Midlife Mastery Journal

Living at Statistical Ground Zero

"Life," they say "begins at 40." In so many ways, 'they' got it right for a change! Regardless of how we might be feeling about it inside, by age 40, the world is ready to take us seriously. We have achieved a degree of success, and everyone around us is prepared to take us seriously. By 40, we're firmly ensconced in 'adulthood' and we've had at least some opportunity to wield a power and authority that we only dreamed of when we were adolescents. I have to say 'regardless of how we might feel' because secretly every adult retains some of that sense of the 'little child in the big world' and the 'terrified teen' inside an often very competent adult exterior. If you haven't figured it out by now, let me assure you that it takes a long time to 'finally, really, truly grow up.'

Whether or not you're ready for it, midlife also marks your shift from the sidelines to mid-field in the game of life. If you were very fortunate in your early years, you may have been spared from having to deal with what I'm choosing to call the "ten terrible transitions." Few people are given the burden of having to endure all ten; however, most people have to endure most of them, and, the longer you live, the higher the statistical probability that it's going to be your turn to face each them. Of the ten terrible transitions, nine of them generally happen at midlife. The longer you've been able to avoid having to endure them, the closer they're coming to you — at least the ones that you're destined to have to endure. Let's look at them.

The Heartbreak of Midlife Addiction

One of the most obvious signs of the onset of midlife is the appearance of those dreaded signs of physical aging. It seems to start with the hair: graying hair, hair loss, and/or hair growing profusely where it never grew before. Then there's the midriff bulges that go both laterally and fore-and-aft. There are many other unmistakable signs, like wrinkling and splotching of the skin, and so on. All these things tend to appear long before we feel the effects of the hormonal changes (menopause and andropause) that we associate with midlife. Therefore, the first signs of midlife attack us where we're most sensitive: in our self-image — our sense of health and well-being. When you start hearing yourself saying things like, "I've got to watch my weight" or "I really need to get more exercise" or (even worse) your doctor starts saying those things to you, the guessing stops: you're at midlife!

What do you do? If you're like many people, you begin watching your diet and getting involved in an exercise regimen, because you want to hang on to the appearance of youth for as long as possible. Doesn't that sound terrifically healthy? On the surface, that seems to be not only the obvious, but also the best choice, when, in fact, that could be the start of a downward spiral that very often ends up not only damaging your health and robbing you of your sense of well-being, but could also destroy your career and tear apart your family. Am I exaggerating? Not in the least! Nobody sets out to ruin his or her life; that outcome only results from a steady stream of small, seemingly insignificant poor choices that eventually lead to a bad end. We call this an error cascade: when a series of small, almost unnoticeable missteps conclude in catastrophic results. For the person entering the midlife transition, it most often begins with the mistaken belief that he or she is 'going downhill' and that somehow the process is reversible. How this one seemingly innocuous idea can lead to heartbreak represents the rest of this story, and 'getting' the moral of this story all depends on understanding the nature of addictive behavior.

Men Don't Know What They Don't Know

In October of this year, the American Psychological Association issued a report on stress by gender. Here is some of what they said:

In June 2008, more people reported physical and emotional symptoms due to stress than they did in 2007, and nearly half (47 percent) of adults reported that their stress has increased in the past year. More people report fatigue (53 percent compared to 51 percent in 2007), feelings of irritability or anger (60 percent compared to 50 percent in 2007) and lying awake at night (52 percent compared to 48 percent in 2007) as a result of stress, in addition to other symptoms including lack of interest or motivation, feeling depressed or sad, headaches and muscular tension. Women were more likely than men to report physical symptoms of stress like fatigue (57 percent compared to 49 percent), irritability (65 percent compared to 55 percent), headaches (56 percent compared to 36 percent) and feeling depressed or sad (56 percent compared to 39 percent).

