This is a long article, but well worth the read. It certainly gives credence to the fact that MLC is real. Though this article was written about male MLCers, it is also applicable for female MLCers, too. Enjoy the read and I hope it generates some great discussion.
Mid-Life Destruction: Avoiding the Re-emergence of the Addictive Sins of Youth
The destruction of a man in mid-life is, in fact, not a singular event—although it is often that last egregious act that is found out and publicized to the man’s entire world that becomes the focus of the shock and awe of a life flushed away.
That act, however— whether an affair with the sexy, young secretary or the re-emergence of a drug or gambling addiction from one’s youth—is merely the end of a long chain of temptations and unwise choices by someone desperate for something to renew a life believed long dead of meaning and purpose. Instead of embracing Christ’s offer of resurrection—of new life to be lived in the present—the man on the slippery slope attempts to resuscitate a life that should be allowed to die. And resuscitation, I would argue, is always a putrid choice compared to the power of resurrection.
*The sources and pattern of self-destruction*
First, however, please travel with me on a journey—into the perfect storm of mid-life destruction of a man’s life. I have consistently found, in my clinical work with men caught up and near destruction in this storm, six common elements that interact together to make this storm so appalling.
1. Physical Decline Many men in their 40s and 50s still think and act like they have 20-year-old bodies—often pushing them to severe stress and even injury. I vividly recall tearing up my knee on my 40th birthday—an injury from which I still feel occasional pain—after swinging and losing my grip on my kid’s rope-swing in our backyard Redwood trees in Northern California.
Overcoming the denial of encroaching limits is often literally a painful venture that begins as a robust adventure. Or worse, many mid-life males are crippled by a serious health crisis—heart attack, a paralyzing or disfiguring accident, the onset of diabetes, or a chronic injury from youth that becomes disabling and painful. For some, it is the loss of sexual prowess and potency, often exacerbated by a painful marriage, the third factor we explore (an issue that Viagra and ED drugs are allaying and extending the crisis another decade into the future.
For many, decline is the simple awareness that aging makes it impossible to do what one was once able to accomplish or to recover as quickly from injury or exhaustion that are so ubiquitous at this stage. For many more, decline may be the first whisper of one’s mortality, forcing the facing of the truth that death is on the horizon and can no longer be denied.
*2. A Crisis That Ends Poorly or Ambivalently*
A second factor—often deemed ‘the mid-life crisis’ to define the entire experience— is a crisis event that impacts a man’s life to his very core. It may be a life-shattering cataclysm that happens in a matter of days or even hours, or it can be a longer developmental or ‘life-stage’ crisis—an event that unfolds over several months or years. The key is that it represents a distinctive change in life and perception. The biggest impact of the crisis—especially one that has exacted a high cost—is the change in one’s worldview, especially in a cynical or more negative direction.
As suggested above, the crisis that can trigger decline into places of destructive decision-making is often physical or medical, and one will hear stories of a heart attack or an episode with cancer as being the source of a major mid-life change of direction. For others, as Larry Crabb has so artfully written, the crisis ensues with the crush of “shattered dreams.”2 The mid-life man is passed over by someone younger for that long-expected promotion, a beloved child dies or slips into a disabling drug addiction or mental disorder, or he realizes that a long-held dream—becoming a multi-millionaire by 40 and retiring or writing the “great American novel”—will never happen.
Such events are, truly, “dangerous opportunities,” as the Chinese understand a crisis. The man undergoing them, suffering on the verge of crazed disillusion, can choose to cling to Christ all the more deeply and recover well, or go off into some dark nether-world from which he may never return. We all know from tragic experience—and may it be sobering knowledge to recall—how many good men choose the latter path. In contrast, may hope be stoked as you recall men who have chosen for Christ and experienced a genuine renewal in life.
*3. Chronic Marital Dissatisfaction*
By mid-life, many men have been married for 25 to 30 or more years. Many are in empty nest marriages—the kids have grown and gone and a married couple is left living and looking at only each other once again. Issues that have been avoided or deferred while a couple raises their children now come crashing home. For too many in this situation—mid-life women as well as men—the person they are left living with is increasingly seen as an alien entity. And when chronic marital issues go unresolved for too long a time, escape eventually becomes more attractive than recommitment and marital renewal.
