What Happens When You Are Having A Midlife Crisis?

Being of an age where men and sometimes even women are going through mid-life crisis', it's incredibly interesting to see how different people react. They start making different decisions, and looking in the mirror and not particularly liking what they are seeing. You see a lot of discontentment amongst this crowd. 

So they go in search for what is missing, or at least the things that make them feel like they are missing out. Most suffer from a lack of self-confidence and a feeling that their lives are not being lived like they could be. They are disappointed and believe they can do and have more. But ultimately, they are unsure of how to go about it. Some do so silently, others are far more radical.

Some sure signs of a mid-life crisis:

The Affair

Their wives or husbands are busy working and doing all the things that they have done so for years, and all of a sudden the person going through a mid-life crisis decides that they don't want to be doing that stuff. They want to be doing what much younger, more exciting people are doing, like having sex with a younger, more vibrant partner. The problem is that having an affair is like taking cocaine, and can be addictive, and that is why we see so many divorces in people's 40's and 50's. 

The Fast Car

Buying the sports car that they always wanted so that they can feel young and alive and everyone will see them in the car and look. It's an ego booster for most and a sign that "they have made it" in case anyone hadn't already realised. But it's sad, because that scream for "look at me" is only a symptom of the problem at hand.


The Adoration

Business people often head to their publicists office so that they can generate publicity for themselves. They look for any angle and find themselves forever trying to keep their heads and opinions in column centremetres so that they are noticed by others and perhaps considered high profile. Other's just look for it by using charm and charisma to make people feel good and in return have the reciprocated.


The Party Animal

When you see a man over 50 in a nightclub, you know it's a sure sign that they are going through a midlife crisis. Worse still, if they are surrounded by people half their ages and/or taking drugs, they want to be young again and they've realised that their lives are perhaps in the last quarter or half. Young people see them as people that can buy them drinks, but other than that, males and females both come across as sleezy and disgusting. I'm sorry if you are one of those people and reading it, but as young people in my office say, "the old man in the corner buying drinks is just sleepy and old."

People often look for a list of signs to validate that someone is going through a midlife crisis. They often experience a combination of feelings, events and physical changes that indicate a transformation is at hand. Then they start making changes:

• Lifestyle changes
• Changing of habits
• Feeling good when they get hurt - just to feel is enough
• Wanting to run away from everything
• Desire to get into physical shape
• Shifting sleeping patterns
• Hanging out with a different generation and less with friends their own age
• Not wanting to feel trapped or tied down
• Doing things out of character
• Ignoring problems
• Being dismissive of everything and everyone

I see it all the time because I have hit my forties, and it makes me laugh. There is nothing worse for me than going to a nightclub, but if for whatever reason I find myself in one around the world, I always see the middle aged man in his 50's or 60's surrounded by scantily clothed girls in their 20's perving and buying them drinks and whatever else to keep them there. Some young girls like the fact that they can have a designer handbag and fly on a private jet when they would never in their lives have been able to afford it themselves.

If you are having a midlife crisis - see someone. You don't want to be this person. You have to appreciate every era that we go through and see the transformation as one that gives us the most out of life. Trying to turn back the clock or find people that "like you" for the wrong reasons, only leads to one day waking up and realising you have lost the best things in life by going down this road.