I was born the fifth of six children that survived. I was born poor and I didn’t know it but for the first 10 years of my life I did know to stay the hell out of my fathers way and far enough out of his reach or there would be no little Newman around the house.
I couldn’t understand my lot in life. He never seemed angry ay my older sisters and my younger brother born four years after my arrival was the apple of his eye. Although my bro could do no wrong, even if he did, it was taken out on me. I seemed the object of his pain and the source of his constant frustration with a life that had gone completely sour from what he first envisioned.
The year before I was born my father suffered an industrial accident that completely evaporated his youth. On a grain elevator construction project he lost footing on the roof and landed squarely on the railroad tracks beneath. Although everyone thought he was dead, he was discovered to be still breathing when the rescuers arrived, his skull had cracked open and he had lost much blood. This was in the days when surgery was equally as hit and miss; but they put him together before sending him back to work.
The corrupt workers compensation board at the time refused him leave of absence and the doctors signed off on a “clear bill of health” within days of his injury. This launched an 15 year struggle with the WCB to gain compensation for his fall. Forced to return to work without compensation benefits, he was immediately laid off as he could not remain standing through his often dizzy spells that would again fall him to the ground. He found other work in agriculture and the oil-patch but would often be sent home to my mother because of nose-bleeds and falling over on the job. His headaches were not to be believed.
I discovered many years later that the reason I became the object of his midlife anger and frustration had less to do with his fall and more to do with a large gap in his memory. Apparently during this time of struggle he never recalled his coming home from the out-of-town project and the weekend of romance he had with my mother. He only recalled the gentleman pastor that succored my mother’s pain in this struggle. Although my mother was faithful, my father had serious doubts. All of my brothers and sisters were born rugged and brunette; I was a handsome young blonde. In my father’s mind I was not to be here and I became a constant reminder of his life’s pain, a reminder of his failure, a reminder of all that was wrong with life – and he let me know in many ways.
I had arrived squarely in the middle of his midlife crisis and the launching of his Irritable Male Syndrome that would carry on the duration of my childhood.
I left home the day I turned sixteen – the legal age that a man could work in our country.
I watched my father withdraw from family and isolate himself and although his tragedy didn’t allow him to be elsewhere he would disappear in his own mind consumed with anger and frustration at his lot in life. His only release was his lashing out at me and the often “after-hours” debates with my mother that I would overhear. It took 15 years and ombudsman intervention to finally gain compensation for his fall. The WCB settled the suit with a lump-sum that was far from just recompense but it gave him a feeling of justification and restored an element of his pride. He was only able to work “full time” for the final two years before retirement. He had become an empty shell of a man that life had beaten. His strength of youth consumed in tragedy he became timid and detached from family and friends. His indecisiveness loomed and he was often led and covered of his weaknesses by my mother. When he finally died some 20 years later I sat at his hospital bedside and said “life is a bitch and then you die” and promptly went out to begin my own midlife crisis.
This crisis of my own was short-lived and although I reassessed some things it never went full blown. It launched periodic periods of reassessment of my life that I lived at full-speed convinced that I would never be like my father. This was my aspiration from the onset of early adulthood but following my father’s death it became a conviction.
Whatever mini-crisis was launched at my father’s death was quickly delayed upon meeting the love of my life some two years later. Phoenix came in to rock my world. It was the single most positive event in my life to finally find her. There was an instant recognition on both of our parts. I had heard about her before but when fate led me to her office I walked straight past secretaries and office people directly to her and extended my hand saying “you must be my star”. I had never met her, seen her, or had anyone describe her before but the burning sensation in my heart of a 5 hour drive at lightning speed to meet her for the first time only saw one person in that office that day and nobody else in my way counted. The room and office staff disappeared into mere shadows as I looked in her eyes for the first time and the force of recognition was so powerful that I think all she said was “oh-ohh, here he is; I’m a dead man”. She too had that recognition that was to never go away. Her name has been on my lips every day since.
A midlife crisis may be delayed, cut short, prolonged, or even disappear entirely. My ‘midlife transition’ was postponed for seven years but the inevitable was to come regardless of how happy life had become. The reassessment of midlife is a normal passage for men and often never really becomes a crisis of any significant proportion. Mine became triggered by a foreign virus that hospitalized me and stole my physical strength for a two year recovery period. During this time my mother passed away and triggered the depth of reassessment while reminding me of the overwhelming thoughts I had at my father’s death bed that “life is a bitch and then you die”.
Midlife Transition is first identified by a period of sadness that may even cause a man to become overtly depressed. Although I had periodic “warm-up sessions” of sadness and depression in the seven years following my father’s death; I had never really known depression in my life until midlife. When it first appeared I wondered what they put in the water! My personality was type AB positive and depression really had no place in my fast paced life.
When a man becomes saddened or depressed in a midlife reassessment he reviews all of the aspects of life that brought him this far. Although women tend to hold their depression inward; men tend to work their depression outward. A woman may take on blame during her depression; a man looks outward at others to blame. When he looks for a ‘reason’ for these feelings he assesses all that he is. Our first identity as males is in our career and work; we identify ourselves by what we do. If a man’s work is not to blame he then looks to his second primary identity – his home and marriage. Since his sadness is often felt in those quiet moments at home he identifies his sadness with ‘location’ and the result is that ‘home is to blame’. The first place to affix blame is on his wife and then his children.
His desire is to withdraw. He needs to isolate himself in order to progress through his midlife passage but this time becomes often confusing with very few markers to show him the way. Socially, depression is deemed a sign of weakness that he feels he cannot show. He can only endure so much of this before he feels the urgency to pull up his socks and ‘get over it’ and ‘on with it’. If a man seeks professional help at this time from medical doctor’s or therapists his midlife transition might be brief. If instead he determines to tough it through on his own his transition will reach crisis proportions before it is over.