Among boomers married for many years, we are now seeing trends of increased divorce and much marital dissatisfaction that simmers just short of divorce.3 Raised on instant gratification and easy divorce, it takes no futurist to predict that divorce will be chosen by far too many mid-life boomers who could choose to stick it out and turn that alien spouse into a vision of loveliness and renewed commitment. However, after years of marital drift, living with a woman who is no longer attractive sexually or emotionally, and a long mental catalog of escapist fantasies, it is likely that choosing for the marriage and late-life integrity will require miraculous power to succeed.
*4. Discretionary Spending Ability*
The fourth and most common enabling factor for many men to run off into darkness is money—discretionary spending money earned over many years. Most men’s mid-life sins are expensive and having extra money not only fuels the fire of wrong-doing, but also serves the rationalization that “at least I’ll leave my family with enough money to live on without me…” Some men are content to buy that “little, red Corvette” and enjoy it; others are determined to push themselves into the trouble zone.
As a uniquely male attribute, the strength of this factor was humorously shown years ago by Nobel-prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, in a letter explaining why he (oh so wisely) declined an offer to leave Cal-Tech that would have tripled his salary:
The reason I have to refuse a salary like that is I would be able to do what I’ve always wanted to do —get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things... With the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would happen to me. I’d worry about her, what she’s doing; I’d get into arguments… and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn’t be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess! What I’ve always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I’ve decided that I can’t accept your offer.
Some loose women, far too well-trained in the seductive arts, have an uncanny radar that hones in on men with money, especially those willing to waste lots of it on them (meditate on Proverbs 2:10-19, 5:1-20, 6:20-35, and 7:1-27). For some men, then, a life of relative poverty may well be a blessing in disguise, if coming into money meant that the temptation of mid-life destruction would increase. We see this again and again, do we not, with men who, whether by inheritance or lottery winnings, proceed to make a mess of their lives due to their inability to manage well all that new wealth.
*5. Attributions of a Hopeless, Imprisoned Life*
Cognitive therapists might assert that this is the most important factor, for as Epictetus held over two millennia ago, “Man is not disturbed by events, but by the view he takes of them.” It is the constant negative appraisal that “my life is trapped and there is no way out; that I’ll go to my grave stuck in this terrible situation”— that enables the desperation that motivates a leap into the hissing cauldron of escape. The worse the attributions a man makes of his situation, the more likely he is to ruminate on, and choose, a destructive path as the way out.
Some men, in order to hide their dissatisfaction and dark musings, or as a constant, countervailing self-lie, will deny their turbulent inner reality and present a perfect face—often a rigid and too-perfect façade—to themselves and the world around them. I have found this especially true with many conservative, Christian men. While some of these maintain the blatant lie that if they hide their darkness publicly it doesn’t exist, some others genuinely—and sometimes desperately—believe that if they project a perfect Christian life fiercely enough, and long enough, it may come true.
This naïve way of compensatory, magical thinking is a sad substitute for a redeemed and holy life, which always requires a fierce and full honesty about our sins and fears. (And many men lament that this level of honesty will only get them ostracized in their church. How many churches prize image over honesty and will not allow or admit to this kind of struggle?) Eventually, this fragile edifice comes crashing down when their dark side overwhelms them in mid-life.
Moreover, living in that seductive lie of the caged life for too long begins to make old habits—and old temptations— look increasingly attractive. A man’s cost/benefit analytical abilities—which are otherwise well-honed and useful by this time in life—become distorted and untrustworthy. Over time the up-side of wrongdoing begins to shine and the negative consequences slowly disappear. The sins of one’s youth—which God may have rescued the man from when he was first saved—are re-introduced by the enemy in the mind as the swash-buckling temptations they may have once looked like.
If circumstances or perceptions don’t change, anger increases as frustrations rise, arrogance creeps in, and a sense of entitlement begins to grow.5 Receptivity to God and God’s messengers begins to shut down. All the combustible elements are in place, just waiting for the firing spark.
