By Ogova Ondego
Published March 10, 2023
“I’m a Christian. I am a leader in my church … I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t believe in divorce. I know he is only 17 years old, but the fantasies are running wild in my brain. Someone really loves me and makes me feel like a woman. He has taken away that terrible sense of loneliness and exploitation I feel with my children and my husband. I know I’ve got to stop seeing him, but I don’t want to go back to living the life I had before—a sweet, smiling homemaker, meeting everybody’s needs—but not even noticed by my husband.”
Hey, what would make a seemingly respectable and loving wife, mother and career woman to suddenly get frustrated, angry, depressed and confused to the extent she stops going to work, attending church or getting involved in the community and instead run off with a man the age of her last born son? What would make a 46-year-old career woman, wife and mother in possession of everything that should make her happy feel so torn up and restless inside and start struggling with the feelings of a 14-year-old teenager in search of an identity?
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Family and relationships counselors Jim and Sally Conway, in their book titled Women in Midlife Crisis, diagnose this woman’s problem as suffering not from the age of menopause or the empty nest, but Midlife Crisis.
They define Midlife Crisis as an emotional trauma of crisis proportions that occurs in women of the age between mid 30s and early 40s.
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Among the factors that may produce stress or cause a crisis for a woman in the last half of her 30s or early 40s include:
- Unhappy marital situation or lack of marriage
- Demands from children and their growing independence
- Accumulation of traumatic events such as death, illness, or aging
- Urgency from her inner clocks to accomplish her life dreams
“Some of these factors are intensified by the mere passing of time,” they write. “A woman may be forced to realize that some of her expectations are never going to be met. For example, she can put up with a poor marriage for years, thinking ‘someday soon’ it will change. Or she may hope for another child or to become vice president of her company. But by midlife she is faced with the hard reality that not all of her dreams will be realized. There is truly a ‘collision of expectations and reality’.”
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Saying many women don’t seem to know who they are by midlife, the counselors write that all these women feel varying degrees of depression, loss, hopelessness and worthlessness and are angry at the telltale signs of aging.
So when does Midlife Crisis hit?
The writers say midlife is dated by life experience rather than by numbers. While blue-collar workers may think of it at as 35-55 years, their white collar counterparts see it as 40-65.
“But whatever the social status—age forty is a major milestone. In our research we found women experiencing midlife crisis in their late thirties and into their early forties, with the average being 39.2,” write Jim and Sally Conway.
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Why is age 35 significant in a woman’s life?
- 35 begins the dangerous age of infidelity
- 35 is when the average woman reenters the working world
- 35 is the most common age of the runaway wife
- 35 brings the biological boundary into sight
But which kind of woman is likely to go through midlife crisis?
All types of women–married women, single women, separated and divorced women, career women, women with children, women without children, homemakers, and women in a variety of socioeconomic circumstances—are affected. In other words, almost every woman is likely to go through this experience and should, therefore, be prepared for it.
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Though the entire engagingly written book running 470 pages is useful, I zero in on the Foreword, the Preface and chapters 1, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 that look at definitions and background of the problem, tempted to escape, keeping up with the life’s clock, answering life’s questions, preventing a crisis, helping a woman in crisis and blooming at midlife.
Well, if you are caught in a midlife crisis or want to avoid one, read this book, complete with the detailed notes and references!
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