Why Most Men Will Have A Mid-life Crisis & What To Do About It

All right, team, welcome back to the mantalk Show. Today we're talking about why so many men go through a midlife crisis. Now, I've worked with countless men over the years who have gone through some form of a midlife crisis. And as I turned 40 this year, this is something that I was kind of interested in within myself because I have seen the very real implosion and destruction that a midlife crisis can cause. And I was curious about this, not because I was unhappy with my life, but over the years, I've worked with so many men who have reached their mid-30s to mid-40s, and all of a sudden, radically changed their life or imploded their life or had this really big sort of monumental change that had been stirring in the background for years or even decades. And so we're gonna talk about what I've found, the three things, the three contributing factors that really lead to a midlife crisis, and what it can inform you, how it can inform you the. To actually lead a better life, regardless of how old you are. So, first off, I just want to say the middle passage through life. I like calling it the middle passage. This is from Dr. James Hollis, who I've actually interviewed on the Man Talks podcast before. He's a very renowned Jungian psychologist. He's done some incredible work and written a lot of books. And he actually wrote a book called the Middle Passage, which, if you haven't read it before, if you haven't heard of it, I would definitely recommend checking it out. He goes deep into the midlife, and some of his work has revolved around this midlife passage that we will all go through. So in our culture, though, one of the interesting things that happens is that because many people are very afraid of death, unconsciously or consciously, they avoid asking the really big questions. And so the midlife gets a very bad rap because, again, we call it the crisis, right? It's not necessarily a crisis per se. It's. It's more of an awakening. It's more of a shedding of an old skin. It's more of a letting go of the shackles that have held us down and the weights that have held us down for many years. And so that's one big piece that I wanted to get out of the way, is that the middle passage of life can actually be very formative. In fact, Carl Jung has famously said, life really does begin at 40, and up until then, you are just doing research. And I loved this quote, maybe because I turned 40 this year. And so it was like, kind Reinforcing. I have been doing research for 40 years, and now I'm on track or I'm on target in some way, shape or form. But the other big thing that I see is this question of why do more men seem to go through the midlife crisis? How come in our culture, especially in the west, men seem to predominantly have this midlife crisis? And I want to answer that very briefly before I get into the three main pillars. My belief is that this is a byproduct of how men and women view and experience time differently. And I think that this is very important to understand, especially for our intimate relationships. What I've noticed over the years in working with men and women is that we experience time differently because of the different cycles that we are involved with. And when you look at the different cycles, for example, that a woman's life will take her on, you know, she'll reach puberty, she'll start to have a menstruation cycle. That menstruation cycle will tether her very, very prominently and very strongly to a monthly cycle that will play out basically for 30, 40 years. And then when she goes through menopause, that cycle will stop, and she'll experience life a little bit differently after menopause. But one of the things that I found interesting in working with women is that they're very acutely aware of where they stand in terms of, like, their reproduction cycle, right? So for a lot of women, when they enter into their early 30s or the mid-30s, all of a sudden it's like, oh, hey, if I want to have kids, I should probably do that now, because time's running out, right? My window to have kids is really decreasing. Whereas for men, when you look at the arc that a man's life takes, you know, a man can have kids way later on in life, right? Men have had kids in their 60s and in their 70s. And so for a. There's less of this very abrupt interruption in the arc of his life, in the arc of how he experiences his life and the time of his life. And so for a lot of men, they can go through their 20s and go through their 30s and get into their 40s, and all of a sudden, they can have been living out of, you know, the household, out of the family system, out of the school systems. And they can have been living for 10, 20 years under this sort of presupposition of who they should be. And suddenly they realize, oh, I'm halfway through my life, or I'm, you know, almost three quarters of the way through My life depending on when they have this sort of, like, awakening. And that awakening is almost always, I am going to die. The end of my life is maybe not as far away as I thought. Because for a lot of men, our life isn't disrupted and isn't cut up in the way that a woman's life is, right? Going through a menstru cycle brings you into contact with your life every single month. Being able to have kids, childbear, and then not being able to childbear, having that period of your life. And women are very acutely aware of this sort of death and rebirth cycle that plays out on a monthly basis, right? There's a period where they're fertile and they can have kids, and there's a period where, generally speaking, they can't get pregnant. And that cycle plays out over and over again. And then you have the broader cycle of when they can start to have children at a very young age, and then when they can't have children anymore, when they get older, you know, sort of like mid-40s, et cetera. Whereas for men, that cycle, that birth and death cycle doesn't happen for men. And so for a lot of men, we can go for a very long time without the sort of conscious realization or the conscious thought that death is imminent, that death is on the horizon. And so it can seem like a concept that's very, very far away. That's, like, way out there in the unforeseen future. And all of a sudden, we can wake up in our 30s or our 40s or even our 50s and suddenly realize, like, oh, shit, death is coming, right? Death is on its way. How do I want to live? How do I need to orient myself