The psychology of midlife

What really goes on in the run-up to menopause?

Please find the second in this series, ‘A manifesto for thriving at midlife’, at this link.

It used to be called the ‘midlife crisis’; sometime later, it became known as the ‘midlife transition’. Either terminology, of course, begs the question of which years we might consider as our midlife years but, given that the average person in the West these days lives till around 80, the midlife decade can generally be said to occur between the ages of 35 and 45.

The change in terminology from ‘crisis’ to ‘transition’ is helpful, though: most people don’t experience an actual crisis in midlife, because the word suggests an acute, catastrophic event. Midlife transition, on the other hand, implies a process. It might be a short process, or it might go on and on, or we might experience a sequence of times of turmoil with periods of relative calm in between. It happens both to men and to women, but for most women, the period of midlife transition coincides with perimenopause, and the physical cataclysms that so often characterise this time of our lives only add to the experience of dislocation and disruption.

Whenever it occurs, and in whatever form, I’d argue that the midlife transition has a developmental purpose, and that purpose is above all about waking up. It’s a period of existential angst, of soul-searching, as we begin to question – and ultimately to discover – who we believe we are, and just what we believe all this life is for.

(Image: Alla Tsank)

The term ‘midlife crisis’ was first coined by Elliot Jaques, a Canadian physician and psychoanalyst, after he had been researching numerous artists throughout history who sustained significant shifts in their life and creative work in their mid- to late-thirties. In a 1965 paper entitled ‘Death and the Mid-life Crisis’, Jaques wrote about these transformations, pointing out that the creative output of artists seemed to change dramatically during the transition from early to mature adulthood. Extending his observations on artists to others, he noted that midlife metamorphoses could include religious or other spiritual awakenings, promiscuity, a sudden inability to enjoy life, ‘hypochondriacal concern over health and appearance’ and ‘compulsive attempts’ to cling to youth at all costs. He declared that this period of turmoil is characterised by feelings of depression or anxiety and also involves a sense of impending loss that is related to the approach of death, as well as an understanding of its inevitability.

Jaques, of course, wasn’t the first to uncover this midlife metamorphosis: in the 14th century, Dante Alighieri’s protagonist in The Divine Comedy – who, according to Dante scholars, is 35 years old – famously declares: ‘Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a dark wood / For the straightforward path had been lost.’ And after Jaques, work on the midlife crisis continued – perhaps most famously with Gail Sheehy’s 1976 book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. In it, she says: ‘A sense of stagnation, disequilibrium, and depression is predictable as we enter the passage to midlife.’ People can expect to feel ‘sometimes momentous changes of perspective, often mysterious dissatisfactions with the course they had been pursuing with enthusiasm only a few years before’, and she declares that the years between 37 and 42 are ‘peak years of anxiety for practically everyone.’ 

Why does all this happen – or does it really happen at all? Some people, inevitably, have argued that the midlife crisis is an invention, a cultural construct – and one that that only occurs in the middle and upper classes here in the West.* But being a cultural construct doesn’t make the phenomenon any less real; it just makes it a consequence of our cultural mythology – of the story that our culture tells us that we should live. It’s our culture that tells us our job is to be constantly fertile and productive, and it’s our culture that tells us that youth is everything, and midlife ushers in a time of decline. It’s our culture that exhausts us to the point that, by the time we reach midlife, we’re exhausted, disenchanted and often traumatised by this life we’ve been told we must live. And this perspective – that the midlife crisis isn’t ‘real’ – completely ignores the phenomenon that Dante recognised in the first place and that Jaques, Sheehy and many others have written about since. Any psychologist, psychiatrist or psychotherapist can tell you very clearly that it happens – whether you choose to believe in the phenomenon, or not. It might even happen to you.