A man that determines to ‘do it on his own’ is dragging his feet through midlife transition. In earlier cultures an elder of the community might step in to coach him through; today a man in western civilization no longer has that social structure to depend on. Instead if he suffers through this alone he will tend to force his feelings of sadness under and put on a socially acceptable mask of strength. When depression is forced under in this way it does not simply disappear. Instead it is forced to ‘not appear’. It becomes what Terrence Real identified as “covert depression”. It can no longer be seen by the typical signs of depression but rather may only be seen by the defenses a man uses to run from it.
Real says that ‘Covert Depression’ has three major symptoms. First, men attempt to escape pain by overusing alcohol or drugs, working excessively or seeking extramarital affairs. They go into isolation, withdrawing from loved ones. And they may lash out, becoming irritable or violent. "Covert Depression," is a psychic band around the heart that sufferers respond to by engaging in destructive addictive behaviors - from classic alcohol and drug dependence to affairs outside the marriage to workaholism to neglecting or abusing their own children. Typically, they are incapable of making the emotional investment necessary to sustain a lasting loving relationship with their wife, children, or another.
In my own story I became one who assuaged my sadness on my own accord being unwilling to seek professional help. I forced my feelings under in order to get by in my world. I had an overwhelming weariness of running, running, and running for the sake of everyone else’s comfort around me. I felt that ‘my time’ was not my own. I was like a gerbil on his wheel unable to step off or the entire structure would tumble down. I became weary of my responsibilities to hold everything together and not able to find rest. My energy was waning and I no longer had the strength or ambition to stay ahead of the younger men rising in the corporation. I had burned the candle from both ends for too long and now I was tired. I asked myself “when will it be time for ME?”
In my situation it was my work that was at issue and I stopped my reassessment there before proceeding to assess my home-life as being the reason for my feeling of sadness. Other men that are content in their career would proceed to “identity number two”. But I had lost my identity at my work-place and my career. I had structured it in such a way that I could not take credit for my personal achievements. It tore away at the very fiber of my manhood – the three primary needs men require from their work – pride, position, and prestige. This overlapped greatly into my home-life and marriage, but was not the place that I personally affixed the blame for my sadness and depression. When I withdrew it was first from my work and then much later from my wife and children. Some 4 years later when I took the ‘midlife crisis test’, I scored on every count except the area of “blaming of one’s spouse”.
Although I resent being the classic cliché of “a man in midlife crisis”, I became the stereotype.
What events in your life is there that triggered your personal reassessment of your life?
What has your midlife transition become? Have you stepped over into the “self-medicating” approach of “getting through this on your own”?
Do you feel that your once depressed feelings of sadness have now either gone “low-grade” or even disappeared?
If you could be honest today with only yourself; what phase would you place your own self in if my story were yours?
Would it be the period of sadness?
The time of reassessment?
The period of withdrawal & isolation?
Covering over your feelings of sadness?
Blame?
Are you engaging in addictive or ‘on the edge’ behaviors?
Do you feel incapable of making the emotional investment necessary to sustain a lasting loving relationship with your wife or your children?
Do you feel that getting coaching rather than counseling will help you walk through this time better on your own?
Until the later half of my forties I was a conqueror in constant pursuit of challenge and competition. I was feverish with goals and meeting them with achievement. Events like downsizing and cutbacks weren’t in my vocabulary. When corporations were cutting back I seized their misfortune as my opportunity for expansion. I considered downturns in the economy as merely opportunities to solidify growth.
My life was surrounded with a constant buzz of activity. Whether I entered the boardroom or the parts room things happened and things moved. Action was generated around me. Everyone knew when I was at my desk because the level of intensity and energy resounded throughout the building. Telephones rang constantly when I was in; movement occurred, change happened in all departments.
I learned to count on the adrenalin rush brought on by stress. It gave me that cutting edge in decision making and development of projects. The closer I walked to the edge the better I liked it. Things get done under pressure and if I worked less than 14 hours it was a slow day.
Turning forty didn’t affect me any as I never slowed down to consider the age change at all. In fact I celebrated my 42nd birthday two years running thinking I was 42 at age 41; it became a source of humor for all involved. I didn’t have time for birthdays or for aging.
Then 45 came on me like an imploding tower. The passing of my second parent led me to reflect on life but only enough to slow my pace. Then even more suddenly after a return flight from out of the country I was hit with a “foreign” virus. It drained me of all of my strength and put me into the hospital. The doctor that treated me and eradicated the virus informed me that it would take 2 years to fully regain my strength if I fully regained it at all – a set back that I couldn’t afford. I regained more than half of my strength in six months through “teethe gritting determinations” but all that I had initially has never returned. I learned to hate the loss of strength and ability to perform the tasks I could do easily not two years before. I found this depressing to the point of reevaluating my entire life.
I resumed a thought that I had taken on some ten years earlier at the death of my father saying, “life is a b!tch and then you die”; only this time I applied that thought to me. I was tired, weary of life and burning the stick at both ends. I felt burned out and cut short of obtaining all of my life goals. I looked ahead to my remaining years of life and determined that I was now too tired and too old to start again or contend on the competitive edge. My failed achievements mounted up in my mind until they blanked out any of the real achievements that I had made. All I could see was my failures.
I couldn’t live with these depressed feelings and sure as hell couldn’t let them show; but they wouldn’t go away. My wife pressured me to fill her in on what was going on in my head; but I didn’t want to talk about it. Finally yielding to the pressure I discussed my feelings. She countered my sense of failure by recounting my successes. This may have worked before but not this time; the feelings didn’t go away so I determined to “fix it” myself.
