When does mid life crisis start

by chianti
(sussex)

what age do men start going through mid life crisis?
do they always have an affair? and could they just change toward the wife.

Noel's response

As you may have read on my website, I believe there are two kinds of midlife transition:

- around age 35-45, when a person has what I call a 'right livelihood crisis', and wonders whether they are doing the right kind of work. This is also a time when they realize they are half way through their lives, and are not going to reach some goals they set when they were young.

- around age fifty, when they begin to ask deeper questions about who they are, and what their relationship is with God, or with whatever power they believe is greater than them. This is a time when they realize they are entering the last 1/3 of their lives, and the end is coming more quickly than they had imagined it would.

Men do not always have affairs when they are in these transitions. In fact I believe most don't have affairs. But they may change in the way they treat their wives, often becoming irritable, uncommunicative, and in general not very nice.

Their lives are changing in ways they don't understand, and being men, they are less likely to seek help than women are. Eventually they get through the change, and their lives become normal again, but they are usually changed in some fairly fundamental way, and often for the better.