*6. An Opportunity to Flee Appears*
The final factor that sparks this combustible mixture into a roaring flame of intense pursuit is a wild-over-the-top experience, and ultimately, a hellish, burned-out consequence. It almost always involves a sexual affair, or the re-emergence of a drug or gambling addiction in which the mid-life man was ensnared in his youth.
The woman of his affair is usually someone he knows, although it is not unusual for the sex-addicted man to become ensnared with a complete stranger— someone he met in a chat-room who lives halfway across the country. She may be an employee or work colleague, someone who likes his attentions and whom he has fantasized about sexually for quite a while. Or she may have been a youthful love who re-enters his life at a class reunion or through an Internet connection that he deliberately seeks out. And I would be remiss if not noting that, in this modern age, more and more men are throwing their lives and marriages away to engage in homosexual affairs.6
Addictions of all kinds will surely rise as a preferred method of escape.7 The abuse of alcohol and prescription narcotics— such as Oxycontin—is already rapidly increasing in America. Among mid-lifers, these drugs become abused as the result of legitimate use after an injury or the onset of a chronic pain condition. Add the fact that Afghanistan now produces over 5,000 tons of opium annually—far more than ever in history. The world is currently awash in cheap, easily available, illicit narcotics. Death by drug overdose and suicide by use of these drugs is rising precipitously— although alcohol and drug overdoses have just slightly increased for young people aged 18-34 over the past 10-12 years; for boomers in mid-life, they are spiraling ever upwards at an alarming rate approaching 200%.8
Gambling is also becoming commonplace— and very troublesome to gambling addicts—with easy access to the now innocuous-sounding ‘gaming industry’ growing on the Internet and all across America. Casinos now exist in nearly every state, either by legislative action or on Native American land. Not only were the casinos the first businesses rebuilt along the Mississippi coast after the destruction of hurricane Katrina, but gambling is being promoted as a desirable recreational habit for the elderly all over the country. And when the big multi-state lotteries reach nine figures and get beyond a quarter-billion dollars, national media attention makes them known to everyone.
Common, and most ironic, paths of addiction are those that are socially accepted— work, golf, hunting, running, even serving in church or the community— when these habits become compulsively driven. Some men will tune out and get lost in these activities that are socially rewarding and have limited negative consequences. And, piling paradox onto irony, these addictions may well be secretly desired by the family, even as it complains about them. Wife and children may be happy that dad isn’t around much, if being around means listening to his complaints or having him interfere with their busy and independent lives.
Increasingly, we find many of these men lost in a virtual world of cyberporn sexual fantasy. Because of the powerfully addictive nature and near anonymity of such behavior, Internet sex has become a “drug of choice” for many men in the Church.9 Far too many of these men, frustrated by the growing dissatisfaction of solitary sex and the addiction’s tolerance effect, will push themselves beyond the virtual world and allow this sin to take hold in their real world. This is when the risk of exposure is highest, creating tremendous anxiety and making a liar out of the man in crisis.
Tragically, a few of these will push themselves to criminal and deadly extremes. They will be exposed engaging with prostitutes, committing rape, perpetrating child sexual abuse—against both girls and boys, using illicit drugs, and becoming needle-sharing heroin addicts. Some men will become front-page news, overdose on strong narcotics, go to prison, and contract AIDS and other STDs. The wages of sin that is never stopped is surely death.
*The life and limits of intervention*
Intervention with a man in the midst of this perfect storm is nearly always impossible. Let me say it directly: I have rarely, if ever, seen it work. Such a man is incapable of rescue, as rescue is usually the last thing he wants at the height of his pleasure. He is like the victims at a beachfront ‘hurricane party,’ who gather to experience the thrill of danger and the awesome force of nature. Forgetting that a 20-foot storm surge is coming to smash and drown them, they party on in mass denial until sudden terror strikes. Their screams for rescue come tragically too late.
