way of the solution is YOU.