I considered that since everything that I had ever thought, done, or believed in life had only brought me to this place of failure - I needed to make some changes. I set aside my “belief structure” because it was obvious to me that it failed me. I set aside my work and engagement in life at home. I determined that my life was going to be about “me” now. I needed to “be me” for once instead of working so hard for everyone else’s comfort. I craved after anything that would make me forget that life was a b!tch.
I began to compensate for the things I was feeling about life by becoming more extroverted and outgoing. I took on a persona that would outwardly express a contradiction to what was “real” on the inside of me. I got a sports car because while I was in it I could feel like I was a free spirit. I loved speed and this car put out! Feeling like a free spirit though didn’t feel quite right when my wife was beside me so I started taking trips and time alone. I began to meet people that also seemed to be free spirited and began to develop new friendships. I started organizing events to bring these friends together. One on one with them I was always clear that I really loved my wife and they were never vocal about their question of where she was. Jokes about “Colombo’s wife” flew right past me. Besides which, all of the other men in my age group were also there alone. These parties began to grow in excitement and numbers. Soon we had people flying in just to attend a party that I would throw. Often the men would leave the parties with new partners but I always slept alone after an event. Organizing these events made me feel good and I kept all of them secret from my wife.
The females at the events were also free spirited and although I never paid them much attention outside of friendship they too began to question the whereabouts of my wife. Although it was obvious to them, I was oblivious to the fact that my “single” attendance was sending out messages. I began to receive correspondence from several women offering to attend events with me and even to share my time and hotel rooms. I laughed them off thinking “everyone knows that I love my wife”. I continued unaware that my lifestyle was presenting a contradiction to what I was thinking and saying.
While these events continued and I was becoming more involved it became increasingly more embarrassing for me to reveal what was happening to my wife. I didn’t feel I could explain my reasoning, my whereabouts, or even the new friends in my life. It became a “double life” for me that although didn’t include an affair did make me feel good and cover my past feelings of failure and depression. Now immersed in a secret life I felt strongly that I needed to stop because the pressure of this façade was too great for me to keep at home. Between these party events though when things were too quiet I would feel like sh!t again; this always happened when I was at home. The organizing of events and the events themselves were giving me the good feelings and adrenalin rush that countered my feelings of failure and depression. So I increased the time away from home and increased the number of party events.
I formed a committee to manage what was growing into very large events with both men and women on the team to coordinate activities. One of the women on the team added me to her instant messenger online. First we communicated party plans only in between organizational meetings. Over time she communicated more of the matters of her life until the personal conversations began to override the organizational conversations. I met on occasion with other members involved on the team and again I would take a hotel room. One time the meeting held at her place included too much alcohol consumption. I stayed too long and eventually fell asleep from the alcohol. I woke in her bed and not alone! Frantic for an explanation of events from the night before I was assured that everything including my fidelity was intact. Feeling safe in the friendship now there didn’t appear to be a need to take a hotel following future meetings if I had been drinking over the legal limit. I crossed the line into serious compromise – a secret life that included an affair.
Innocence lost is never regained. I was involved outside of my marriage. As the frequency of contact, drinking, and party life emerged, the line between alternate realities of the double life obscured the reality of life in my marriage. As the one increased the other diminished. Future plans excluded my wife and began to include my affair partner instead. It was blurring the line of demarcation between who I knew that I was and who I had become.
I was cycling between periods of feeling depressed and feeling good. The lifestyle I had created was a self medicating antidote to the depressed feelings that I had inside. These periods of cycling that were periodic at first then became more intense with my affair. As long as I continued “self medicating” myself I seemed to feel okay until I got alone. The answer seemed in keeping active enough to avoid thinking too deeply about life or what I was doing. I intensified my drinking and party life to include very few sober hours often kicking back a stiff drink very first thing in the morning. The intensity of this time was such that very little of it remains in my memory today and what does remain seems scattered like a fragmented hard drive. No defragmenter here though!
Odd as it may sound to anyone reading this I never did stop loving my wife. I had displaced her.
Including an affair as part of self medicating midlife depression complicates matters entirely. I was already accustomed to covering up a secret life that excluded my wife. Lying about being involved with another woman was not too far of a stretch. Yet I was beginning to see past the puppy love of the affair already and I was considering what life would be like with the other woman. I wanted out and was already feeling trapped. When my wife confronted me I disclosed my affair; I wanted it to end.
Disclosure ends nothing for a man in midlife crisis. More often than not it only makes matters worse. Externally it may seem that it brings freedom to the secret life by bringing it into the light of day. Internally the same problems exist but are now magnified. It’s like pumping up the oven temperature from 450 to broil. It doubles internal pressures. To the depression it now adds feelings of guilt, moral failure, integrity failure, remorse, regret, and a host other complex failures. If depression was initiated from feelings of failure this disclosure of the affair magnifies it and elevates it way beyond. If you are a well seasoned man in midlife crisis you know what to do next – increase the self medication. You counter your emotions with outbursts of anger because you cannot show your own hurt. You lie and create even more excuses for your behaviors that are now exposed.
The disclosure of my affair that I intended to end it nearly drove me to the other woman. To somehow justify my actions I lied and said that I loved her to ease my guilty conscience and moralize my infidelity, I said that I was “in love”. Somehow in a childish mind “love” is supposed to excuse such behaviors. I was like a child exposed and caught in a wrong.
The other woman became eager to succor my problem situation that she assumed to be caused because of my sincere love for her drew nearer. We now have a common enemy – the wife; right? Typically, yes; for me, no, because I had never stopped loving my wife and untypical of midlife crisis I had never spoken against her either. My other woman found this to be threatening to her position. She immediately became insecure about our relationship and she was right to be. My wife never reacted to my disclosure she responded. She said in very simple terms “if you love her you better go to her; which furniture do you want?” In midlife stupor I replied that I didn’t want furniture but that I wanted to keep both women! Neither one of these women could see my way of thinking though in as much clarity as I had in that moment of revelation. Odd that isn’t it!