It certainly happened to me – and then some. Beginning around the age of 32, I embarked on a period of around ten years which were punctuated by a sequence of crises. It was a time when everything – identity, purpose, meaning – was thrown up in the air, again and again. I had become separate from my authentic self. I didn’t know how or who to be; all I knew was that I needed to cast off the roles and personas I had previously embraced. But I knew, in every cell of my body, there would be something afterwards: something for me to do, to be. And I knew that, getting on for halfway through my life, if I didn’t start becoming whoever I was supposed to be soon, I was never going to have the time to do it properly. I had to begin now. But it was hard to let go of the safe structures that I had formerly clung to; it took several years of tearing them down, one after the other, before I could say that I was finally through.

* (I reject the idea that it’s not experienced by the working class. Perhaps it’s simply that working-class people don’t have many options other than to struggle on through. Certainly, the profoundly poor working-class folk I grew up among felt that they had no choice but to grit their teeth and carry on through whatever crises might be trying to pull them under. They didn’t have access to talking therapies, and they didn’t have the luxury – or a culture – of talking about their troubles to each other. The bills had to be paid and the food put on the table. There was simply no energy for anything else. A state of affairs which often didn’t end well – but a state of affairs which is the way things were, nevertheless.)

What are the emotional correlates of the midlife transition?

They can include the following:

• A decline in happiness, wellbeing and overall satisfaction with our lives

• Aimlessness, a loss of purpose or a sense that life has no meaning

• Self-doubt; a decline in self-confidence

• A sense of powerlessness or loss of control over the trajectory of our lives

• Frustration with the roles we play in our lives and with the responsibilities we’ve taken on

• Boredom and dissatisfaction with key relationships and with our job or profession

• Growing concerns about our ageing appearance and changing body

• Concerns about old age and especially about death

• Changes in energy levels: restlessness, fatigue, poor motivation

• Mood alterations and swings: depression, anxiety, anger

• Changes in sexual desire: sometimes more, sometimes less

• A profound shift in our values – in the things that we think matter

Apart from all the above, you know you’re in midlife transition if you’re beset by a continuous stream of nagging doubts and self-questionings, and a series of urges to do things you’d never normally do. By the onset of strange longings and obsessions. By constantly asking yourself, Is this all there is? By marriages in trouble, love affairs, job crises, and the purchase (mostly if you’re male) of yellow Corvettes or unwieldy Harley-Davidsons (yup, some of those clichés are real!).

That’s already quite a lot to contend with. But when we add in the physical changes experienced by many women in the run-up to menopause, we have, if you’ll forgive the cliché, a perfect storm. If you’re beset by irregular periods, hot flushes, ‘brain fog’, insomnia, palpitations, headaches, discomfort during sex – just a handful of the many lifechanging consequences of hormonal disruptions during this time – then piling a whole set of existential crises on top is going to make you feel as if your world is falling apart. It can be a very lonely time, characterised by a sense of alienation from the rest of the world – and also from ourselves. Because what’s happening here is that the old self is dying, in order for the new one to be born. But having the potential for a great outcome, of course, doesn’t make the hard times any easier to endure.

Is there really anything positive about the midlife transition?

First, let’s acknowledge again that the midlife transition for sure isn’t easy – but then it isn’t supposed to be easy. Psychologist’s tough love alert: the greatest growth comes from the greatest pain, and at midlife, for better or for worse, you get to really grow! All this isn’t an optional add-on; I believe it’s a developmental necessity, and the only way through it is through it. There are no shortcuts. It’s about learning to become what we can uniquely become. It’s about finally getting our act together, in the final stages of our lives. It’s about figuring out what we bring to the world and getting on with bringing it. It’s about showing up.