for that? And that realization that bumping up against that death and rebirth cycle, or death and birth cycle can come in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, just depending on where a man's life is at and how he has been living. And so let me give you the three things. The three pillars that I found have played a massive role in why men go through a midlife crisis and how it can inform our lives. So number one is what I've called pleasing syndrome. And I think this is a common term. Some people will call it the nice guy syndrome, right? Dr. Robert Glover, who I've talked to, is a good friend of mine, I've spoken with a lot of. This is when we place a good amount of our worth externally, and we actually. We look for a sense of who we are, and we actually place a good amount of our value externally onto other people. And so men who have spent their 20s and their 30s and maybe even their 40s living in a way to try and please their parents, right? To show dad how happy, you know, how successful they've become and that they've made enough money or that they've become more successful than their father, or they lived in a way to try and get their mom's validation, or they've lived in a way trying to get their, you know, the women that they're dating their validation, or just women in general trying to get their. Their validation. They have lived in such a way where they press their value and their worth externally out onto the external world. And they don't develop an internal sense of rigorous validation, of, this is. This is who I am, this is what my worth is, this is what my value is. These are my strengths, my skills, et cetera. And what they'll find is they'll wake up with either a sort of understanding that death is on the horizon or a complete collapse of the fatigue of continuing to chase and seek validation externally. And the pressure cooker of death or the pressure cooker of living with all of your worth and your value externalized will be the thing that eventually collapses a man psychologically to the point where all of a sudden it's too much to bear and he has to make some very radical changes in his life. And that can look a number of ways, right? He might end the relationship, the marriage that he's in. He might start a family. He might, you know, move countries or quit jobs or whatever it is, but he'll start to reorient himself. And this is the real beautiful part that we can all start to do right now, today, however old you are, we can start to reorient ourselves towards not seeking external validation, but actually developing internal validation and praise and recognition. And so you can begin to develop the skill of actually having a framework internally of recognizing yourself. When you do things that are meaningful, that are important to you, that are valuable to you. When you are developing a skill or a habit of, or a ritual that actually improves who you are, and you begin to witness the value that you actually have to offer, you start to validate and verify your own worth. Now, that doesn't mean that we pull the nets in entirely. It's still nice to have friends and family members and whoever it is, give some external validation. That's. That's nice and that can be rewarding, but it's. That the bulk of it, you know, you can use the 8020 rule. It's 80% of it is coming internally from you that you're able to recognize yourself in that way. So that's the first thing that oftentimes creates this collapse, is that men are living in a way that is kind of selfless, and they're trying to get all of their worth and validation externally. The second thing, and I'm going to quote Dr. James Hollis again, because he's got this great quote. He said, fear of our own depths. Fear of our own depths is the enemy. And this is what I have seen playing a huge role in a lot of men's lives as they enter into this middle passage. Again, whether you enter into that middle passage in your sort of like mid-30s or mid-40s or even into your 50s, that middle passage that you begin to go through forces you into the depths of who you are, what matters to you, the depths of your own psyche, your own being. And this can be a terrifying and confronting experience for any of you or any of us that have lived kind of on the surface level, right? Having the surface level conversations and friendships and relationships, not really pursuing the shit that truly matters to us. And that all of a sudden, when we begin to again have this confrontation with death or that living on the surface level for so long can sort of pressure cook our system to a way where all of a sudden, we crave to go deeper. We want to go deeper into who we are. What matters to us, what we want to contribute to, right? Where we want to put our energy, what we want to build and create, how we want to be with people, how we want to interact with them, maybe even a deepening into your own sense of spirituality, of finding a deeper sense of meaning in life. And so this fear of our own depths will show up. And generally, what I've seen happen time and time again for men that are going through the middle passage of their life or have a midlife crisis is that what they're seeking is depth. What they are craving is depth. That might be a deeper connection of sexual intimacy with their partner. It might be a deeper connection to a sense of meaning in their life, of contribution, of skill acquisition. It can be a number of things. It can look like going back to school and educating themselves in a different way in their midlife, but it is really a search for the depth. And so how we can utilize this is that wherever you are in Life, whether you're 19 or, you know, 65, and you're listening to this, is we can orient ourselves towards depth, towards depth in conversation, connection, relationship depth in terms of what we want to learn about depth in terms of our own skills and assets that we bring to the table in relationships and society and culture. So begin to look at what aspects of myself in my life do I want to deepen? Are there certain relationships that I want to deepen? Are there certain skills that I have that I want to deepen? Right. Maybe you want to cultivate a very. A deeper level of public speaking. Right. And to orate more proficiently. Or maybe you want to deepen your financial acumen or you want to deepen your relationship with your body and. And start doing yoga or working out more. Not sure what it is. The last piece, and this