Midlife Crisis - Myth Or Reality?

Some experts think this phase of life needs to be put into retirement

We all know about the cringey clichés of the supposed midlife crisis; the guy who suddenly buys a sports car and swaps his suit pants for ripped jeans, or the woman who walks out of her corporate job to find her true self while backpacking in South America.

As pop culture construct that we have long held to be true, both the Eastern and Western world are rife with tales of midlife dilemmas. But on closer inspection, does the concept really stack up? For starters, why would being a certain age suddenly make you more prone to crisis, and in an era where we are living longer than ever before, what classifies as “middle aged” anyway?

Are we just so overexposed to the idea of midlife malaise that we almost bring it upon ourselves, by seeing it as some unfortunate rite of passage that inevitably hits as the years tick by? Or is it simply a natural response to a need to take stock and re-evaluate our goals?

Here, we look at whether the midlife crisis is a legitimate life phase, or just a loaded suggestion that’s become lodged in our psyches.

A POPULAR PHRASE

The “midlife crisis”, as we know it, is thought to have been invented during the 1950s by psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques. He had noticed a phenomenon among his patients where people in their mid-30s became depressed, unable to enjoy life, prone to rash decisions and overly concerned with staying youthful. At the time, the concept was slow to gain traction, but when he wrote the essay Death and the Midlife Crisis in 1965, the idea took off.

By the 1960s, life expectancy had climbed to around 70 years of age, and people were more receptive to switching their career, starting over with a new partner or sailing off on an adventure around the 40-year mark, knowing they still had several decades to enjoy it.