All too often, people try to resist the midlife transition, to stand firm and rigid in the face of all the winds of change that threaten to blow us over. Why not? – it’s scary, and there are no guarantees. If you follow this particular Call to Adventure, all bets are off. English poet W.H. Auden expressed that attitude of resistance to change perfectly (if rather brutally) in these lines:

We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

So my only advice to anyone standing on the threshold of this particular storm is – don’t bother to try to resist it: it’ll get you one way or another. If you don’t heed the midlife wakeup call the first time, that big old bell will keep on tolling till you do. But even if we hear it, and even if we follow it, leap off the edge, embark wholeheartedly on this new journey into the second half of our lives – it certainly isn’t plain sailing. Growing can hurt, and if we do our growing properly, many things must be left behind which once we thought we treasured. The gifts to come will be concomitantly great, but sometimes it’s hard to see ahead for the darkness of the woods we’re walking through in the meantime. As English author Martin Amis once said (quoted in Gail Sheehy’s Passages): ‘You wake up in another country, where you don’t know the language or how to get around on the subways. You have no idea how to be, or what’s expected of you. It’s only being there that you begin to figure it out.’  The trick, then, is in that last sentence: it is quite simply to be there.

People in the midst of midlife transitions or menopause often become profoundly irritated if you try to tell them that there’s a point to all this pain. But there is. The struggles of midlife are a wakeup call. The deepest, most authentic part of us is crying out for attention, and chances are it’s been neglected for way too long. If we recognise the process and keep faith with it, things start to shift. Problems begin to resolve, blocks begin to dissolve. Amidst the many dyings, a space opens up for rebirth.

So yes, there’s a positive side to all of this, too – really there is. The midlife transition is a continuous and dynamic process – important things are happening in the background, even when all the joy seems to have vanished from our life. Carl Jung for sure saw midlife as a necessary time of transition, following his own midlife crisis which began around the age of 38, and which he described in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. He wrote: ‘... we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning – for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.’ Once he’d navigated that particular period of crisis and breakdown (by choosing to ‘turn inward’, a long and fascinating process mapped in The Red Book), Jung’s best and deepest work lay ahead of him.

We might fear the unknown, but if we don’t accept and then move on through this period of darkness, allow it to take us, to shake us, to teach us its lessons – then we’ll never be whole, never fully individuate. Midlife is an initiation, and initiations are supposed to be hard – but they’re a necessary part of the journey toward growth and wholeness. There’s a danger to the process, for sure – but it’s only when we grit our teeth and embark on that journey that we can emerge, at the end of it, truly transformed.

Above all, midlife is about letting go: about necessary lettings-go. Letting go of illusions, letting go of Shadows. Sometimes, letting go of people and places and jobs. Letting go of the wounds we allow to define us, as well as those we’ve forgotten or repressed. We’re often taken over at this time by a longing to shed excess baggage: all the things which once defined us, we now begin to reject. The things we wanted most in the world might be offered to us – and we find that actually, we don’t want them any more. Three times during the early years of my midlife transition, I was tested, like all the best fairy-tale heroines. I was offered significant promotions in the corporate environment that I was still dipping in and out of – promotions specifically designed to keep me there, to stop me from making the final break I knew I need to make. Three times, I’m delighted to say, I refused.

The first time this happened, the weekend before I handed in my notice, I’d just watched the brilliant Baby Boomer, a light comedy starring Diane Keaton (and a particularly gorgeous Sam Shepard. But tragically it’s Keaton’s role which concerns us here ...) In it, Keaton plays a successful Manhattan businesswoman in midlife who is involved with an investment banker – and both of them are obsessed with their work and the progress of their careers. But after a cousin dies and leaves her tiny baby in her care, Keaton finds herself slowly changing and her priorities radically shifting. Eventually, finding life as a mother incompatible with her company’s expectations of her, she throws away her high-flying career, leaves her unsympathetic partner and moves to a remote and slightly dilapidated Vermont farmhouse. In financially dire straits, she starts to make and sell home-made baby food – and sales begin to boom. The crunch comes when Keaton’s old company wants to buy the business for millions of dollars, distribute the product nationwide and promote her to an even more high-prestige job than she had when she left. Although life in Vermont has been far from easy, and although this new offer at first seems to be everything she has ever wanted, in the end Keaton realises that she can’t possibly give up her quality of life, her new lover Shepard, and the daughter she now adores. And so she turns them down and gets on with her simpler, but infinitely more satisfying life. Planning as I was to run off, now quite penniless, to live in a semi-derelict cottage in the Connemara bogs, this movie both gave me courage and warmed my heart.

