[Jackolar12]

Mid life crisis has no empiracle evidence, therefore it evidentially does not exist! Whatever.
However, we know it does ? What the f££k.
My perspective is that MLC addresses the good ness of fit of your particular relationship. Which initially could have been fine but developed over time to be all consuming and overpowering.
Soooo what do YOU do, well you evaluate your situation and chose vastly differently alternatives which naturally upset some significant people in your life. You want to finally be your authentic self whatever the cost! So you totally redefine and construct your life for the better?
You have put up with society and family expectations of your expected behaviour socially and it has now come to a stage where it no longer works. So you Rebel against the administration. You run looking for a better goodness of fit for your new life. It works for a while and your happy with your new choice. But eventually you new found energy depletes and you are back to square one, your old self! Was the journey worth it ? You tell me!
Jackolar 12

[Ready2Transform]

I can't say I disagree with this, Jack.  

[Not Applicable]

You have put up with society and family expectations of your expected behaviour socially and it has now come to a stage where it no longer works. So you Rebel against the administration. You run looking for a better goodness of fit for your new life. It works for a while and your happy with your new choice. But eventually you new found energy depletes and you are back to square one, your old self! Was the journey worth it ? You tell me!
Jackolar 12

I've read this argument several times and while I believe it could very well be the case for some, in my husband's MLC it is the exact opposite. He always did his own thing. He was very different from someone in his culture, naturally. In fact, even with very little exposure to people from my culture before he met me, he was very similar to someone from my culture from his natural personality. Even marrying me meant going up against the opinions of society and most of his family.

His MLC is a great deal related to societal, cultural and family pressure to conform after returning to his hometown after spending more than half of his life living elsewhere, coupled with personal circumstances of ours that we could not control but left him outside the cultural norm. He used to tell me he would never succumb to that pressure even though he knew he might face it. That was when we lived in a different part of the country on our own. And now he has succumbed, and he has clearly made himself miserable in doing so. Because his MLC is about NOT being his authentic self.

[hawk]

My conclusion after all this time is that some could be a combo of stuff in all that J but often also combined with simply just not being happy in the marriage itself or of what life had become.
l think mine was that combo bc l hadn't been happy in my marriage or life myself either for 2 or 3yrs and l wondered just wtf to do too.
My ex was a different person and most of the things l loved about her had just changed and a lot of the changes l didn't like at all.
And l know me and that stuff was all a huge part in ex's decision.

We also had a lot of stress and would you believe she went into early menopause and depression too , 39.
So just how much of each thing was mlc or unhappiness or menopausing , l'll never know.
l know most here said yep she is def' mlc but our marriage had become what it did too and l'm sure l can see that in a lot of the stories through hs but maybe their h's or w's were just silent like mine was about it , hell l was silent about my feelings too. l didn't know what to do.

Well , l don't think l've mentioned it on hs yet although a few friends here know privately but mine we found out has married the om sooo, l guess that might say that it was more about our marriage than mlc.
Don't worry l'm use to the news l found out awhile ago now and although l wanted to try and turn our marriage around before bd, l'd given up on ex and R since a long time ago .
Yeah things still hurt and effected me but how could anyone not be sad about losing their family and marriage whether they were happy or not, that was the difference for me.
But as l come and went for my d l also saw ex continue to change and that also helped me bc l was still not really liking anymore the person she'd been becoming over the years anyway even after bd.

So maybe she simply left and gave up on her marriage after all , l'll never know l guess. The om has already been married twice and has 4 kids to 3 different women buttttt, people still seem to think he's a decent bloke soooo, maybe she just got lucky.
Maybe it was all still just a conscious decision for the better for her even with the combo of everything going on, who knows. 

[Tyks]

This is interesting.  I also believe my h is having an mlc although I also believe he had valid complaints in the marriage that he never spoke up about until the surprise bd. Had he spoken up about them I also would have spoken up about my issues.

I believe everyone has issues in a marriage. It is how you deal with them that makes the difference. I was willing to work on it and try to fix the issues while my h was just wanting to run run run and stick his head in the sand. So that is what he did 

That is the part that is the hardest for me to get over.  Mlc or issues I believe you should really try to work it out with your spouse by working together. That way you can say well I did everything and if it doesn't work out you can have a clean break and be done with it.

[LisaLives]

You have put up with society and family expectations of your expected behaviour socially and it has now come to a stage where it no longer works. So you Rebel against the administration. You run looking for a better goodness of fit for your new life. It works for a while and your happy with your new choice. But eventually you new found energy depletes and you are back to square one, your old self! Was the journey worth it ? You tell me!
Jackolar 12

I've read this argument several times and while I believe it could very well be the case for some, in my husband's MLC it is the exact opposite. He always did his own thing. He was very different from someone in his culture, naturally. In fact, even with very little exposure to people from my culture before he met me, he was very similar to someone from my culture from his natural personality. Even marrying me meant going up against the opinions of society and most of his family.

