The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Welcome to the virtuous midlife crisis
Clare Thorp looks at Gen X’s search for a purpose
‘MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY IT’S HELPED ME A LOT’
Leaving the stereotypical midlife crisis to the baby boomers, nowadays – with less job security, tinier pension pots and weighed down with late-life responsibilities – those reaching middle age are taking a more mindful approach to the ‘Is this it?’ feeling. Clare Thorp investigates. Photography by Andy Donohoe
Nick King’s bonus from his job as a corporate lawyer came at just the right time. At 44 and feeling deeply dissatisfied with how life was going, he knew he needed to do something to shake things up. ‘I think it probably was some form of midlife crisis,’ he says. ‘I’d hit a rocky patch from my late 30s and was in an unhappy place. I was getting ever-more frustrated with life. I’d prioritised work over pretty much everything else, including my family and certainly my health. I was putting weight on, drinking a lot.’
So he wrote out a cheque for several thousand pounds. But it wasn’t the down payment on a sports car, or for a round-theworld trip. It was for an intensive 12-week personal-training programme at a high-end gym – which meant three sessions a week, giving up booze and completely overhauling his diet. In under a year he lost over 7st. He’s since swum the English Channel, run a half-marathon and taken part in a 28-mile swim from Capri to Naples. ‘It started out as a physical thing, but mentally and emotionally it’s helped me a lot.’
Welcome to the modern – and mindful – midlife crisis, where you’re more likely to run a marathon than run away from your marriage. It’s less splurging on a Porsche, more searching for your purpose. As for trading in your spouse for a younger model? So last decade. Today’s crisis involves swapping your corporate career for something more meaningful.
It’s the way of the world that each generation will rebel against the one that came before it. So if the baby boomers’ midlife wobble was hedonistic – involving affairs, tattoos and fast cars – then those hitting the halfway point now, aka Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980), have found a more virtuous way to do things.
Take Kim Kardashian West – who turns 40 this year – training to be a criminal justice lawyer with a view to opening up her own practice focused on prison reform. ‘Just to know I can make a difference in my children’s lives and [others] by helping fix a broken system, that’s so motivating for me,’ she says. Or one-time hellraiser Chris Evans taking up running at 48, then completing six marathons in five years. ‘Am I addicted? Absolutely. But what a fantastic addiction.’
Since the term was first introduced by psychologist Elliott Jaques in 1965, midlife crises have become a bit of a cliché in popular culture – usually a male one. Think Reggie Perrin, Breaking Bad’s Walter White and Bill Murray’s character in Lost in Translation. But there’s plenty of evidence that they’re real – for men and women.
‘In its most basic terms, the midlife crisis is that moment in your late 30s, early 40s onwards when you begin to realise that you haven’t achieved what you wanted to or done what you thought you might,’ says Professor Mark Jackson from the University of Exeter, who is writing a book on the history of the subject. ‘Alongside that is a deeper psychological crisis in that, at the same time, you also realise you haven’t got much time left to do it.’ An increasing awareness of mortality, through elderly parents, sick friends and our declining bodies, adds to this sudden sense that time is running out.
Research across 132 countries published earlier this year by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 47.2 is the age at which we’re at our most miserable (on the plus side, it’s all good from there on), suggesting we might be hardwired for a midlife crisis. Meanwhile a new book, Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun, which has been causing a stir stateside and has just been published here, explores the specific crisis now facing Generation X women. Calhoun digs deep into why she – and so many other women she knows – find themselves awake at night, wondering if they’ve played the game of life all wrong. She also pinpoints the specific struggles that midlifers now face compared to the boomers who came before.
Unlike their parents’ and grandparents’
‘I’d prioritised work over everything else. I was putting weight on, drinking a lot’
generations, many of whom were empty nesters at midlife, Gen X, she says, are at that point hitting peak stress in both their work and family lives. ‘Our lives can begin to feel like the latter stages of Tetris, where the descending pieces pile up faster and faster,’ writes Calhoun.
Gen Xers, her book claims, were the first to grow up thinking they could have it all – and middle age is when many of us realise we probably can’t. ‘We thought we could have both thriving careers and rich home lives and make more and achieve more than our parents, but most of us have gained little if any advantage,’ she says.
This generation have had more choices than anyone before them, yet that only leads to anxiety about making the right ones. ‘They’re sort of living with a complete mess where everything is possible,’ says Prof Jackson. ‘That can paralyse and lead to a crisis.’
Research from UCL Institute of Education found that Gen X were more likely to report symptoms of poor mental health around the age 42 than the generation before them. Marrying and having children later may be a contributory factor, meaning many are raising children while simultaneously looking after elderly relatives. Our jobs are less secure. We don’t have generous pension pots waiting for us.
While not quite as restricted as Michelle Obama was as First Lady – she said the fringe she adopted for her 49th birthday was because ‘I couldn’t get a sports car, they wouldn’t let me bungee jump…’ – Gen Xers are weighed down with responsibilities that make blowing up their lives a luxury most can’t afford. Besides, most have not long stopped partying anyway. So they’re finding new ways to channel the crisis.
