Over the last twenty years, hundreds of high functioning middle aged men have found their way into my counseling practice. Some of these guys talk about their struggling marriages, some about loss of satisfaction at work. Most of them hope to come in, get the wheels back on their bus and return to the familiar roads they were cruising not long ago. What none of them wants to admit is that they are trapped in a mid-life crisis.
Something about that phrase, “mid-life crisis,” looms like a spectre haunting our imaginations. Nobody wants their personal story reduced to a cliché, cast in the role of a thin-haired guy in a Porsche trying to pick up girls half his age. Men in mid-life don’t want to be in a crisis. We don’t want to be struggling. After all the work we’ve put into building this life, we expect to be happier than we are and assume it’s some sort of failure that we’re not.
So what’s the deal? Despite decades of living with the best of intentions, a good dose of intelligence, achieving various measures of success in the world, why do so many middle aged men find themselves wrestling with unseen forces? And when we do go to the mat with these dark powers, how can we handle them in ways that build inner strength rather than leave us with more anger, insecurity, anxiety, shame or doubt?
The term “mid-life crisis” was coined in the mid-twentieth century and gained currency as the boomers started to glimpse the unbearable shadows of their self-satisfied lifestyle in the eighties. As a term, I don’t find it to be all that helpful. It just seems saddled with associations that narrow and limit the vitality of what it otherwise could be.
If you buy into a narrative arc of life that pervades the modern world – that life is a linear progression from birth to death, with emphasis on progress – then any interruption to that upward trend will be greeted as either a failing or weakness. When the inner demons you’ve kept at bay for years seem to gather strength, it can feel like the structure of your life is deteriorating. It’s a problem that needs to be solved. Yet, over time, the “problem” reveals itself to be unresponsive to your solutions. You may find yourself saying things like: “Is this just more proof of my failing? What is happening here? My life is so good on paper, and I really can’t point to anything so awful that should be making me feel this way. What the hell is wrong with me?”
What if the hauntings of mid-life were not a personal failing? What if humans have been having mid-life crises for millenia prior to the invention of the term? If that’s the case, perhaps it’s not a pitfall to avoid at all, but rather an essential component of living a meaningful life? What if the challenge at mid-life is something as natural, perhaps, as experiencing puberty, getting and overcoming sickness, orgasm, childbirth, and sleep?
Human history is replete with evidence that mid-life is a threshold—not a failure. Even Dante Alighieri began his Inferno with the lines:
So what if the struggle of middle age men is not simply a personal problem? What if you are experiencing something universally essential in your development as a fully mature, wise and soulful individual?
If you’d like to struggle less at mid-life, then shift from viewing the crisis as a pathology to seeing it as an opportunity. Recast the narrative structure of your life. Suspend for a while the view that your life should be a linear progression from birth through childhood to adulthood: a straightforward path where through learning and engaging you get progressively better at doing life with better and better results to show for it. In this model, episodes of recession and setbacks to the forward progress are fundamentally problematic and should be avoided.
As an alternative, consider your instead as a series of transformations. Imagine periods of intense challenge may be initiatory thresholds that work to kill off outdated strategies and outlooks in order to usher in the emergence of a new version of you. In a transformational view, the challenges themselves are simply life demonstrating the insufficiency of your skills and mindset to meet the current moment.
If you look back on the arc of your life, what episodes can you cast in the mold of transformative periods? The birth of your first child? The death of a loved one? A tragic illness or accident? A loss of innocence in some form? Can you see moments of your life that interrupted the linear development of your identity; much like a chrysalis interrupts the life and identity of a caterpillar?
In cultures rooted in the natural cycles of life, individuals are supported at these thresholds of transformation through rites of passage – practices that ritualize the death of the old self, enact challenges which test the initiant on the skills, strengths and mindset needed to thrive in the next phase of life, and welcome the transformed individual into their next chapter of life. Living in a society that lacks such social infrastructure, we are left to view these difficult passages through a psychological lens that pathologizes our suffering rather than ennobles it as a catalyst for growth and transformation.
As middle age men beset by seemingly existential challenges, if we’re unwilling to recognize the transformational processes at work, we risk forestalling the growth and strength needed to inhabit our life as wise, fulfilled elders. We risk fighting the tides of time; unwilling to let go of attachment to our waning vigor and thus unable to establish ourselves in the present season of life in an honest and authentic way.
In a well circulated story illustrating this point, a woman came across a cocoon trembling with life. She watched as the outline of a nascent butterfly strained to push its way through its sac, yearning to obey the call of its destiny to spread its wings and fly out into the world. Taking pity on this struggling beauty, the woman made a slit in the cocoon wall to facilitate its emergence. What her good intentions were blind to was that in the butterfly’s struggle, the strain of pushing against its confining walls created the force needed for fluids to surge into the new arteries, organs and capillaries. Without that pressure generated from the struggle, the life force cannot inhabit its body.
On this episode of the Men’s Therapy Podcast, Marc Azoulay and Mark J. Platten reframe the midlife crisis as initiation, exploring archetypes, shadow work, and the journey from prince to king, where responsibility and service create true freedom.
Taking the term “mid-life crisis” at face value, we glean that it is a challenge poised between the first and second halves of life. If we see this solely through the lens of a linear progress/regress mindset, then it’s something pathological to be avoided. In that case, best to cut a slit in your cocoon and flee the pressure of that struggle. Go get some medications, buy a sports car, deny the reality of your aging and find what you crave to distract yourself from this darkness.