I find this information intriguing because of the words in the first line: "people reported." Of course, there's no other way that researchers can gain this sort of information except by querying their subjects, and, of course, the resulting data are necessarily subjective. That's the problem: women are far more acutely in touch with how they feel. Men face some significant cultural barriers when it comes to expressing how they feel.

The Male Brain - Hardwired to Fail?

As if the emotional, social, cultural and hormonal changes that overtake a man during the midlife transition aren't severe enough, he also has to factor in a biologically-based uphill battle that he has to fight to maintain his place in the world. Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen from Cambridge University writes, "The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy; the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems." Natural selection has favored the male for processes like figuring things out and building things. It has favored women for making and maintaining connections.

It should therefore come as no surprise that the world of commerce and industry has remained, up until now, male-dominated. After all, we men invented it. It should also come as no surprise that women have had a more difficult time breaking into the system because these male-dominated organizations can seem to women like a visit to a foreign country. For the most part, from the time human society became agrarian, men most often made the tools and taught women how to use them. This has remained true until the end of the Twentieth Century; since then, everything has started to change very rapidly.

No Little Pill Will Fix It

Over the past number of years, there has been an explosion of advertising around pharmaceuticals that are designed to alleviate problems with ED [erectile dysfunction] in men (for the drug companies and advertising agencies, the embarrassment of ED has apparently replaced the heartbreak of psoriasis). Of course, this condition can be a serious problem: according to the drug company sites, almost 50% of all men between the ages of 40 to 70 experience some form of ED. I fear that men (and their partners) who are very concerned with performance issues may be rushing off to find a quick-and-easy solution without fully appreciating the situation. ED is just one of the symptoms of andropause, and unless you address the broader spectrum of symptoms, the results are apt to be a temporary 'fix' at best, and very likely wholly unsatisfying.

Rather than focusing on just one symptom of andropause, Dr. Jed Diamond lists ten symptoms that need to be recognized and addressed. They are:

1.Reduced libido or sex drive
2.Reduced potency or ability to obtain and maintain an erection
3.Fatigue or loss of vitality
4.Irritability and grumpiness
5.Aches,pains,and stiffness
6.Depression that often manifests as anger or boredom
7.Night sweats or “hot flashes”
8.Dryness and thinning of the skin
9.Restlessness and a longing to break free
10.Weight gain,especially acquiring a potbelly.

The Most Terrible Feeling of All

One day my father, as a young man, came home from work to find the apartment cleaned out of furniture and swept clean. His wife (not my mother) was gone. Needless to say, reconciliation wasn't an option. I also know of a woman who was so alienated from her husband that, from time to time, he'd come down to breakfast and find a note on the kitchen table saying, "Gone." She'd reappear after a week or so traveling or visiting family. Seldom do you hear of men doing the 'cut and run' routine. As a matter of fact, the more frequent story tells the story of men who who have become obsessed with the object of their affections.

In spite of their bravado, men easily become dependent on women. The same way most women wouldn't leave home and leave her children behind, most men wouldn't leave their wife behind (at least until he had found and hooked up with someone else). Men cling to their wives not out of a sense of responsibility (the way women cling to their children) but out of a sense of need. Talking about his own sex, Dr. Jed Diamond writes, ". . . we give a lot of our power to women. Our sense of self-esteem and value depends totally on their view of us. We become 'nice guys' who are forever trying to please the women in our lives. Or we become controlling and mean as we take out our anger on the women we are so dependent upon."

Willpower, the Only Cure for Gravity

I have a confession to make: as I get older, taking care of myself becomes more and more of a chore. Additionally, as andropause continues to take its toll, bodily maintenance keeps looking more and more like an uphill (and losing) battle. Add that to the cultural expectations that tell us men that we're not supposed to pay attention to things like our diet, health, fitness, looks, etc., and you've got a recipe for neglect. I don't consider myself an old guy (yet), but I'm noticing certain habits and phenomena creeping in that, frankly, disturb me. Have you noticed that older men very often wear traces of their latest meal on their shirt-fronts? Is it because we're paying less attention to what we're doing, or is it that there's more shirt-front there (and at a more obtuse angle) than there used to be?