is an interesting one, it'll probably be brief, but the last one is the collapse of the illusion that right action leads to right outcome. The collapse of the illusion that right action leads to right outcome. This is a big one. A lot of men have some type of a midlife crisis because how they have been acting for the majority of their life up until the crisis or the middle passage is, I'll do the right things. I'll take on the responsibility. I'll be who people want me to be. I'll say yes to the things that I'm supposed to say yes to. I'll take care of the people I'm supposed to take care of, and I'll do all these right things, and hopefully the right outcome will happen back. Right? So if I act right, the outcome will be right, and it'll align with what I want and what I want to build and create and the life that I want to live. And in the middle passage, you very quickly begin to realize that that's not true, that right action doesn't always lead to right outcome. That right action can help you for sure orient towards a deeper sense of who you want to be and what you want to contribute to the world. But oftentimes, the right action that men have been taking in their teens, 20s, and 30s is what other people want and expect of them. This is the big thing that a lot of guys get caught underneath. And so what ends up happening is they are taking. They take on a whole bunch of responsibilities that they don't necessarily care about. They take on a whole bunch of pressure that they don't necessarily care about or want. And suddenly they wake up, you know, in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, and realize that they have been acting right in the way that society or their parents or their w for their girlfriend or whoever has told them to act. But it hasn't led to the outcomes that they actually want. It hasn't led to the connection or the depth or the fulfillment or the satisfaction that they've actually desired. And outside of that is the more sort of existential piece of it, which is that life has a large role in curating what your everyday experiences are going to look like. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that you can tell the truth. You can make the right decisions in building your business. You can do all the quote unquote, right things to create something or build something, a marriage, a relationship, a family, a business, et cetera. And life can have other plans for you. That there is a larger force outside of you, that there's a large circle of non influence, as Stephen Covey would call it in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There's this large circle, this large world and universe outside of you that you have no control or influence over. And that means that sometimes you'll make all the right decisions, you'll do all the right things, and still things won't work out. And so we have to start to come into contact with that notion that just because you do the right things doesn't mean that it's going to work out the way that you want every single, single time. And that's part of the maturation process. That's part of the deepening process as a man to deepen and mature within your own masculine is to know that you can trek forward in your life and your relationship in your business, you can do all the right things and shit still might not work out. And to not let that stop you from going in the direction that you want to go from building the things and creating the things that you want to create. And to honor the fact that that there are larger forces outside of you that sometimes are going to infringe and blow you off course and cause havoc in your life. That that is going to happen. And the acceptance of that while still maintaining your direction in life by still saying, this is what I want to build, this is who I want to be. This is the type of life and family and relationship I want to have. And to still truck forward and tread forward on that is incredibly, incredibly powerful. So to wrap this all up, what can we take away from these pieces and what can we begin to implement? Well, number one is to take up a little bit more space in your life. I have worked with so many men who are sitting in the backseat of their life while other people drive or nobody's at the steering wheel, right? They're sitting in the Back seat. Or even, as one of the guys said at one of the men's weekends recently, he is like, I'm in the trunk trying to drive the car, but I can't see where we're going, you know, and so. And his family's in the front, you know, his wife's in the front seat and kids are in the back seat, and he's all the way at the back. And so take up a little bit more space in your life. Plan a trip or an adventure that you've always wanted to go on. Pick a hobby that is just for you. Take up something that you want to build, that you want to create, that you want to explore, that you want to adventure in that you want to deepen in. Right. Maybe you've been doing Brazilian jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai or something like that, and you want to go deeper into that practice. Or, you know, I do photography, which is one of my habits, and part of my commitment as I entered into 40 was to deepen my skills as a photographer. And so take something up. And if you're not too sure where to start, just write down a list of 5 to 10 things and start to knock them off. Right? You. You don't need to know because some men will get into this phase and they're like, well, I actually, I realize I don't know what I want. I don't know what I actually like. And so just write down a bunch of things that you think you might enjoy, that you think you might like, and start to tackle them. Right. If number one is like hiking and you've got mountain biking is number two, and you've got woodworking is number three, you know, you got yoga or like, whatever it is, just start to try them out and let that be the adventure. And slowly. What you'll find over time is you'll really get a sense of, actually, I really love this, and I didn't like that at all. And who you actually are and what you actually desire and what's going to give you a deeper level of fulfillment and satiation in your life will start to come online. So if you are completely unsure, try that and begin wherever you are today. So thanks so much for tuning in. Feel free to share with this with somebody that you know is going to enjoy it. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.