Is my husband suffering from a mid-life crisis?

What are my options?

Summary: Since men are more likely to go through a midlife crisis than women, it leaves wives and girlfriends totally confused when they notice that their men are not the same. If a woman does not deal with all the changes, she might find out that the man has either left her for another woman or completely thrown her out of his life.

Samantha writes, "My husband and I have been married 27 years and he will be 49 years of age shortly. I have become concerned because everything he does in life is all about him and his needs. He is always at the gym, he bought a second car just for him, he has taken up cigar smoking and now collects guns. I have dealt with all of this for some time but now he pays no attention to me to the point he ignores me. When he does talk to me it is always about politics. What should I do ? I admit I am losing interest in him and am really not sure if I love him anymore. He is just not the man I married. Also I did want to mention that I cannot get him to help make any home repairs or get things done that he would always do in the past. Do you have any advice for me?"

Around this age, many men and lots of (professional, driven, ambitious, career-focused) women go through a phase when they start re-evaluating their lives. While most experts disagree that anything like this exists, but in common language, we refer to this as mid life crisis. I am 45 and maybe going through some of these emotions myself. Life has been good but we see signs of aging (personally for me, after having a perfect set of eyes, having to use reading glasses has been a traumatic revelation for me that I am entering a different age group) and wonder how to make the best of the years left. We all wanted to do big things, get rich, and have an awesome life.

Some things turned out good and some not so much. By this time, most of us have also accumulated some wealth and we start recognizing that there is a time for engaging in some of our passions before we become too old to miss out on even more things. We already regret so many other things that we missed out on either due to lack of money or time or passion.

That set of emotions explains a lot of his actions. I see them harmless things that a man (provided he can afford them) has some right to do, but what troubles me is that he has thrown you out of your life. This is also the time many men and women reevaluate their relationship and wonder if that is the
person that they want to spend the remaining years of their lives.

It so happens that their spouses (whether they realize it or not) have also changed over time and want things that are different from what they wanted when they first fell in love and got married. This is the age with very high rate of divorce (years of accumulated grievances in marriage get amplified around this time) or falling into a pattern where a couple is technically married but is not in love, does not have awesome sex, and is just together for economic or social reasons. Some of these people get a lover, others get mistresses, and those that can do anything to change their lives, fall into depression.

You have some thinking to do. If your husband is ignoring you because you have failed to share his newly acquired passions or are looking forward to a time of slowing down and taking it easy, then, the problems in your marriage are fundamental.

You can see if you can join him in some ways and enthusiastically become his partner in discovering new things in life, now that you are wiser, smarter, and richer than you were in your 20s and 30s.

If he is ignoring you because he does like how you look or how you treat him, you can see how to work on those things to save your marriage. Communication is always very important.

If, however, his lack of interest in you is because you two are so different now and have very different visions about how to spend the rest of your lives together, then, you need to see if leaving him is an option. I am not a big fan of destroying a 27 year old marriage just because the man likes guns and working out (which by the way is a great habit to ward off heart diseases and live healthy) and you would rather read a book or go to a classical music concert. You can always strike a deal as a couple in which he can do most things that he wants but joins you for some and you also make an effort to learn new things to appreciate what he is doing. In other words, please do make an effort to see if you can come to some kind of a compromise on spending the second half of your life.

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