I left and came back many times feeling completely unsure of my life. On one such occasion I was supposed to be headed back to the OW house after a property division talk with my wife when I woke up. I was driving at the time and it came on me that suddenly. I wailed out loud with a loud groan that seemed to come from my stomach. Followed by questioning: What am I doing here? WTF have I done?, how could I have done this to the most important person in my life? How could I have hurt her like this? And who is this woman that’s been in my bed? Tears filled my eye sockets and I really didn’t know what they were because I hadn’t cried in 40 years. It was hard to see the road from the sports car. I drove 15 more miles in tears to a dive of a motel and took a room where I could be alone and cry the rest of the night. The next morning I spent several hours writing my thoughts into a “dear jane” letter to my affair partner and thinking about life from the bottom of life.
By nine the next night a thought occurred to me that I was hungry. That perhaps I could get pizza and go out to my W place with it and a bottle of wine. I found the pizza and wine and drove 25 miles out to my Wife’s place. I started to feel “chicken” as I got within a mile or two and then remembered that my wife used to put a lamp in the window whenever I traveled and only turn it off when I got home. So I decided to go around the long way to see if I could see a lamp burning. If there was a lamp, I would drop in; if not, I would keep on driving. When I crested the hill all I could see was a single light. It was from the window. I stopped sharply in the middle of the road with my chest pounding with fear and excitement. It had been a year since I last looked for the lamp in the window.
I called her from my cell and said “I’ve got pizza: I’ve got a bottle of wine”. She asked “where are you?” I said up the hill – look out the window. She pulled up the shade and I flashed my head lights. She said “well come in”. I did. I haven’t left again since and never saw the OW again since that night.
I wake up gradually in the mornings and my waking from MLC was that way too – gradually. I awoke in an instant but it took several months to actually become alert.
During this time my cycling became seriously intense but it was different, it had changed. I was no longer cycling between feeling good and depression; now I was cycling between depression and sheer panic. When I wasn’t feeling consumed by guilt and regret and remorse I was consumed by panic in fear of saying or doing something that would cause me to lose my wife and our marriage. By being in such a state of fear I kept stumbling over my own intentions. Wanting desperately to save my marriage I was doing everything to nearly destroy it. I would lash out in utter anger and the next day be crying at her feet for forgiveness. As we continued to talk and try to work things out the guilt/panic cycle increased to almost hourly. In the end my wife tells me that I would leave the room angry and enter it again in remorse. She never knew from moment to moment weather she would be dealing with Dr Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.
Our marriage restoration was often confused by periods of ambivalence. Both of us wanting to stay committed would waiver on the side of ambivalence questioning “should I stay or should I go?” It’s easy when things are going good: not so easy when they are not. I wanted the whole thing to just be over! She needed to understand.
Men, you will not only know this you will understand this – you said things and did things that you have no recollection of. You would swear on a shoulder height stack of bibles that you didn’t say or didn’t do certain things during your midlife crisis. These things are literally not in your memory; they are gone. The best thing for you to do is to stop denying it. You did it and she has razor sharp memory of it. She was there; you weren’t. If there is a time to get over your need to always be “right”; this is it. You may have said things yesterday that you will swear today that you didn’t say. This doesn’t mean that you have lost your mind it means that you are normal in the process of recovery. Accept it and move on. A year from now you can laugh about it.
My wife had many questions about my time away. She needed to understand in order to fill up the missing pieces of her life. Regretfully I was the only one with her answers but I did not remember. I was desperate to give her what she needed but I was desolate of the resources.
Put a candle in the window, ’cause I feel I’ve got to move.
Though I’m going, going, I’ll be coming home soon,
’long as I can see the light.
Pack my bag and let’s get movin’, ’cause I’m bound to drift a while.
When I’m gone, gone, you don’t have to worry long,
’long as I can see the light.
Guess I’ve got that old trav’lin’ bone, ’cause this feelin’ won’t leave me alone.
But I won’t, won’t be losin’ my way, no, no
’long as I can see the light.
Yeah! yeah! yeah! oh, yeah!
Put a candle in the window, ’cause I feel I’ve got to move.
Though I’m going, going, I’ll be coming home soon,
Long as I can see the light.
Long as I can see the light.
Long as I can see the light.
Long as I can see the light.
Long as I can see the light
My Day of Emancipation – October 12th
And The End of My Midlife Crisis
Some days are remembered for the good things wrought in them and marked as special days on our calendars to which we give special attention to our reason for celebration. July 4th – American Independence Day is one. But for me, I will never forget THIS day – October 12th; it marks something far greater than independence – it marks my Day of Emancipation and deliverance from the turmoil of approximately 4 ½ years of Midlife Crisis. It marks the beginning of my Year of Jubilee!
What is Emancipation?
The Encarta Dictionary of North American English calls it: An Act of freeing – the act or process of setting somebody free or freeing somebody from restrictions. It also means Being Freed – the condition or fact of being set free or freed from some restriction.
October 12, 2004 was my day of emancipation and today I celebrate this day as though it were Christmas or New Year.
Sometimes the idea of being led can seem so profound. I never immediately saw the significance of the morning a month past this day when my wife came to me saying “yes” to renew our marriage vows. She said: “I really feel this is our new beginning. When we renew our vows I strongly believe that we need to celebrate and have the minister speak on the year of jubilee.”
As with so many of the gifts that come from God, the word of wisdom is not always understood in the moment; often understanding (the real wisdom) comes much later, even often after the event. Today my understanding of this gift is becoming much clearer. It goes back to biblical days and the law given to the people at the time of the Levites. It says the following in the most profound way:
'You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.