There's even another possibility I could consider: you know, I've done all this before, many, many, many times. How many times have you performed all those required bodily and social functions that you have to go through (nearly) every single day of your life? Don't you get tired of the routine sometimes? I know I do. Even when I try deliberately to vary my daily schedule, it still seems boring: how many ways can you vary eating breakfast or brushing your teeth? I've already eaten over 22,000 breakfasts. After a while, it all gets sort of . . . well . . . redundant. I find it very hard to drum up enough willpower to convince myself that physical maintenance is all that critically important, compared to all the other issues that are fighting for my attention from day to day.

Don't Confuse Me with the Facts!

There are (among other things) at least two features that we guys are famous for: not asking for directions, and never reading the instructions before assembling a new 'toy'. That describes me fairly well. I remember driving through the maze of streets in Salerno, Italy, trying to get to the other side of the city. Craig was insisting that I stop and ask for directions, but not I! And I made it through perfectly well, and we were on our way. (I never told him that as long as I kept the ocean to my left, I was sure we were going in the right direction.) And, as for instruction books, I don't know why the manufacturers even bother: after all, most men won't let anyone else assemble anything, and it's a matter of pride when we can do it without help. That's how we are.

Don't get me wrong: I think most of us know that most women could do at least as well in the assembly department as we men (and that some of us men aren't all that adept at it anyway). On the other hand, we believe it's our job in the great scheme of things to put things together. We also believe that it's an innate gift we were given by virtue of our masculinity. We somehow believe that we shouldn't have to learn how things work; we should just know. It's not surprising, then, to find out that most men (as well as many women) are quite unaware of how the human body (especially the female human body) works. We've all got one. Isn't that enough?

Could It Be Male Menopause?

I'd like to remind you about the function of hormones in the human body. Some people unfortunately underestimate their function and importance. Hormones are the chemical messengers that control the operation of all the body's systems. You could liken them to the way a television signal causes the set to display picture and sound in your living room. Although the nervous system uses electrical impulses as one of its means of maintaining communication between different areas and functions in the body, even these signals depend on biochemical reactions to do their jobs. Why should you care? Because, as you age these chemical messengers change, too.

Everybody knows about the physical and emotional disruptions caused by puberty. It's the stuff of legend. We also know quite a lot about the effects of menopause in women: the effects are definitely hormonal and go way beyond just the cessation of the menstrual cycle. Now, for a decade, researchers like Jed Diamond have been writing about a similar phenomenon that affects men equally severely (although with fewer observable physical symptoms). This apparent lack of symptoms has led some to question the existence of 'male menopause', but, according to Diamond, it's existence is both scientifically provable and widely observable.

When Are You 'Over the Hill'?

A little over a month ago, I had one of those 'milestone' birthdays . . . you know the kind . . . they're the ones that end in a '0'. It didn't bother me too much this time. Actually, I felt rather good about reaching that age at a time when people are saying, "You're kidding! You're that old?" So, although this was certainly a milestone, it wasn't really a 'biggie' for me. For whatever reason, the 'biggie' was the BIG FIVE-O. That one hit me more than just a glancing blow. To be honest with you, I'm not entirely sure why that was. I'm wondering if one reason wasn't that, no matter how you slice it, that probably marked a watershed point in my life. Who knows, but it's highly likely that, at that time, I had more of life behind me than before me.

In the course of my gathering experience to share with you about midlife, one fact has become abundantly clear: nobody knows exactly when midlife occurs. When I asked people to define midlife, I got a broad range of answers. One person said that midlife was that period "between ages 35 and 55" (quite a reasonable guess, I think), while someone else suggested "60 to 80" (maybe this person hopes to live to about 150). Most people didn't quote any dates; they simply referred to a period that ushered in a second (and several said 'better') half of life. Must we leave the question unanswered?