While everyone else witnesses this race from reality as a crazy act of foolhardy abandonment, the entrapped man sees the flight as a longed-for escape from an otherwise impossible prison that was choking him to death. It is the wide gulf in these perceptual worlds that make it nearly impossible to rescue the “lost” man when he is in the midst of his flight from reality—a reality, to him, that was poisoned beyond repair.
When he becomes committed to it, he deliberately locks out all pleas of safe return, and locks in a dedicated effort to escape and enjoy it in every way possible. No matter how truthful—how soaked in Christ—your words of warning and pleas of return are, they are usually useless, falling on the deaf ears of a man lost in trying to recapture some utopian fantasy of his long lost youth. It is like you were speaking a foreign language to someone who has not the slightest comprehension of its meaning.
Clinical intervention, sadly, tends to work only before or after the storm. Of course it is best to help a man avoid such destruction, and I pray that is the primary effect of this article. Most of the time Christian counselors work with the consequences of this destruction. We spread our verbal salve on the painful detritus of the broken man, the shattered marriage, the traumatized wife and children, the shocked and embarrassed professional partners, the various “parties to the litigation,” and all the other victims caught up in the wake of a spreading tragedy.
*Presenting Christian Alternatives*
One critical preventative intervention is to review and hold out alternative choices— especially the always ready choice of the Savior and His resurrection power. A man alone, living a solitary existence in his own head, has often developed a severe ‘tunnel vision’ that sees nothing but the perceived trap he lives in and the imagined way of escape. It can be a revelation of freedom to even believe and consider that there are alternative ways of perceiving and conceiving a different end to his dilemma.
For many men, successful intervention requires that they remove themselves for a time from their normal environs— separated from the daily pattern of frustrations, stresses and temptations that operate so habitually—and be placed in an environment that fosters de-stressing, meditation, and helpful interaction with other men. Men at risk need a welcoming environment away from their ongoing life to be able to think clearly, to pray, to talk honestly, and to consider and chart a different course for their lives.
Creating better old_resources that allow for intensive, week-long (and longer) interventions in individual and group formats for mid-life pastors and counselors struggling with these issues is a long-term goal of the AACC (and the AACC Foundation would welcome grants and bequests to facilitate this very needed ministry for mid-life men).
Most men, however, will fight the idea that there is an alternative resolution, especially those caught up in the midst of the storm. He will usually assert that he has considered them all, tried most, and nothing works. He may be stubbornly blind to the fact that he has considered but a few, tried just one, if any, and did so poorly, caving in to defeat after just one feeble attempt.
The man swirling around in this storm is wedded to his defeatist views because that justifies the desperation of a complete escape. He must construct a plausible (though to everyone else, an impossible) logic to abandon heart and home for the radical embrace of that which no one else could accept. To live and lived in. It really does take some artful, Spirit-inspired therapy to expose and effectively ‘spit in the soup’ of this powerful, self-justifying, and dedicated fantasy of the self-destroying man.
*Seek Help from the Lost Man*
I commend to you a paradoxical tactic that I have found useful in penetrating the powerful denial of a man entering the storm. When he is deep into escape, I stop trying to change him and ask him for help, reversing the pressure of trying to get him to listen to reason, and causing him to pause when that pressure is suddenly absent. I seek his help—and ethically, I ask him to sign a release form that allows me to talk to, and help, the likely victims—to define what to say to those shattered family members and friends who will want to know what happened and what to do next.
It is usually a dissembling moment for the mid-life man in crisis, as his defenses are suddenly down and he often doesn’t know what to do. Yet when I see his resistance crumble and he stops fighting, I remain quiet, wanting to avoid re-triggering his defenses and waiting for him to finally turn his attention toward my queries. Only the paranoid or pathologically hostile will refuse this request, as the man-in-flight is almost always concerned about the impact on those he leaves behind. He is especially concerned, and often obsessed, about mitigating the damage and reducing the hurt to his children, wanting to maintain good future relations with them. And even if he is angry with his wife, he does not want to stoke her rage and increase the likelihood of retaliatory behavior by her in the event of divorce.