But the important point is this: the directions we take and the choices we make at this time of our lives are profoundly consequential and have considerable significance for the rest of our lives. Because midlife opens us up to a period of accounting. In a sense, we’re living through the Judgement card in tarot: we’re being asked to make a deeper judgement about the purpose of our life and our true calling. Judgement involves understanding and integrating past experience, and so being able to transcend it, to move beyond it. Only afterwards are we ready to fulfil our promise, to release our calling, to fully and wholeheartedly offer our gift to the world.

How do we navigate the midlife transition?

There are so many things we can do to help ourselves to find a solid path through this most disconcerting time, and in future articles here I’ll share a good few of them. But here’s a handful to get you started.

First: the midlife transition – or crisis, if that’s how you experience it – is, according to Jung, a spiritual crisis at heart. And so midlife transitions are often punctuated by a sudden burst of synchronicities that point us to new revelations, or to new ways of finding meaning in our lives and in the world around us: synchronicities that transform our lives. I was living in America during much of the decade of my midlife transition and one day, out of the blue, sandwiched between an enormous pile of junk mail, a beautifully produced large-format catalogue from a company called Isabella landed in my mailbox. ‘Gifts for awakening the spirit’ was its subtitle, and if ever a spirit needed awakening, it was mine. Suddenly overcome by a hunger I had never before admitted to, I began to leaf through it. It was filled with the kind of books I never read and products relating to activities I would never have indulged in. Books that were environmental, psychological, ‘inspirational’; music for meditation, and chanting; symbolic jewellery, and all kinds of spiritually oriented gifts and accessories for the home. The scientist in me scanned the pages and shuddered.

And then a book title caught my eye: My Mama’s Waltz: a Book for Daughters of Alcoholic Mothers. As I explained in If Women Rose Rooted, this book enabled me – the daughter of an alcoholic mother – to accept and then to question what had happened to me in my early life, and to come to understand myself fully for the very first time. It enabled me to let go of some destructive habits of thinking and behaving in relationships. I had never come across such a book before, and quite frankly, hadn’t even thought to look. I didn’t need help – I was fine, wasn’t I? – until suddenly, now, I understood that I wasn’t, and why.

The second book that leaped out at me was World Weary Women: Her Wound and Transformation, by Cara Barker. A World Weary Woman, Barker writes, is one whose characteristic response to stress is to struggle to achieve. But she finds little joy in her achievements, because she’s suffering a disconnection from her feminine body wisdom and her creativity. Her task, the book argues, is to find a way of living authentically that allows her to express what awakens her heart. The provisional life exhausts her and she knows it, and so she must detach from who she has been, in order to discover who she is meant to be:

‘From my first meetings with World Weary Woman, it was clear that she could work. She could analyze, psychologize. But she had not learned how to play … It is in pausing to connect with her own inner wisdom that World Weary Woman learns to create … to cultivate what brings joy, to savour her connection with cosmos. Thus she transforms her suffering through a sacred return to creative living … Little by little, World Weary Woman discovers that living vibrantly is a creative process, an intimate experience whereby she becomes fully known.’

I was World Weary Woman, through and through. This book showed me that I wasn’t mad: I was just trying to live the Hero’s Journey, and failing at it quite miserably – because that wasn’t who I was, at all. To slightly paraphrase T.S. Eliot in ‘Prufrock’, that was not it, at all.

The third book that caught my eye in that one remarkable catalogue was by the very wonderful Sue Monk Kidd, and it was called The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. I bought it, of course, for the title alone – but reading it answered my particular and growing spiritual crisis, my crisis of meaning, my complete inability to come to terms with being a woman in a patriarchal world. It led eventually to my writing – especially to If Women Rose Rooted – and to the work I do today.