A warning for middle age men who go this route: the initiatory call will continue to demand your participation! If the divorce didn’t get your attention, your dying parents may. If that doesn’t work, maybe your addictions will start causing a scene. Whatever is waiting for you to be dealt with as an adult will not simply go away.
When viewed as a series of transformations, the mid-life crisis is seen as an initiation required to embody ourselves as second-half-of-life-adults. In other words, we don’t get to be a true elder without letting parts of ourselves dissolve within the cocoon and then push our way through to emerge into the second half of life, transformed, initiated and humbled.
Richard Rohr, a contemporary Franciscan mystic, theologian, and men’s work pioneer, extends Carl Jung’s thinking on the core functions of the two halves of life in his remarkable book, Falling Upwards. Rohr puts forward three questions essential for the first half of life:
Our job from birth through mid-life is to discover the resources needed to survive and make our way in the world, while finding the people we will be walking with on this path of life. We solve problems, we gain strength through setting goals, earning money and, one hopes, find some fulfillment. Once our egos have figured out how to survive, it then often turns to figuring out how to play the game of life for more and better results. With accumulated resources, skills and knowledge middle age men should have some measure of confidence in their ability to support themselves and their loved ones.
Many middle age men I work with have thrived through their first half of life. They have met hardships and faced some struggles, but, more or less, they’ve continued to check the boxes they were told were required of them. They’ve figured out how to play the game pretty darn well, and have reached a cruising altitude with all the benefits of stability and outward confidence.
Then, like a handsome and well fed caterpillar, something disturbing begins to stir in our depths. With the business of the first half of life largely accomplished and the march of time continuing towards our inevitable demise, some inexorable force compels a transformation in order to meet this next phase of life.
On this episode of the Men’s Therapy Podcast, Marc Azoulay and Dr. Kyle Hulsebus dismantle testosterone myths, explore midlife archetypes, and show why breathwork, humility, and small somatic practices matter more than bloodwork for men over 40.
When you feel the disturbing force of transformation stir within you, take a lesson from the caterpillar. Create a cocoon. To effectively meet the metamorphosis of mid-life requires taking time to unhook from the busy-ness and demands of the outer world in order to cultivate greater curiosity and skill in looking inward at what is stirring within you. You will likely be challenged to reduce or even give up, for some time at least, the habits you’ve grown so accustomed to in your first half of life.
Cutting down on social events, reducing your work load, unhooking from pressures and demands of others can feel like giving up on life. To say no to certain habits in order to spend time in quiet contemplation with yourself can feel like crawling into your own casket. That’s one way to know you’re in a productive cocoon: it’s quiet and scary.
While in the cocoon, an essential process you will undertake is a metabolization of the old life. This is about facing yourself and your history in an honest and unflinching way. As a middle age men, we have likely warehoused our share of shame, grief, anger, hurt and pain of all sorts. This time is about letting go of what we’ve held onto or actively avoided for decades and learning how to open up to who we truly are in our depths.
This is also a time to host honest and probing questions about what truly matters. Explore memories and people who reflect what you deeply cherish. Contemplate times in your life where you’ve betrayed your values and acted foolishly; areas where you harbor regret, shame or grief. Don’t do this to find fault or blame. Do it in order to get clear and honest with what it takes to live with integrity to your values in the reality of the world as it is. An essential mid-life skill is in learning how to span your highest values and your deepest yearnings while humbly remaining accountable to your shortcomings as a uniquely flawed human being.
If you are reading this during a time of walking the dark woods of mid-life, ask yourself:
This last question is an essential to staying buoyant in the muck of life. As you delve into the depths, you need to regularly return to something that brings you to life. For me it’s always been coming back to nature and moving my body. For others it could be poetry, art, walking the dog, spending time with friends and family, fishing, golf, woodworking, or any number of things that bring you into the moment in a way that just feels right to you. Those practices are little warm cottages of refuge in dark, lonely woods. Return to them regularly, but remember that until you fully emerge, you are still on a journey.
What should middle age men expect to find on the other side of this transformation? That’s ultimately for you to find out.
If all goes well, the most basic level you will develop an unshakeable courage in your soul for having honestly faced all that you had been unwilling to address up to this point. In doing so, you will have earned your seat at the table of fully fledged adults. You will have freed yourself from the need to be seen by others in any particular way. You will find the inner harbors of defensiveness, fear, animosity, scorn and judgment to have emptied out. You will have come closer to entering into the family of elders who, in their wisdom and humility, see eye to eye with all humanity.
Emerging on the other side of the dark woods of mid-life, you will find a new way to inhabit your life. A way that you have uniquely authored. A way that suits you far better than the outdated stories you crafted as a child. You will go on suffering and struggling, but you will not be the victim. As the protagonist in your own life, you will be blessed with the knowledge that who you are doesn’t depend on what you have or what’s happened to you. You will be, as has always been, the measure of you.
If you would like support navigating through these dark woods, reach out to a trusted ally. You can contact me at www.vitallifecc.com, explore options such as men’s retreats, groups, coaching and other support resources at MTO, or seek out a trusted counselor or coach in your area.
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Counselor whose path began at Brown and deepened at Naropa, where mindfulness and clinical practice merged. Over two decades of mentoring, program leadership, and community building have been rooted in compassion and empowerment. Joy comes from guiding others toward liberation from suffering, while family, nature, hunting, foraging, and cooking bring balance and gratitude beyond the work.
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