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When a Man Turns Forty
| Article
# : |
17712 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1990 |
2,298 Words |
| Author
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Bob Silverman
Bob Silverman holds seminars and gives lectures on the male
mid-life crisis. |
When I turned forty, one thing more than all others characterized my life: I was quite unhappy. Like most men, I blamed this unhappiness on everything and everybody other than me: "It's my wife's fault…. The job is killing me…. I need more money."
I didn't like being unhappy and tried to do something about it. So after more than fifteen years of holding job titles like controller or chief accountant with a series of Fortune 500 companies, I left it all to head a nonprofit human service agency. I decided to do something more personally rewarding than just making more money. At about the same time, I walked away from a twenty-year marriage, casting family, friends, financial security, and many years' worth of material acquisitions to the winds.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was experiencing a typical male mid-life crisis. I spent the next five years learning everything I could about it.
Male mid-life crisis is a fact. It's neither a joke nor a contrived excuse for unusual behavior. It's a time of life that demands growth and change, an unmarked passage leading either to ruin or to the beginning of a better way of life.
Eighty percent of all men in their middle years reevaluate the lives they've built. They struggle with questions like, Am I happy? Is this what I really wanted? Is this all there is? How much time have I got left? What now?
Of this 80 percent, a large number will, in one way or another, forfeit a good measure of the rest of their lives. Far too many start winding down while still in their forties. Studies have shown that one-third of all men experience a full-blown mid-life crisis. These men experience rapid and dramatic changes in personality and behavior.
Some men experience positive change as the result of a mid-life crisis. It's not always a bad thing. Some men actually grow and expand in their middle years, becoming more productive and less competitive. Their relationships become deeper and more stable, and they gain a greater sense of well-being.
Male mid-life crisis rarely occurs before age thirty-nine, or beyond sixty; it's most common between thirty-nine and forty-five. It can be expected to last up to four or five years.
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