Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who suspect their husband is experiencing a midlife crisis. The husband will often abruptly make life-altering decisions. He’ll often leave or abandon the things that previously defined his life – like his job or his marriage. And this type of behavior isn’t like him.

Needless to say, wives are often not only shocked and troubled by this behavior, but they’re also not sure how they should respond to it. 

A wife might explain, ” I don’t want to sound rude or judgemental, but my husband is really off his rocker. He’s normally a measured, rational-thinking person. But over the last several weeks, he has made drastic and ridiculous changes without even consulting me. It started when he donated nearly all his clothes. Then he got a new car. After that, he quit his job. The very next day, he backed a bag and told me he wanted to “try on” a separation. He said he just needed to evaluate some things in his life, and he can’t think unless he’s by himself. Of course, I told him this is crazy, and I begged him to reconsider. He got very defensive, and he is pretty much refusing to discuss it. I feel like my life is turned upside down by decisions I have no control over and absolutely no say in. He’s 50, so this is the perfect time for a mid-life crisis, I guess. How can I handle this to have the best chance that he will come to his senses and stop this behavior?”

I can’t tell you how common this topic is. Unfortunately, some men reach a certain point in their lives and believe they are dissatisfied. As a result, they think they need to discard parts of their life that have little to do with their unhappiness.  

I’ve come to believe that there are some things that you can do to minimize the fall-out from his unexpected behavior. I will discuss them below. 

Understand Why You Need to Be Careful: I understand that you must be beyond frustrated. I get why you might want to tell your husband that he’s acting crazy. But you need to understand something. A man who acts like this or a man in a midlife crisis is a man who is struggling. In other words, despite any outward appearances, he doesn’t feel great about himself right now. So if you bring his attention to what you perceive as his crazy, negative behavior, he will only feel worse. Since no one wants to willingly feel negative emotions, he may tune you out at best. Or at worst, he’ll perceive that your negativity requires him to limit or remove your influence from his life. Either way, there’s no upside when you paint his behavior as crazy or undesirable, even if you know it is. The good news is that he will often eventually realize this for himself, so you don’t need to make things worse for yourself by pointing it out.

Avoid Labeling This as a Midlife Crisis:  I can’t think of anyone embracing being labeled as someone experiencing a midlife crisis. The connotation of this phrase is so negative that most people will immediately get defensive when they hear it. No one wants to think of themselves as so old and silly that they would go through a “crisis.” Although you may strongly suspect this is what is happening to your husband, I’d think twice about shouting it from the rooftops. Others may be doing that so that you don’t need to. Or he may even know in his heart that this is true without your needing to alienate him by labeling his behavior.

Focus on Appearing Supportive Rather than Judgemental: Since we’ve hopefully established that husbands who act this way are struggling and are likely at an insecure time in their lives, you will often do better to take a supportive stance. Instead of telling them that his behavior is embarrassing, ask him what you can do to help or support him. He may not take you up on this offer and insist that he just needs time. But at least you have positioned yourself favorably, and he’ll know that he doesn’t necessarily need to avoid you during this process.

Take Care of Yourself While You Process and Wait: I know this is painful. I know that you may be doubting your own worth, his love for you, and how you see your marriage and the bond between you. But please understand that his judgment is clouded by fear and doubt, so he’s not thinking normally. You should not blame or doubt yourself, and you might do everything in your power to surround yourself with the people and things that make you feel supported and loved while you are waiting for him to come to his senses and for things to change. You can’t “make him” realize that he is wrong, but if you show him that, at least on your end, you have value, it can help. And self-respect and self-love can also make you feel a little better. 

Make the Changes You Can Facilitate on Your Own: I would never insinuate that a bit of this is your fault. It isn’t. But when I dealt with this myself, it was helpful to take an honest look at my marriage and then ask myself if there were any places where I could make individual changes to improve our situation and our marriage. Turn out, there were plenty of places. I certainly wasn’t a perfect partner. At times, I took my husband for granted and took much more than I gave. There were places where I could make tiny changes with big results. Most of the changes were honestly not too painful. The heavy lifting had to be done by both of us. But early on, I made some noticeable tweaks, and my husband certainly appreciated this later. Truth be told, I appreciated them too because they made my husband happier, which made my life better and easier. They also made it more likely that he would get on board so we could reconcile. 

I think my husband probably had a mild midlife crisis right before our separation.  Thankfully, I didn’t label it this way to him, but I made some mistakes that alienated him and delayed our reconciliation.  I was able to gradually undo them and we did reconcile eventually and recovered fully.  You can read that whole story at https://isavedmymarriage.com

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