'You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its after growth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines.
'For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field.
On this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his own property.
(Emphasis in BOLD is mine.)
Some of you that know me or that are in the Men’s Forum will understand immediately how this has significance to me having just turned 50 and been given a year off from my career work and labour.
So what does October 12th mean to me?
It was the second half of August that year when driving away from my wife’s place to my dingy motel room after discussing our property division that I woke-up from the cloud of MLC. I had only driven 10 miles down the road when it hit me completely unexpected. Perhaps it was the radio playing that forgotten song – Everything I Own by Bread: idon’t really know. But suddenly I woke up! A groan rose up from the deepest part of my belly and barely formed the words to say – ”what have I done? I’ve hurt her. I’ve hurt the only one I could ever truly love. I betrayed her. And who is this woman that has been in my bed? She means nothing to me! My God what have I done!” And as I moaned these words tears began to form in my eyes and I didn’t even know what they were; I hadn’t cried in 40 years. I could barely see the road from my midlife sports car.
You sheltered me from harm
Kept me warm, kept me warm
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free
The finest years I ever knew
Were all the years I had with you
And... (Lyrics by Bread)
I drove the remaining 15 miles to my motel room with these tears swelling my eyes and trying to regain composure knowing that my stop there was to be brief as I returned to my girlfriend’s place. My heart was hanging near my belt. I called her saying that I would not be coming home to her. I thought the conversation was only a few minutes but I understand now that it was 22. I don’t know what I said; I don’t really care. But that night I stayed awake all night and all of the next day thinking about what I had done and writing a Dear Jane letter to my girlfriend. I was ending it right then and there.
I thought about Phoenix and our life…
You taught me how to love
What it's of, what it's of
You never said too much
But still you showed the way
And I knew from watching you
Nobody else could ever know
The part of me that can't let go
And... (Bread)
Around 9PM the next night I became hungry. Not many restaurants are open past 9PM so I considered ordering in Pizza as these restaurants remain open well into the night. While considering this another flash occurred to me… I could order Pizza and pick up a bottle of wine and go to my wife’s place and we could have it together! I found both the Pizza & Wine and began to drive the 25 miles out to what was our home.
As I neared the home fear settled in on me. I began to question ”what if she doesn’t want to see me? What if she is not even there? What if she rejects me now? What if it’s too late for me in her life now?”
I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give ev'rything I own
Just to have you back again (Bread)
Then I remembered --- when I used to travel Phoenix would place a lamp in the window for me and only turn it off when I arrived home safe. If I drove around the long way I would be able to see if there was a lamp in the window. If there was then I would drop in; if not, I would keep on driving. The fear and anticipation had my heart rate set on extreme. Before I crested the back hill I turned out my lights so as to not be seen. Creeping slowly forward through the dark I topped the hill. I saw only one thing in the darkness.
A lamp burning bright.
My heart racing with stress nerves flushing my face with intense heat I parked there just --- looking. It had been over a year since I last looked for the lamp and there it was as all my eyes could see. I couldn’t turn back now! Shaking, I reached my cell phone and dialed her number…… she answered…….. I hadn’t prepared for this… I didn’t know what to say. Fumbling for first words I said “… I have Pizza; I have Wine…” then silence… After an eternity she replied “where are you?” I said “up the hill; look out your window…” The light dimmed and the curtain rose… she said “well, come in.” I did!
We spent the remainder of the night with pizza and wine and talk from our heart. I slept in her bed my heart full, at home, finally at rest. I never saw the OW again from that night on.
Beginning marriage recovery ends nothing for a man in midlife crisis.
I began immediately to move from covert (hidden) depression to overt and open depression compounded by guilt and much remorse. This would cycle to the feelings of abundant joy only to find their way back again. An MLC man knows what to do when depression hits – up the self-medication! But I didn’t have that option any longer at my disposal. When I was severely depressed, all I could think of was MJ and how I missed her. When I was overjoyed all I saw was Phoenix and how I loved her. I placed dozens of phone calls through to MJ while feeling depressed (none of which I remember to this day).
In my constant cycling I came up with what I considered the optimum solution to my dilemma – “why shouldn’t I be able to have both of these women?!!!”. Feeling the importance of this Light Bulb Moment I brought my solution to Phoenix with most earnest sincerity. I told her that I was “in love with MJ” and “why shouldn’t I have both of you…”
Knowing both my sincerity and earnest Phoenix knew that she needed to detach. Her only response was “which furniture are you going to want?” and announced that she was leaving Monday for California and was not sure she would ever return. Knowing that I had really messed up with this demand I was much more quick to realize that not only was my suggestion sincerely earnest but was also completely off the wall. I realized that I did NOT have my sh!t together and if I did not hurry up and “get it together” I was going to lose her and everything worth living for. I replied “give me two weeks” .
What I meant was “give me two weeks to get my life sorted out (believing in a small miracle happening here…). What she heard was “give me two weeks to pick between the two of you”. This misunderstanding was to cause us the most severe hurt, pain, and confusion of our lives that would span many months of personal turmoil.
She detached and she left that Monday for California. She didn’t want me to drive her to the airport but had her friend drive her instead. The Two Weeks past rather quickly as I immediately cycled back to depression. We men can only put up with about 3 days of depression before we take action. I forced that ‘sucker’ down and began self-medicating big time! I hit up all the old friends I had hung with in MLC and planned a big get-together about 600 miles away. I started consuming great amounts of Bacardi creating a fourteen-day liquor bill that is not to be believed! Unless I drank myself to sleep I just could not sleep – Bacardi became my sleeping pill. My mix was ‘grapefruit juice’ – the worst thing for a midlife man. For over a year-and-a-half straight I had only slept roughly 2 ½ hours per night and NOW was no exception! Sleep deprived and drunken sleep took its toll in many telephone calls to my affair partner during these two weeks – all of these just prior to passing out from too much Bacardi. I do not recall any of these calls.