‘From the beginning, midlife crises have been about the passing of youth and retaining that youth in some way,’ says Prof Jackson. Previously, that might have involved shacking up with someone younger. ‘But extreme sports or fitness or yoga are also a mechanism for doing that. There’s a very different feel to the midlife crisis now – a sense that it can be liberating and something that enables rather than closes down.’
For Nick King, hitting his 40s was the first time in two decades he’d stopped to take stock. ‘I was probably quite typical of my generation in that I prided myself on working really hard and being the first one in the office and last one out. Then you think, “Well, I’m halfway through my life, hopefully.”’ The drive that once made him fiercely competitive in his career, he now channels into fitness. For his 15th wedding anniversary last year, he and his wife went to New
York. ‘We did two 10km runs around Central Park together,’ he says.
He’s certainly not alone in embracing fitness in midlife. Ultimate Performance – the personal-training programme that King signed up to – has seen an 83 per cent increase in the number of clients over 40 signing up since 2017. ‘For many it’s about turning back the clock, for others it’s about investing in their health for the future, to make them more resilient to stress, illness and ageing,’ says its founder Nick Mitchell. Indeed, a 2018 study by Bupa found that, for men, the new midlife crisis is marked by going vegan and signing up for a Tough Mudder challenge.
Another added pressure these days is social media. While ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ has always been a temptation, it’s now easier than ever to compare ourselves to the Joneses’ seemingly perfect lives, even when they aren’t always what they seem.
Certainly to anyone on the outside, Geraldine
Morelli looked like she had it all worked out as she approached her 40th birthday three years ago. She had a wellpaid job as the head of marketing for a large telecoms company, and was married with two children and a nice London home. ‘I’d done everything I was told I was supposed to do. On paper everything was perfect, so I didn’t think I had the right to be unhappy,’ she says. ‘But I’d wake up in the morning and not look forward to anything. I didn’t want to get ready for work each morning, but I didn’t want to come home and see my husband either.’
In the end, she took a nine-month sabbatical to take a hard look at her life and focus on a passion project she’d started two years earlier – an African conservation charity called Wild & Free. ‘I thought, if this is my midlife crisis, I’m going to make it bloody good. I’m going to make it worth it.’ She took a piece of paper and wrote down every
major factor in her life – from her career and the charity, to her family and where she lived, and thought about which ones she wanted to change. ‘Eventually, I realised that it was my marriage and my job that I had to move away from,’ she says. ‘I divorced, resigned and moved out in 2017.’
She now splits her time between her charity and working as a specialist safari travel agent from home. ‘I’ve never been happier and I’m grateful that I love what I do every day. I honestly think my midlife crisis was the best thing that could have happened to me.’
Lucia Knight, a careers coach, thinks there’s a reason the midlife crisis is so often related to our jobs. ‘For Generation X, work forms part of our self-esteem in a way that it never did for any generation before us,’ she says. ‘It’s part of our identity, our status. If that boat starts to rock, it has a huge impact on the rest of our life.’
Gen Xers have seen the world of work change radically. They grew up pre-internet, then watched as it came and cannibalised their industries. The most common questions Knight’s clients ask is: ‘Is this it?’ Many are experiencing burnout, having spent two decades climbing the ladder. ‘We put our careers on autopilot and keep going up and up and think that’s the definition of success, but the midlife phase causes us to question and redefine what we mean by success.’
Paul Bridgeman, now 51, had spent nearly two decades working in advertising sales when he was involved in a serious car crash in his late 30s. It was the beginning of what he calls ‘an existential crisis’ that lasted several years. ‘I view that accident positively now, which sounds odd as I was lucky to come away with my life, but it put things in focus for me,’ he says.
Spending time in hospital surrounded by doctors and nurses – ‘people having a huge impact on me’ – meant he started to reflect on his own career choices. Shortly afterwards, on a work trip, he found himself talking to a Catholic priest. ‘He saw the scars on my face and we got talking about what had happened to me. He told me there’s nothing worse than when he encounters people who reach the end of their lives full of regrets. It stayed with me.’
Bridgeman started studying for an Open University degree in his spare time. Meanwhile, he felt increasingly distant from the job he’d devoted decades to. ‘I found myself sitting in meetings trying to persuade clients to take on products and services that I knew in my heart of hearts might not benefit them,’ he says.
Things came to a head when he was signed off with stress for six weeks; then, when he was 46, the chance for voluntary redundancy came up and he took it, deciding to apply for a teacher-training course. ‘It is a cliché, but I wanted to do something where I felt like I was contributing to the lives of others,’ he says. ‘Walking into the classroom on my first day as a qualified teacher, it did feel as though my whole life had been building to that point.’
Psychotherapist Michelle Scott, from The Recovery Centre, agrees that a midlife crisis can be a time of opportunity, to reassess what we want from life. ‘A successful way to get through it is to find a sense of worth and purpose,’ she says. However, she adds that people need to manage their expectations, too. ‘There can be a lot of pressure to have a sudden profound realisation, an Eat Pray Love moment. That suddenly you’re going to go and completely change everything.’
Small changes, she says, can have just as much impact. Although try telling that to Nick King, who has already focused on his next goal – a series of 40km running and swimming events this summer. ‘I probably could have bought a really nice car with what I spent on personal training,’ he says. ‘But it’s the best investment I’ve ever made.’
‘Walking into the classroom, I felt my whole life had been building to that point’