Why Do Men Have A Midlife Crisis

[balli hi]

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/187750/Why-do-men-have-a-midlife-crisis-

OSCAR-winner Tim Robbins has admitted he has struggled with turning middle-aged but he is not alone in re-evaluating his life after hitting 40

The irony is that he is one of the few middle-aged men in Hollywood who lets his hair go grey – actually it’s nearer white these days – rather than colour it.

But that doesn’t mean that Tim Robbins, star of The Shawshank Redemption, is immune from the affliction that can hit men any time between their mid-30s and their mid-50s.

Now 51 and separated from his long-term partner, actress Susan Sarandon, he admitted yesterday that he has been battling a midlife crisis. He was so conscious of his own trauma that he toyed with calling a collection of songs that he is set to release later this year The Midlife Crisis Album.

“I think we all go through something. It’s inevitable, it’s unavoid­able,” he said on yesterday’s edition of Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4. “You’re staring some kind of frightening thing down. You can call it an existential crisis. It’s when you pass 40, actually.

I think we all go through something. It’s inevitable, it’s unavoid­able

Inherently we double our age when we think about life. At 40 you can imagine 80 but at 50 you can’t imagine 100. And you think: ‘You know that hill? I’ve already been at the top of it.’ And you start thinking, ‘How many years do I have left?’ It’s at those moments you go, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’”

The classic symptoms of a midlife crisis are when middle-aged men start yearning to trade their cars or their wives – or both – for a younger model. As a celebrity toyboy – he is 12 years younger than Sarandon who was his partner for 23 years – the famously private Robbins did not reveal whether he has acquired a taste for younger women.

But the father of two – who won a best supporting actor Oscar for the film Mystic River and directed the death-row drama Dead Man Walking for which Sarandon, its star, won an Oscar – said the turmoil happened after the collapse of a film project. It left him asking what he had not yet done in his life and the answer was cutting an album.

“I have all these songs and nobody knows them, nobody has ever heard them, and I wanted to see if they’re any good,” he said.

For good measure he also asked for a surfboard as his luxury to take to his imaginary desert island, revealing that he has recently had a couple of lessons in the sport more associated with wiry teen­agers and is keen to take more.

In seeking to live life to the full before it is too late, he is going down a well-trodden path for celebrities at his time of life.

Comedian Lenny Henry, 51, recently separated from Dawn French after 25 years of marriage. In 1999 he admitted to having had a “classic midlife crisis” in the wake of allegations he’d had a fling.

Film star Harrison Ford was assumed to have experienced something similar when he divorced Melissa Mathison, his wife of more than 20 years, shortly after turning 60. He also marked the occasion by starting to wear an earring and began a relationship with actress Calista Flockhart, 22 years his junior.

The term “midlife crisis” was coined in 1965 by Elliott Jaques, a controversial Canadian-born psychologist who taught at Brunel University in West London. He was best known in his lifetime for a theory of management which held that hierarchies are a natural form of social organisation.

But he also studied the working patterns of creative geniuses and noticed that writers, composers and artists such as Charles Dickens, Ludwig van Beethoven and Paul Gauguin went through periods of agonising self-doubt, frequently accompanied by self-inflicted domestic upheaval, followed by a revitalised blossoming in a new direction.

Thus at 46, Dickens abandoned his wife and 10 children. He took up with an 18-year-old actress and went on to write two of his most successful novels, A Tale Of Two Cities and Great Expectations.

In a paper called Death And The Midlife Crisis, Jaques explained this process as “the adult encounter with the conception of life to be lived in the setting of an approaching personal death”.

“I do think the midlife crisis exists and it can strike at increasingly younger times, particularly during the recession we’ve been experiencing,” says behaviour expert Dr Pam Spurr.

“In my agony mailbag I’m hearing from men in their mid-30s who fear for their jobs or who have lost work. It can also strike as late as the early to mid-50s. Sometimes men don’t realise they’re in the grip of it and it’s their wives or partners who start questioning what they’re doing or saying about their life.

“The key so often is that you see them doing something they wanted to do in their 20s but couldn’t because they’d gone to university and straight into a career and then maybe got married. So the man who suddenly takes up guitar playing at 49 or gets his motorcycle at 46 – he is trying to claw back time and do these things before it’s too late.

I heard on the trailer for Desert Island Discs that Tim Robbins had made an album and I immediately thought ‘midlife crisis’.”

She says that intimations of mortality are bound to affect women too but for some reason they do not suffer the same turmoil. “Women experience the same fears that a man may experience. Some crisis in their life may signal mortality, perhaps the death of an ageing parent or the loss of a job, or someone younger than them has been promoted.

But on the whole women cope better with these fears - at least outwardly - and we also still tend to have stronger female friends who we can discuss our feelings with. Men, by contrast, may feel it’s humiliating or a loss of face to talk about going through a crisis.”

It was key to Elliott Jaques’s original notion of the midlife crisis that it resulted in a creative flowering.

Gauguin fled his marriage, family and job in a bank to live in the South Seas and paint canvases of beautiful naked women now seen as masterpieces, while Beethoven came out of a suicidal phase and reinvented the symphony.