In the back of my mind though was the fact that Phoenix was in California and I seemed to be out-of-sight; out-of-mind as far as she was concerned – she had detached big time! I wasn’t even too sure that I was occupying much of her head-space at all anymore. This bothered me in sober moments to the extreme! Not only had she detached but she had seemed to have ‘gone dark’, so much so that other men were beginning to show interest in her for them selves (I coulda killed them!) I KNEW that if I didn’t ACT and do it NOW then I was about to not only be left behind but I would lose her too. But then – those were the sober moments; the solution – up the antidotes to this depression with more self-medication. By this time I was consuming ¾ of a 42 ounce bottle of Bacardi every day plus several Breezers. I kicked off my day by downing the left-over’s in the glass from the night before in order to delay any hangovers.
Somehow in this cloudy darkness I found the need to go to California to get my wife. En-route though I intended to stop for a couple of days at the party event. I rang Phoenix and told her I was coming but that I would be stopping in Vancouver, BC, on the way to get together with my buds and party-it-up. I think I told her that MJ was on the party list of attendees too. Phoenix seemed surprised but welcoming of the idea so –this became my plan.
As the time neared though that I should depart my sober moments also increased and along with these the midlife depression. But these times were good because along with them was time to think. To think about the matters I now realize are part of midlife transition, I evaluated my past choices and compared them with the present. I projected current choices upon my future. The one thing that was continually present was that I could not imagine my life without Phoenix in it even though my actions and words were depicting completely the opposite. I knew it would take a Quality Decision to completely cut all contact with MJ and to give the remainder of my life exclusively to my wife.
But I missed MJ and it was driving me crazy mad.
This period of time between your wife and your affair partner is what we men in the Men’s Forum call “Stuck in the middle”. It is a time of extreme feelings of withdrawal. (Heroin withdrawal would be easier than this.) We fluctuate between being committed to our wives and marriage (our true character speaking) and feeling the endorphins of new-found love. We know that we compromise our selves in this ongoing relationship but somehow the feelings out-weigh the alternatives. ‘Feelings” suppressed for years, now refuse to be silenced and dictate our logic – the caboose is pulling our train. I feel dearly for any man ‘stuck in the middle’. What I was to learn much later on was that what I/we was missing was not the OW in our lives at all – it was the feel-good feelings that she provided as an antidote to our depression – woe to the man who wakes to this after divorce and the time is too late! There are many and I could post their private stories if they gave me permission.
But I was ‘one bright boy’! Not only did I miss my affair partner I also filled Phoenix in on these feelings – whoa!
Thank God she realized who was really me and differentiated between my words and the one who cycled into the Alien.
Men, sometimes you feel trapped by these words that you speak – your profession of ‘commitment’ to your new relationship and your words to your wife. But really Bro’ – don’t be. If you realize at any time during this transition that you have just messed up or are about to mess up by holding to your word then back up for a minute. Don’t get stuck holding to words said right now; matters are confusing and these are NOT times to make LIFE decisions. This is a time to appraise former decisions. New decisions can wait. The fact is – you have already decided years ago, now go with that! The piper-to-pay is too huge if you decide otherwise. But DO correct the problem issues in your current marriage through counseling and other resources.
While picking up my wife in California she began her series of what was to be many, many questions. A lot of which I had no answers to. I became weary of these and wanted to just say “get over it”; I resisted this temptation but not very well. Being ‘who’ she is, my Phoenix never has asked what my affair partner looked like, the size of her breasts, her hair color, or any of the like. Instead she asked me ONE QUESTION to which the answer was required in order to save our marriage. She asked: ”how is it that you could compromise your character in order to be with MJ?”
Although she expected this answer immediately I am still seeking answers for it today. I’ve written hundreds of postings on forums in reply. I still seek the truth to that question today. So I ask you – what is it that compromises your character today that enables you to be with or flirt with being with another woman? The answer to THIS question will pull you through.
But this question was just the beginning of the end for me. I was cycling through MLC like the Madman of Gadara being torn by a legion of demons. Her detachment during my cycling drove me mad but she held firm. I did NOT want to talk about things – I wanted the entire issue over with and behind us. She, on the other hand, needed to understand. I was fighting against her need to understand with my need to get over it and get on with it. Then one day it occurred to me – if I answer her questions by talking truthfully and freely then she will get her need to understand met and I would get my need to have it over with met! Big Light-bulb moment yet again! Sheeeeeeesh!
We started committing MANY hours every day to this process of asking/answering questions, talking freely, and communicating our feelings. But often in my cycling these conversations went awry. I seemed to be cycling between two characters – one that loved my wife and wanted her above all else and the other that just wanted to be rid of her constant questioning. Between being happy with her and extremely irritated with her. Between being content with her and being sad with her. Between being understanding with her and being extremely angry with her. It began to seem hopeless to us both and our marriage was ending.
There was nothing remaining in me that I could do. I had simply become this ‘person’ that was out of control, irritated, angry, loving, caring, and merely a caricature of the person I once knew that I was. Trying with all my might to save our marriage; I was tearing it down with my own hands. I had no ambition to even live. My cycling increased from ‘daily’ to hourly to every 20 minutes, In the end I would leave the room angry, irritated, stubborn and destructive; then turn around to enter the room in regret, remorse, and loving and caring. On October 12th I hit Rock Bottom. I could do no more. I gave up.