As I proceed, I recount questions I’ve already been asked or devise questions that serve to penetrate the denial of a ‘family receptive’ fantasy that the man has mentally constructed. When he protests, I reinforce the questions’ power by reference to my experience with such cases, and challenge the man-in-flight to help me construct answers for a worst-case scenario. The further your client travels with this exercise, the more you’ll notice that your ‘worst-case’ scenario and his true family picture will begin to coincide.
When the man is soberly offering his own questions and ideally, is arguing with himself, the paradoxical intention is being realized—he has stopped resisting and has become the source of his own challenge. You may even be able to reverse roles completely and take up arguing his reasons for flight, anchoring more deeply his own resistance to the inherent foolishness of them. If he leaves the session deep in thought and off-balance, even confused by all this, it has been a success.
However, one more session is necessary, at least, to assess whether a true turn around has succeeded. If he returns to the next session more determined than ever to flee, I know he is lost. Then I will use the information gleaned in this ‘exercise of last resort’ to help the victims. If he returns and picks up the discussion where we left off, I know he has shifted direction—however slightly—and I pray that God will put His foot in that wedge and continue to open the door to faith and reason all the more.
Pray fervently. If there is a breakthrough— a sustained reversal of direction by the man in flight—it is usually only due to some miraculous intervention by God. No human power—no brilliance of intervention or persuasion— can overcome the strength of a man bent on escape. But God can, and He does as a response to prayer by those who pray fervently for a miracle to happen (see Mark 11:24, Philippians 4:6-7, Colossians 4:2-12, James 5:13-15, Ephesians 6:18).
So against all evidence of escape—when the ‘facts on the ground’ look impossible—that is a signal to join with some true and trusted prayer warriors you know and pray all the more fervently. And against all evidence of flight and destructive consequence, that is evidence to keep praying and never stop. Tragically, it is too often true that godly change does not occur prior to flushing one’s life down the drain, but after all is lost and there is no human hope for recovery. Even if the man turns and returns to sanity, there is so much work to do to help him resolve his issues and restore an honorable and fulfilling life—prayer partners will be needed for a long time after the immediate crisis cools.
Mature believers will keep praying by faith when the evidence has caused all others to have long abandoned beseeching God. God’s ways are written in a language we know so little about, and God’s timing operates on a completely different schedule than our own. Even when ‘all is lost’ in human judgment, God is still working to bring about a miracle that no one expects or foresees. And creating miracles out of such hopelessness is what delights God—reveals that He is God Almighty—and shows everyone involved that He alone is worthy of all praise and glory.
*Conclusion: God is able*
Sadly, too many of us know by hard clinical experience that change for the better—if it comes at all—usually comes only after a man has jumped off the cliff and a tragic wake of destruction has swept over him and all those with a stake in his life. It seems to be a stubborn fact that too few Christian men in America pursue a truly sanctified life wholeheartedly, maintaining instead a lukewarm spiritual devotion and keeping one foot mucking around in the ways of the world.10 Many mid-life men who never fully let go of their 1960s addictions to “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” will be sabotaged by this double-mindedness (see James 1:5-8) when faced with a mid-life crisis today.
You will see real family tragedy and hear some heartbreaking laments. Many men will confess that they never truly realized, nor appreciated, what they had until it was forever lost. Many will confess that they never knew the love, nor appreciated the power, of God until He restored that which was irretrievably destroyed. God often never truly becomes God apart from lives being shattered to the point of no return.
Very sadly, for too many men who “wake up” out of the pigpen they have made of their lives, it is too late for any restoration and reconciliation. His reputation is destroyed and his career is gone, his wife has divorced him, and his children are bitter and alienated. His mistress has also left him—or worse, is always around, cackling with incessant chatter and complaint, never leaving him alone—and never again being as desirable as she once was. His drugs, for which he takes ever greater risk and pays ever more money to obtain, are now producing more high-cost misery than pleasure.
More often than not, he has wasted his assets and is broke, his health is broken, and his self-respect is battered to the point of no recovery. As Hibben suggests in the epigraph, we gaze upon such a lost and broken soul with both fascination and horror.