But Dr Spurr says the reality can be more prosaic for most men. “For a minority of people it does become a very positive phase in their life but for too many men it becomes a period of depression in which they don’t grow,” she explains.

“They don’t know what they’re looking for. They cause chaos in their families and they may have an affair or walk out completely. There’s a whole range of experiences and outcomes but I always advise people to take it seriously if their father or the man they love is going through a midlife crisis. It really can have devastating consequences.”

[Raistlin]

That is so depressing, I think I am going to buy a motorbike.

[Phoenix999]

I was told I had a mid life crisis simply because when I hit 50 I went out and bought this

Some people just do not understand

[Raistlin]

Nice wheels old man

[jw67]

I was told I had a mid life crisis simply because when I hit 50 I went out and bought this

Some people just do not understand

Ooh,if I get a 350Z when I'm 50 then I can't wait

[Raistlin]

I was told I had a mid life crisis simply because when I hit 50 I went out and bought this

Some people just do not understand

Ooh,if I get a 350Z when I'm 50 then I can't wait

They won't be making them by then...

[jw67]

I was told I had a mid life crisis simply because when I hit 50 I went out and bought this

Some people just do not understand

Ooh,if I get a 350Z when I'm 50 then I can't wait

They won't be making them by then...

That came out like a compliment but,I know better than that you smooth talking b :censor: d

:D

[Raistlin]

Ooh,if I get a 350Z when I'm 50 then I can't wait

They won't be making them by then...

That came out like a compliment but,I know better than that you smooth talking b d

I am so sorry, you know I would never knowingly compliment you...

[balli hi]

I was told I had a mid life crisis simply because when I hit 50 I went out and bought this

Some people just do not understand

What a beauty Why did you get rid of it , or do you still have it , and have you taken up guitar lessons of late ? bought a motor bike ? traded the missus in for a younger more athletic model , dyed your hair , or decided to cut a few records , if the answer is yes to at least two of those questions , then get help and quick :lol2:

[Bizarra]

If he has done those things, he doesn't NEED help He is doing very nicely without any & is to be encouraged & complimented.

The answer to growing older is to fight back & not surrender to it

[balli hi]

If he has done those things, he doesn't NEED help He is doing very nicely without any & is to be encouraged & complimented.

The answer to growing older is to fight back & not surrender to it

Or to grow old gracefully ..... all good harmless fun Vic , just a bit of leg pulling you understand :D

[Bizarra]

If he has done those things, he doesn't NEED help He is doing very nicely without any & is to be encouraged & complimented.

The answer to growing older is to fight back & not surrender to it

Or to grow old gracefully ..... all good harmless fun Vic , just a bit of leg pulling you understand :D

Sorry, Balli ! It is better to grow old DISgracefully than to sit back & accept it

Wine, Women & song & flashy cars is the prescription

Don't worry Balli I don't take offence easily. If Raist hasn't succeeded by now, I'm immune

[Raistlin]

Flashy cars

but you drive a Corolla which is definitely an old mans car...

[Bizarra]

Flashy cars

but you drive a Corolla which is definitely an old mans car...

You are just jealous <_< The only thing Toyota about an Aygo is the Badge

Besides, there is no point in having a car that doesn't stand out so that our Traffic Wardens can recognise it immediately, & turn a blind eye

[Raistlin]

They are probably worried that if they slap a ticket on it the weight of it may cause the body Shell to collapse

[Bizarra]

They are probably worried that if they slap a ticket on it the weight of it may cause the body shell to collapse

They know me! & know I know a man who knows a man

They also know that if that happened, I'd sue & with the "Compo" I wouldn't buy an Aygo

[Raistlin]

That's because you wouldn't have enough pennies...

[Bizarra]

That's because you wouldn't have enough pennies...

I wouldn't have enough pennies coz we're in line with the rest of the Civilised World. ....... I'd have enough cents, though!

[Raistlin]

That's because you wouldn't have enough pennies...

If I were to buy another car I'd have enough cents not to buy a Corolla !

Many a true word said in jest :D

[Bizarra]

That's because you wouldn't have enough pennies...

If I were to buy another car I'd have enough cents not to buy a Corolla !

Many a true word said in jest :D

and turned into lies by unscrupulous users of the "edit" button

[Raistlin]

It's a skill like any other :D

[Phoenix999]

What a beauty Why did you get rid of it , or do you still have it , and have you taken up guitar lessons of late ? bought a motor bike ? traded the missus in for a younger more athletic model , dyed your hair , or decided to cut a few records , if the answer is yes to at least two of those questions , then get help and quick

The Z had to go because I do virtually all of my drive in and around Havering.... oh well I had 2 years of great fun.

In response to your questions I can answer No to the guitar, no to a motor bike, no to trading in the missus, no to dying my hair and no to the records thingy.... phew silly me

However I did buy this baby a year ago so maybe I am a lost cause

[jw67]

P6 with Buick V8 =

[Bizarra]

P6 with Buick V8 =

She's a beaut

Too late now, Steve, but my advice would have been to keep shtum about her :shutit: You may have noticed the stick I get about my Corolla Executive GL, from a mere Aygo driver, whose name begins with "R"

[Raistlin]

As if I would....