I went into my private den and shut my door. I was empty, destitute, and without feeling. The Beatles sang it well - He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing
Nowhere man, the world is at your command
He’s as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all?
I had set this guy aside nearly two years prior. I wanted nothing to do with Him and I did NOT want him controlling MY life.
This day though I was angry and empty. If I could hate anyone for my Nowhere life it would be the Nowhere man! I cussed at Him and swore at Him for his fault in my life. I was angry and bitter that He directed me here. And in my rage I fell face-long on the floor before him. {And this morning with tears filling my eye sockets I can say He didn’t forget me} As I spilled my bitter angry rage before the one I thought was not listening. My tears soaked the carpet as my rage emptied out on the floor and like Jacob; I wrestled with God intent on bringing Him down. This wasn’t about infidelity, betrayal, or about my wife – it was about Him and me. At first I might have faulted my wife for making me feel this way but not anymore – I went straight to the source. It was YOU god that made me this goddamned way and it is YOU that is at fault here!!@#$$##@! And as my rage filled the carpet with tears I poured out every hurt and deed I had done in my midlife foray until I could say no more. And like Jacob he dislocated my hip in order to say to me ‘now you win’ (a battle obviously lost by me). Then...
Silence
Earth shattering silence
Then reaching for the bible and journal I had set aside two years prior I dusted its cover.
There was nothing left of me.
The last words I wrote to Him in my journal were – “what about ME? When is it MY turn? From now on it was going 'to be me' - All about me.
Bible and Journal in hand I saw the ripped pages of my first infidelity.
I saw where I went wrong
My face again fell to the floor without compulsion, without rage, but empty, lost, alone… and to the One that made Himself Nowhere for two years my soul and heart was bared.
I felt washed, clean, empty, restored.
I sat back in my chair and in a moment of time I saw where He once gave me my wife as a gift. I said aloud, I don’t feel like I’ve been treating her as much of a gift right now. Then out of – not nowhere – but, someone, I heard these words in my heart and mind – “I’ve given you to her as a gift too”. ………………………I broke.
Perhaps you’ve never been broken; perhaps you have. And perhaps your ‘religion’ doesn’t help you believe in a God that is real in the here and now. But I do. I didn’t for a while or – well, I really didn’t care. But that aside, midlife is too important to NOT have what is real – I do. And it sure aint from anything I’ve done but here it is. This is what October 12th means to me
A new man
Is there someone you know
You're loving them so
But taking them all for granted?
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don't hear
The words you long to say...
I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give ev'rything I own
Just to have you back again
Newman., May 17 2006, 09:47 AM
I was born the fifth of six children that survived. I was born poor and I didn’t know it but for the first 10 years of my life I did know to stay the hell out of my fathers way and far enough out of his reach or there would be no little Newman around the house.
I couldn’t understand my lot in life. He never seemed angry ay my older sisters and my younger brother born four years after my arrival was the apple of his eye. Although my bro could do no wrong, even if he did, it was taken out on me. I seemed the object of his pain and the source of his constant frustration with a life that had gone completely sour from what he first envisioned.
The year before I was born my father suffered an industrial accident that completely evaporated his youth. On a grain elevator construction project he lost footing on the roof and landed squarely on the railroad tracks beneath. Although everyone thought he was dead, he was discovered to be still breathing when the rescuers arrived, his skull had cracked open and he had lost much blood. This was in the days when surgery was equally as hit and miss; but they put him together before sending him back to work.
The corrupt workers compensation board at the time refused him leave of absence and the doctors signed off on a “clear bill of health” within days of his injury. This launched an 15 year struggle with the WCB to gain compensation for his fall. Forced to return to work without compensation benefits, he was immediately laid off as he could not remain standing through his often dizzy spells that would again fall him to the ground. He found other work in agriculture and the oil-patch but would often be sent home to my mother because of nose-bleeds and falling over on the job. His headaches were not to be believed.
I discovered many years later that the reason I became the object of his midlife anger and frustration had less to do with his fall and more to do with a large gap in his memory. Apparently during this time of struggle he never recalled his coming home from the out-of-town project and the weekend of romance he had with my mother. He only recalled the gentleman pastor that succored my mother’s pain in this struggle. Although my mother was faithful, my father had serious doubts. All of my brothers and sisters were born rugged and brunette; I was a handsome young blonde. In my father’s mind I was not to be here and I became a constant reminder of his life’s pain, a reminder of his failure, a reminder of all that was wrong with life – and he let me know in many ways.
I had arrived squarely in the middle of his midlife crisis and the launching of his Irritable Male Syndrome that would carry on the duration of my childhood.
I left home the day I turned sixteen – the legal age that a man could work in our country.
I watched my father withdraw from family and isolate himself and although his tragedy didn’t allow him to be elsewhere he would disappear in his own mind consumed with anger and frustration at his lot in life. His only release was his lashing out at me and the often “after-hours” debates with my mother that I would overhear. It took 15 years and ombudsman intervention to finally gain compensation for his fall. The WCB settled the suit with a lump-sum that was far from just recompense but it gave him a feeling of justification and restored an element of his pride. He was only able to work “full time” for the final two years before retirement. He had become an empty shell of a man that life had beaten. His strength of youth consumed in tragedy he became timid and detached from family and friends. His indecisiveness loomed and he was often led and covered of his weaknesses by my mother. When he finally died some 20 years later I sat at his hospital bedside and said “life is a bitch and then you die” and promptly went out to begin my own midlife crisis.
This crisis of my own was short-lived and although I reassessed some things it never went full blown. It launched periodic periods of reassessment of my life that I lived at full-speed convinced that I would never be like my father. This was my aspiration from the onset of early adulthood but following my father’s death it became a conviction.
Whatever mini-crisis was launched at my father’s death was quickly delayed upon meeting the love of my life some two years later. Phoenix came in to rock my world. It was the single most positive event in my life to finally find her. There was an instant recognition on both of our parts. I had heard about her before but when fate led me to her office I walked straight past secretaries and office people directly to her and extended my hand saying “you must be my star”. I had never met her, seen her, or had anyone describe her before but the burning sensation in my heart of a 5 hour drive at lightning speed to meet her for the first time only saw one person in that office that day and nobody else in my way counted. The room and office staff disappeared into mere shadows as I looked in her eyes for the first time and the force of recognition was so powerful that I think all she said was “oh-ohh, here he is; I’m a dead man”. She too had that recognition that was to never go away. Her name has been on my lips every day since.
A midlife crisis may be delayed, cut short, prolonged, or even disappear entirely. My ‘midlife transition’ was postponed for seven years but the inevitable was to come regardless of how happy life had become. The reassessment of midlife is a normal passage for men and often never really becomes a crisis of any significant proportion. Mine became triggered by a foreign virus that hospitalized me and stole my physical strength for a two year recovery period. During this time my mother passed away and triggered the depth of reassessment while reminding me of the overwhelming thoughts I had at my father’s death bed that “life is a bitch and then you die”.
Midlife Transition is first identified by a period of sadness that may even cause a man to become overtly depressed. Although I had periodic “warm-up sessions” of sadness and depression in the seven years following my father’s death; I had never really known depression in my life until midlife. When it first appeared I wondered what they put in the water! My personality was type AB positive and depression really had no place in my fast paced life.
When a man becomes saddened or depressed in a midlife reassessment he reviews all of the aspects of life that brought him this far. Although women tend to hold their depression inward; men tend to work their depression outward. A woman may take on blame during her depression; a man looks outward at others to blame. When he looks for a ‘reason’ for these feelings he assesses all that he is. Our first identity as males is in our career and work; we identify ourselves by what we do. If a man’s work is not to blame he then looks to his second primary identity – his home and marriage. Since his sadness is often felt in those quiet moments at home he identifies his sadness with ‘location’ and the result is that ‘home is to blame’. The first place to affix blame is on his wife and then his children.
His desire is to withdraw. He needs to isolate himself in order to progress through his midlife passage but this time becomes often confusing with very few markers to show him the way. Socially, depression is deemed a sign of weakness that he feels he cannot show. He can only endure so much of this before he feels the urgency to pull up his socks and ‘get over it’ and ‘on with it’. If a man seeks professional help at this time from medical doctor’s or therapists his midlife transition might be brief. If instead he determines to tough it through on his own his transition will reach crisis proportions before it is over.
A man that determines to ‘do it on his own’ is dragging his feet through midlife transition. In earlier cultures an elder of the community might step in to coach him through; today a man in western civilization no longer has that social structure to depend on. Instead if he suffers through this alone he will tend to force his feelings of sadness under and put on a socially acceptable mask of strength. When depression is forced under in this way it does not simply disappear. Instead it is forced to ‘not appear’. It becomes what Terrence Real identified as “covert depression”. It can no longer be seen by the typical signs of depression but rather may only be seen by the defenses a man uses to run from it.
Real says that ‘Covert Depression’ has three major symptoms. First, men attempt to escape pain by overusing alcohol or drugs, working excessively or seeking extramarital affairs. They go into isolation, withdrawing from loved ones. And they may lash out, becoming irritable or violent. "Covert Depression," is a psychic band around the heart that sufferers respond to by engaging in destructive addictive behaviors - from classic alcohol and drug dependence to affairs outside the marriage to workaholism to neglecting or abusing their own children. Typically, they are incapable of making the emotional investment necessary to sustain a lasting loving relationship with their wife, children, or another.
In my own story I became one who assuaged my sadness on my own accord being unwilling to seek professional help. I forced my feelings under in order to get by in my world. I had an overwhelming weariness of running, running, and running for the sake of everyone else’s comfort around me. I felt that ‘my time’ was not my own. I was like a gerbil on his wheel unable to step off or the entire structure would tumble down. I became weary of my responsibilities to hold everything together and not able to find rest. My energy was waning and I no longer had the strength or ambition to stay ahead of the younger men rising in the corporation. I had burned the candle from both ends for too long and now I was tired. I asked myself “when will it be time for ME?”
In my situation it was my work that was at issue and I stopped my reassessment there before proceeding to assess my home-life as being the reason for my feeling of sadness. Other men that are content in their career would proceed to “identity number two”. But I had lost my identity at my work-place and my career. I had structured it in such a way that I could not take credit for my personal achievements. It tore away at the very fiber of my manhood – the three primary needs men require from their work – pride, position, and prestige. This overlapped greatly into my home-life and marriage, but was not the place that I personally affixed the blame for my sadness and depression. When I withdrew it was first from my work and then much later from my wife and children. Some 4 years later when I took the ‘midlife crisis test’, I scored on every count except the area of “blaming of one’s spouse”.
Although I resent being the classic cliché of “a man in midlife crisis”, I became the stereotype.
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What events in your life is there that triggered your personal reassessment of your life?
What has your midlife transition become? Have you stepped over into the “self-medicating” approach of “getting through this on your own”?
Do you feel that your once depressed feelings of sadness have now either gone “low-grade” or even disappeared?
If you could be honest today with only yourself; what phase would you place your own self in if my story were yours?
Would it be the period of sadness?
The time of reassessment?
The period of withdrawal & isolation?
Covering over your feelings of sadness?
Blame?
Are you engaging in addictive or ‘on the edge’ behaviors?
Do you feel incapable of making the emotional investment necessary to sustain a lasting loving relationship with your wife or your children?
Do you feel that getting coaching rather than counseling will help you walk through this time better on your own?