His MLC is a great deal related to societal, cultural and family pressure to conform after returning to his hometown after spending more than half of his life living elsewhere, coupled with personal circumstances of ours that we could not control but left him outside the cultural norm. He used to tell me he would never succumb to that pressure even though he knew he might face it. That was when we lived in a different part of the country on our own. And now he has succumbed, and he has clearly made himself miserable in doing so. Because his MLC is about NOT being his authentic self.

How do you know that?  How do you KNOW who his authentic self is?  I am not sure some days I know my own authentic self?  I think sometimes people like your husband who run so hard from something, are in fact the ones most likely living a lie--trying to be something they ARE NOT, to prove they are not who they are, which is somehow, something they perceive as inadequate.  One of my favorite truths in the Art of Loving by Fromm is that love is reflection of your self perception and that when you are young and incomplete, you love those who seem to complete you, but when you are complete you love yourself. 

We all struggle, EVERY SINGLE DAY, with who we ARE, who we think we are, who we want to be, who others want us to be...  And all the others want us to be something different.  None of us can be the ideal person, spouse, mother, sibling, child, worker, friend.  So, what wins, in this second, or the next minute?  I don't even know your husband, but I guarantee neither you nor he knows who his authentic self is, because even a self-aware person knows that authentic person changes with the wind. 

If your values do not clash every day, you have no values.  If every day you do not wrestle with your dark side, you are in denial and your dark side is winning...  Love and light, ll

[Not Applicable]

I'll give you an example. My husband is in his 40s. And he has to ask his mother and siblings what the proper customs are in many social circumstances because he left home when he went to the university and never had any experience or exposure to what is done as a responsible adult in his hometown. He spent most of his life living in the same country but the customs are very different where we lived before and he gets angry at having to do the stuff he has to do here even now. He has a goal in his MLC madness but in order to achieve that goal he has to jump through a lot of hoops he doesn't like. He at one point a couple months ago was refusing to do something that is commonly done and said, "I don't care what the customs are as long as I am not doing something illegal or against my religion." In other words, he didn't care what anyone thought if he refused to do something that everyone here does. This is a man who is happiest if he can just come up, close the door and not have to deal with anyone or anything.

I know what you are saying about people trying to prove they are something they aren't. There are actually a lot of people here in this community that are like that because they work in fields where they are exposed to people from different countries every day and they act in ways that fit their stereotypes of people from those cultures when they interact with them because they think this will benefit their relationship with them. They are total caricatures and really I find these kind of people obnoxious and creepy and you can spot them from a mile away.

But my husband had virtually no contact with people from outside his culture when I met him. So he had no preconceived notions that he was trying to impress me with. He simply is really different from the average person in his culture naturally. That stood out to me the first day I met him. I could tell he TRULY was different from the fakers.

[Thunder]

I think a MLT is very normal for people reaching midlife.  You take stock of where you are, what you've done and where you want to go from here.  Transitions can be very painful but I do think they change you, probably for the better.

A MLC is when this transition turns into a crisis.  You have no idea who you are anymore or what you want.  Huge confusion and depression set in. 
You start doing very destructive things that are not good for your future or yourself.

They may very well end up doing the inner work they need to do and come out a better person, or they don't do the inner work they need to do and just come back to square one.  The same person they were with no improvements....only losses.

I guess it all depends on how they handle their crisis.  It takes courage to take that leap and work on yourself.  Some people don't have that courage...so they just keep running, never finding their true self.

[Anjae]

We all have a midlife transition. But not all of us have a midlife crisis.

Aside from those of us that have a MLC, we can't really tell you, can we?

However, I doubt this true self stuff and that it was what drove people into MLC. If it was so, they should had remained happy with their choice. They don't. They are depressed, they look terrible and they are miserable. So much for autentic self and being happy.

[Not Applicable]

I have to agree with Anjae on that. I think some LBS imagine that the MLCer must be happy and in love with the OW or else why would they do what they are doing. But they aren't. They aren't any happier with the OW than they were with you. They may not even be any happier with the OW than you right now. Because the misery is inside of them and no one can get rid of it for them.

My husband did not choose OW because she was perfect for him in his eyes or his dream woman. He chose her because she was willing to accept him, and he truly believed his options were so limited because of his age and certain other factors. He has a really negative view of himself as a potential partner at this point in his life. And he said directly because of all these factors he felt he would not be able to attract just anyone. He was settling.

Contrast that to when he chose to marry me, he actually COULD have had anyone he wanted in his community. He was pretty much the most desirable bachelor around. And he chose to marry me from outside his community and this even made a lot of people angry at him.

I don't think MLC is about self-actualization. I think the MLCer faces some circumstances in their life, possibly a very specific circumstance, consciously or subconsciously, that they feel they must fix, and quick. They do whatever they think will solve that problem, but they are so focused on what they are trying to fix that they are blind to everything but that problem and they don't look at their life as a whole when they inadvertently start destroying what they already have and love about their life. It's like the walls of their home have come crashing down now and all sorts of issues that were neatly stored away or that had their place are now jumbled and out in the open. I think it is almost like a domino effect.

I sometimes wonder about MLC like chicken and egg. Which came first? Is MLC a syndrome that causes them to do all this? Or do they do some very specific thing that triggers the MLC as a whole?