These, then, were synchronicities which changed everything. That one piece of almost-discarded junk mail quite literally changed everything. Be sure to look out for such strangenesses, and explore them fully. And in particular, also pay attention to your dreams. During this long midlife transition, I had a series of ‘big dreams’: dreams more vivid than any I had ever had before. At a critical choice point, I dreamed of a creature with the face of a fierce, ageing woman and the body of a large hound. I held out my hand to her and she smiled; her teeth were pointed and sharp. Then she bit me. I looked down at my open, bleeding hand, and found that each of my fingers had turned into a bat. I had no idea then what I was dreaming, but I knew that I needed to know. After much research I discovered that the Greek goddess Hecate was sometimes represented with the head of a woman and the body of a dog. Hecate, who holds the keys to the Underworld, who calls us to follow her there, whose Call is a call to transformation. And the bats? In almost all cultures, they are a symbol of rebirth. Really, you couldn’t make it up.

A few months later, just as I was worrying about handing in my notice and returning home from the USA to Britain, wondering if I was making a huge mistake once and for all to give up my long-held desire to live in the great American West, I had another big dream. I was running alongside a train, trying to get on. But, as happens in all such dreams, my legs grew heavy and the train began to gain ground. A guard in uniform appeared at the open door of one of the carriages. ‘The train’s leaving,’ he told me. ‘It’s not for you.’ And I found myself holding out to him a heavy grey stone which I seemed to have been carrying all the time. ‘You have to let me on,’ I said. ‘I am carrying the foundation-stone of my mother’s house.’ And he did, and I got on the train, and took that big old granite stone with me. And from that time onwards, it turned out that all of my work would be focused around reclaiming the lost mythic feminine. I was carrying the foundation-stone of my Mother’s house, indeed.

Dreams know. Really, they know.

What we’re mostly doing at this time in our lives, then, is looking for a story to draw together the messy fragments of everything that’s happened to us and defined us up until now. We need to transform the story we tell about ourselves, to find a story in which we have more agency – and more purpose. The problem is that, in the culture we currently occupy, taking the necessary time out to dig deep and uncover such profundities just isn’t the done thing. We’re supposed to produce, to perform, to be everything that we once were but more, more, more. How, in the face of all this pressure, do we find a way to slow down and to gather the calm and space to focus in on what is becoming increasingly urgent? Somehow or other, no matter what our responsibilities and preferences might be, we have to find the time sometimes to be alone. British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott once wrote: ‘The capacity of the individual to be alone [is] one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development.’ Solitude – for most of us – is essential when we’re undergoing deep transformation, or when new and important ideas are emerging in us.

Writing this, it occurred to me for the first time that for a full nine years of my midlife decade, I was living alone. I’d fled a difficult marriage, was absolutely no good at casual relationships, and the right person simply didn’t come along until much later. Although, as an only child, I’d always loved spending time alone, I was often quite lonely – but the truth is, that period of solitude was a gift. It helped me to confront and work through the things in my life – in me – which needed to die or to be changed. I was able to regain a sense of balance, of internal equilibrium. It enabled me to come to terms with change and with loss, and to fully mourn and let go of the parts of my life and relationships which badly needed to shift. It enabled me to find sanctuary. Years earlier, a friend had given me a copy of psychiatrist Anthony Storr’s beautiful book, Solitude. He knew better than I did, I think, and certainly long before I did, that Storr’s words would not only comfort me, but inspire me. And that book convinced me that a solitary nature wasn’t an aberration, but an opportunity. When finally I married again, I had learned how to walk that ever-shifting line between too much time alone and too much time together.

At its heart, then, the midlife transition is forcing us to confront the Big Questions. Who do I want to be; how do I want to live. I’d love to have convinced you that it’s worth the pain, and worth the time, to have those questions answered.

Sharon

Please find the second in this series, ‘A manifesto for thriving at midlife’, at this link.