Connor Beaton argues men hit midlife crises around 40 because they lack cyclical biological markers like menstruation, leaving them dependent on external validation through career and status. When mortality hits, that foundation collapses. The fix: shift to internal validation and accept that doing everything right doesn't guarantee the outcome you want.
All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Today we're going to be 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 so we're going to 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 to actually lead a better life, regardless of how old you are. So. 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 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 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 from 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, real 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 of 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 and 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. To a monthly cycle that will play out basically for 30, 40 years. And then when she goes through menopause, that cycle will. Will stop, and she'll. 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. 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'. They can have been living out of 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. 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. 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. And they don't develop an internal sense of rigorous validation of, 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 of the marriage that he's in, he might start a family, he might 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 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. 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 time. 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 get 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 this with somebody that you know is going to enjoy it. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.
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