Providence for the prodigal. Yet there is always One who never says no to the desire to return Home (and, if necessary and by fervent prayer, He will implant that desire anew). No matter how far the prodigal in mid-life has fallen, no matter how much he has grieved God over the disastrous losses, the Heavenly Father will always beckon the prodigal home with open arms. Sometimes, in AA parlance, the broken man must not only hit bottom, but bounce off it a few times before he becomes truly tired of the misery.
Is this now much older and broken man too ashamed, too proud, too cynical, too hardened and exhausted by his sins to return to the Father whose love never stops? On that question hangs the prodigal’s eternal soul. And only the prodigal man can answer it.
Biography:
George Ohlschlager, J.D., LCSW, is Senior Editor and Writer of Christian Counseling Today and other leading AACC publications; and is Executive Director of the International Board of Christian Counselors, the AACC-affiliated counselor credentialing and program accreditation agency. He is Chairman of the AACC Law & Ethics Committee, maintains a nationwide clinical/ethics/forensic consulting and speaking practice, and teaches in the Liberty University Center for Counseling and Family Studies, and at St. Petersburg Theological Seminary. George was honored as Consulting Editor to the Soul Care Bible (Thomas Nelson, 2001), and is Executive Editor and co-author of Competent Christian Counseling (WaterBrook, 2002), Caring for People God’s Way (Thomas Nelson, 2005), and the upcoming Caring for People in Marriage and Family Life (Thomas Nelson, 2006)._
*Endnotes*
1 Paxton Hibben, (1927). Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait. New York: The Press of the Readers Club.
2 Larry Crabb, (2001). Shattered Dreams: God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press.
3 Elayne Clift, (March 6, 2005). Grey Divorce on the Rise, at
http://www.boloji.com/wfs3/wfs344.htm; and Jackie Gatewood, (2005). Women and Divorce in Later Life. Christian Counseling Today, 13-4, 32-35.
4 Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, Ralph Leighton (2005). Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: Norton.
5 See Tim Clinton’s upcoming book, Turn Your Life Around (Time-Warner, 2006), which outlines this disaffection process developmentally and shows how God provides the pathway and power to be renewed.
6 And this fact envelops a case with a layer of added confusion, especially if the husband ‘comes out’ and claims a gay identity. See Warren Throckmorton’s excellent piece on the ‘Brokeback Syndrome’ in Christian Counseling Connection, 2006-1. He challenges the toxic anti-marital message of the movie Brokeback Mountain, by telling the story of marital reconciliation between a man and a woman after the man worked through his homosexual struggles.
7 See Mark Laaser, George Ohlschlager, & Tim Clinton, (2005). Addictions: A Multi-faceted Christian Approach, in Tim Clinton, Archibald Hart, & George Ohlschlager (Eds.) Caring for People God’s Way: Personal and Emotional Issues, Addictions, Grief, and Trauma. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.
8 E.M. Caravati, T. Grey, B. Nangle, R.T. Rolfs, C.A. Peterson-Porucznik, (Jan. 21, 2005). Increase in poisoning deaths caused by non-illicit drugs—Utah, 1991-2003, in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, at
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ This data showed that deaths among men aged 35-64 had increased 198%, with Oxycodone, Methadone and Fentanyl the three biggest drugs of abuse among prescription narcotics. 9After finishing this article and just prior to publication I received, on referral from Arch Hart, a great little book by Al Cole, The Shadow Christian: A Parable About Men, God, and Sexual Temptation; for copies contact alcole@cox.net. I highly recommend it for men and wives who have just had this issue explode openly into their lives in mid-life. Also, review Mark Laaser, (2005). Sexual Addiction, in Tim Clinton, Archibald Hart, & George Ohlschlager (Eds.) Caring for People God’s Way: Personal and Emotional Issues, Addictions, Grief, and Trauma. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.
10 See George Barna, (8-9-2005). Most Adults Feel Accepted by God, But Lack a Biblical Worldview. The Barna Update; George Barna (5-24-2004). Faith Has Limited Effect on Most People’s Behavior. The Barna Update; both at
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page
MLC-land from a Christian counseling perspective
Author
Topic: