I like to call it a "midlife adjustment" and there is not a person alive who gets to that age who does not have to deal with it at some level - it really is the transitioning from the phase of life where everything points up to that in-between phase where things slow down, age starts to show itself more, and our mortality looms nearer. We all react to it differently but react we do, unless we are beyond feeling.
This piece nicely sets forth how a wife stuck through a pretty tough time with a husband who was adjusting pretty badly. It is a great story of how patience, perseverance, and wisdom can see us through trials. The lesson is that grace should control and guide us where our emotions would lead us to do things we might otherwise regret.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to state "not a person alive who gets to that age..." - The whole mid-life crisis thing is a function of societies that are a little higher up in Mazlo's hierarchy.
I assure you that the significant part of humanity that is trying to track down enough food, clean water, or even a warm place to sleep each night - let alone adequate medical care or education, doesn't suffer from ennui. They, of course, suffer from hunger, thirst, and exposure - problems, yes, but they certainly have clear priorities.
Sometime happiness suffers when we are provided everything that we need, and we end up asking ourselves, "Isn't there more?"
> Sometime happiness suffers when we are provided everything that we need, and we end up asking ourselves, "Isn't there more?"
Which is why sometimes instead of doing great science or cool projects I wonder if perhaps a more old-fashioned life would be a good choice. Modern medical assistance maybe, but if you have to work to survive every day, I find that does wonders for your happiness.
> I assure you that the significant part of humanity that is trying to track down enough food, clean water, or even a warm place to sleep each night - let alone adequate medical care or education, doesn't suffer from ennui. They, of course, suffer from hunger, thirst, and exposure - problems, yes, but they certainly have clear priorities.
Maybe they don't suffer from ennui, but why do you come to the conclusion that they do not get a mid-life crisis? Surely they notice the decline of physical strength too. I certainly think that also people not provided with anything necessary may ask themselves at some point "isn't there more?".
Yes, very true, and perhaps a great illustration of how we humans haven’t yet evolved quite enough to deal with the very different challenges the affluent nations deal with so soon after we as a species were struggling for survival.
"there is not a person alive who gets to that age who does not have to deal with it at some level"
I figure that there are multiple events in everyone's lives like this: quarterlife crisis, midlife crisis, tragedies, deaths of loved ones, broken relationships- these are part of the shared human experience. I occasionally try to remind myself that in all likelihood, I'll have to go through each one of these situations at some point in life. If I mentally prepare for them in the present, it usually doesn't take away the pain when I do find my world turned upside down, but it certainly helps me see the light at the end of the tunnel and think more clearly.
I'm probably a little unusual in being in my mid-30s and still not having experienced the death of a loved one. I try to tell myself it's inevitable, but I can't bring myself to really believe it - I think unfortunately this means it's going to hit me pretty hard when it actually happens.
I am not disagreeing with you but can I just say that you can really only know how it affected you - and as it felt so natural it is easy to assume that everybody is affected in a similar way.
I remember reading a pedophile stating that all men were attracted to young girls, deep down in their hearts. Anyone who denied it would be lying, to their surroundings or themselves. It's easy to see how someone who has such desires would think that it applies to everybody because it feels so ingrained.
As I said, I am not disagreeing with your point, just making an observation about how easy it is to see one self as the norm.
I just changed startups. Everything was new and interesting again! 51 this fall, still no emotional meltdown, still with wife of 25 years. Startups are the solution!
My take on it is that the author had a system that wasn't working how she wanted it to (her marriage), and rather than take the obvious approach to the problem (discussion / argument), she understood the system well enough and found an unconventional approach that gave her the results she wanted. Maybe that's a little bit of a stretch?
The story is also about understanding what's valuable in life, which folks at HN usually express in their desire to make a living on their own terms outside the traditional workforce. In marriage or employment, finding and keeping those things that are worth having is often really hard work, but if you're lucky it pays off in the end.
Wisdom and self-assurance matter less than the ability to conceive of a world where this kind of a response is possible. As widely-circulated an article as this was creates people capable of pulling it off.
“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.” -- Tom Robbins, "Still Life With Woodpecker"
my guess: (s)he loves <cars>, but all the (wo)men (s)he dates hates <cars> and if (s)he married that (wo)man (s)he'd have to give up <cars>.
Replace <cars> with the tag of your choice :)
(^ one of the biggest crimes of political correctness: making everything so damn hard to read and full of strange punctuation!)
Either that, or (s)he is typically extremely busy with very fulfilling things, and is looking for either a similar partner or a partner who is simply unusually low maintenance.
I've run into that dating. The conversation was along the lines of...
"So, it's paid off since I bought it with cash. The insurance is cheaper than an economy car. The parts are as cheap as economy cars, save for wear parts. It actually gets pretty decent mileage to boot. Why would I have to get rid of it?"
"You just would, that's why!"
I had hung out with her for two weeks and apparently her idea of a happy marriage was giving up everything I have, selling all my furniture (despite the fact my apartment has won AWARDS), and buying whatever she fancied - presumably an over-sized home not within walking distance of anything, that'll be a maintenance nightmare after 20 or 30 years, and a crossover.
I'm all for compromise, but some gals demand total capitulation instead.
Okay, seriously, how do you win awards for an apartment? That's got to be an impressively flexible come-back for an awful lot of relationship-related comments.
Your last sentence comes pretty close. I have several passionate 'hobbies' that are each rather time-consuming, let alone all put together. I can't imagine even continuing a conversation with a woman after she'd suggested I give something up that I considered a part of me (and of course, in turn, I would pay her exactly the same respect). She would have to harmonize with who I am and what I do; but between two people with two sets of motives it is much easier to introduce dissonance. So in my case it is not about completion or finding happiness, it is simply about finding a pairing that adds more to both people's existing lives than it subtracts. You're probably right that she'd have to have a similarly driven independence and be unusually low maintenance. Tall order, I know, but unless the terms make both people better, I can't strike the bargain :)
Sometimes it seems the quality of HN is deteriorating, and then a submission like this, which you'd think one has to be at least 35 to even understand, gets 149 points. Pretty amazing.
I thought that story was awesome, though I completely respect those who hated it. Here is whyb (somewhat stream of conciousness... sorry...):
Long term relationships take work and commitment, including possibly long stretches of unhappiness. This article celebrates working toward something besides "fun".
A rewarding life is NOT the same as being happy all the time. If you ask me, focusing on happiness above all else is tantamount to addiction, and really bad. ("Self overcoming" is what makes a rewarding life, and self overcoming almost requires suffering; I study math -- suffering is fun once you get the taste...)
She wouldn't take the blame for his crappiness, and decided to be OK with herself; she practiced this OK-ness even when it didn't come naturally.
I hate to be all curmudgeonly, but between the 1960s and Freud we have adopted a VERY self indulgent ideology which makes me want to puke. (And which has probably fueled a big part of the conservative movement, unfortunately...)
I may have other less easily expressed reactions that are coloring my overall gestalt, but I think those sum it up.
I'm surprised no one has brought up mental illness. There are very few of us who will make it through life without some kind of depressive episode. Some of use internalize it, some of us lash out and destroy the things around us.
I think the author knows very well the character of her husband. She realized that these feelings and changes in him were out of character, and that other things in his life might be causing him serious distress. She was patient, and gave him the chance to leave if he really thought he needed to, and the time to get his head straightened out. What she didn't do was respond to his lashing out, making the situation worse.
As I see it, she stuck by her husband as he was having a hell of a time in his life. She knew the kind of man he is, and that he'd be back.
So I took this advice a bit too literally when this article came out, and was in denial about all the tantrums my wife was throwing. This weekend, she told me she's hired a lawyer and moved out with my daughter. Should I "buy it" yet?
To whatever extent this article had any advice, it was not to ignore the tantrums, but to ignore the attacks. The author responded to "I don't love you any more" with "what can we do to make this better for you?"
If you took a similar approach, refused to engage in the personal attacks, repeatedly tried to find common ground and ways to fix the problems, and your wife still left... well, you did everything you realistically could. Your focus now should be on maintaining your relationship with your daughter, IMO.
Good point. I certainly shouldn't blame anything on a year-old article, it's just what came to mind re-reading it. Thanks for the kind words, although I can't imagine anyone can imagine what this might be like - at least I sure couldn't. :-/
I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larvae passing through 'developmental stages'. I consider it an affront to the dignity of all children and my teeth are set on edge every time I hear it.
OK, <thoughtful comment>.
If I expressed my deepest feelings to someone who was close to me, the most painful response I could imagine is "I don't buy it". If they spat at me or hit me, then at least they heard me, took me seriously and emotionally engaged with what I am saying. To hear "I don't buy it" is to be told "I don't recognise your feelings as valid", it is to be told "you don't matter, I'm the one in this relationship that decides what we feel about things". To hear "What can we do to give you the distance you need" is to be told what you need, not asked. When he said "I don't like what you've become", she didn't want to hear what he didn't like, she didn't want to engage, she didn't even acknowledge what he was saying, she just invalidated him and shut the discussion down with "I don't buy it".
There's a good chance I'm being grossly unfair, but I can't see anything but an emotionally manipulative woman, breaking the spirit of her husband by refusing to engage with him emotionally. I see a man who has had his every thought and feeling dismissed for years, who has become scarcely able to recognise his own emotional autonomy. When he says “You’re going to make me go into therapy. You’re not going to let me move out. You’re going to use the kids against me.”, I don't see paranoia, I see a man who had a damned good idea of what he was in for; Her only statements of any real meaning were to tell him “What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”, “[do] anything but hurting the children and me” and “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy.”. They all sound an awful lot to me like some things you might say in order to manipulate someone into not leaving by using their kids against them.
Of course we know nothing about their relationship prior to this incident and very little about it since, but I find what we do know to be deeply troubling. It seems to me that every aspect of this situation screams "PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSIST". She seems completely unable to recognise the thoughts and feelings of others, and seems to simply refuse to acknowledge the possibility that there is an objective reality beyond her own imagination that she is unable to control. As I said, I could be being grossly unfair, but everything about this story sits badly with me and I find it deeply worrying to see this woman unquestioningly lauded as wise and enlightened.
You're not being grossly unfair: you're just being completely wrong. Your conclusion is that she is a pathological narcissist, but it is you that makes the story completely about her. On the other hand, she clearly recognized that this man's life wasn't solely about her and she correctly concluded that any problems probably weren't solely about her either.
She lets the guy get a broader perspective, by reducing her own importance in his life, by letting him discover a taste of a life without her, and yet you, and others, manage to interpret that as a sign of narcissism. I don't understand that one bit. It could as well have played out in a completely different way, where the guy liked his newfound freedom enough to go through with the separation. The fact that he stayed is a pretty strong signal that she was right and that it wasn't about her, as she guessed. A narcissist couldn't possibly guess that something wasn't about her.
Your story boils down to 'guy finally has the guts to tell her how it stands, because he is sick of her emotional blackmail, but he's actually a pussy, because a new bit of emotional manipulation is enough to make him reconsider'. That really doesn't sound very convincing.
She doesn't recognise at any stage that he might actually have feelings, or that his opinion might matter. It isn't that she thinks that this man's life isn't solely about her - she doesn't recognise that his man has a life. Whatever he feels, however he acts, her response is to ignore and invalidate.
It is erroneous to believe that what defines narcissism is an obsession with the self. The primary defining trait of the narcissistic personality is the failure to recognise the boundaries between self and others. Narcissists see others as simply an extension of themselves and fail to fully realise the independence of the minds of others. Narcissists have failed to develop the understanding that there is an external reality, acting independently of their own mind.
Narcissists are so debilitating to those around them because their internal logic is so different that our natural reactions are confounded. We fail to recognise when narcissists are lying, because to a narcissist anything that comes from their imagination is the truth - narcissists don't experience any stress whatsoever when lying and seem to be absolutely confident in anything they say or do.
People who are in relationships with narcissists quickly lose their sense of self, because the narcissist's erroneous sense of personal boundaries erodes their sense of sentience. The best analogy I can give is Orwell's Newspeak - if you live for ten or fifteen years with someone who can genuinely convince themselves that black is white, who acts as if nobody else around them has emotions, who acts as if they are the ultimate arbiter of truth, it absolutely warps your sense of self. There is a vast amount of literature on what happens to the partners of narcissists and this guy seems to fit that pattern exactly.
It's not that he's a pussy, it's that after twenty years of being told what he thinks and what he feels, he has a completely eroded sense of self. He doesn't know who he is anymore. That's why he wants to leave and why he finds it so difficult to do so. He came out point blank and said "It's over, I'm leaving" because he rightly anticipated that he wouldn't be given any opportunity to discuss it, and that any response he would get would be manipulative. He correctly anticipated how he would be manipulated, but fell for it anyway because he has lost his fucking mind.
I don't believe the man in this story had any idea what he wanted apart from escape, escape from her, his kids, his job, perhaps his mortality. He could be described as a victim of his emotions. I think she was right to identify this as negative, as hopelessness and directionless self destruction. That doesn't make it any less real for him or any less painful for everyone involved but it does make it possible to see her as a patient and dedicated support. We all go through trials. Sometimes those trials work to destroy our lives, relationships and the people we love. We would all be lucky to have someone stick around while we take them for grant and self-immolate for 6 months.
Regardless, he always had the option to leave. If he had a better plan, he'd have rolled with it. If he was self-actualizing greater destiny, I would agree with you but this guy sounds like he was under water.
As you predicted, I do think you're being unfair to her. Relationships and happiness are tricky things -- if happiness does not come from externalities, can you not control your own thoughts, construct your own internal reality, and be happy based on that? Likewise, aren't relationships defined by feelings, not external successes, so dealing with the other person in _any_ capacity defines the relationship, and therefore its success?
I oversimplify, but it's something to think about.
More to the point, what I read was a woman who heard a line influenced by society, and decided she wanted to deal with it in a way that would force her husband to decide whether he really meant that. My feelings are rarely so clearly defined that I can reduced them to a few sentences, and I'll often collapse them to a saying because it's accurate enough. Frustration is one of the hardest to pin down, and I don't think it's unreasonable of her to say, "I hear that you're unhappy, but I don't think I'm the cause." Of course, just saying this isn't productive, for exactly the reason you mentioned: you can't tell somebody "You're wrong" when they express their feelings.
So she did what she could -- she distanced herself from the turmoil, and she tried to let her husband figure out exactly what the problem was. If it truly was their marriage, he would grow distance, and the subsequent departure would be easier on him. My guess, which fits with the events, is that he found the distance didn't quell his frustration, and re-engaging with his family at his own pace actually brought him some happiness.
Relationships are so close to our emotional core that when something goes wrong, it shows up in them. Like failing at work will make us unhappy even after we go home, lacking fulfillment from our hobbies and career can appear to show up in a relationship. Good relationships recognize this, and can survive an event like the one described in the article.
I think she's lauded as wise because this story gives the reader an easy bromide disguised as deep understanding.
She never once in this story actually sat with her partner and tried to understand what was going on with him. She gave him an answer, made a few demands, and flat out refused to listen.
Reading this story broke my heart. I couldn't believe her utter weakness and lack of compassion.
The truth is scary. Love is scary. Change is scary. These things loom over our comfortable lives threatening to expose us to the changes going on outside our realm of control. You don't own your lover, and the truth may one day be that they're unhappy, and need to leave. That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
If this is indeed a true story, I sure hope the guy has since managed to find a good divorce attorney.
ADDITION:
I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head
that told me my personal happiness was only as good
as my outward success, rooted in things that were
often outside my control.
This is a huge red flag.
Whenever some says that they've "finally managed" to fix themselves in some major way, be very suspicious. It doesn't work that way. We keep our patterns, and they find new ways to manifest until we learn through repeated painful experience to turn them to our benefit some of the time.
There is no switch.
Her happiness was still clearly very much rooted in her "successful" marriage, her ability to provide a traditional two-coupled-parents environment for her children, etc.
The first step to Happiness is admitting one's neuroses.
The second is admitting that the first didn't make them go away.
She never once in this story actually sat with her partner and tried to understand what was going on with him
Of course she has tried that and of course he couldn't explain what was wrong. It is crystal clear that the man wasn't clear on what he thought should be changed. As jjames points out in another comment, his life involves much more than just her. This woman recognized that, accepted that and gave the man room to work out his problems, because those problems did not (primarily) have to do with their relationship.
Of course she has tried that and
of course he couldn't explain what was wrong.
Ah, the laziest excuse for bad behavior ever. "I tried that, and it didn't work!"
He couldn't explain what was wrong, but he was trying to explain how he felt. These things are complicated. And rather than try to help him explore this problem, she refused to listen, because his feelings didn't jive with her worldview.
Clearly this story wasn't the whole story. If you read the followup article, you learn that his business recently failed, and he had lost his sense of self-worth - all of which the wife was aware.
--
The first step to Happiness is admitting one's neuroses.
The second is admitting that the first didn't make them go away.
--
This is rightfully to the point. But my experience has led me to believe that it doesn't end here. With time and practice we can learn to gradually replace our "neuroses" with different kinds of thinking patterns.
Although it is true that there is no binary switch, there are ways to start training new neural pathways which gradually alter the patterns that we end up following in given circumstances.
To make it short, I'd just add these to your list:
The third step is to decide whether you want to commit to the process of changing yourself on some particular area even though you are bound to face setbacks on the journey.
"I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larvae passing through 'developmental stages'. I consider it an affront to the dignity of all children and my teeth are set on edge every time I hear it."
Do you have kids? Do you think a 4-year-old has "unique preferences" or feels de-humanized because he isn't given "ice cream" as a choice for dinner?
While your comment might be true of an adolescent, it is not true of all children as a category. There are very real and beneficial reasons for age-appropriate learning and guidance.
At two I was a committed vegetarian, at four a committed socialist, at six a committed atheist. I could calculate the kinetic energy of a bicycle in motion before I could ride one. At four years old, I most certainly did feel de-humanised when refused a vegetarian meal or spitefully tricked into eating meat. I'm obviously a distant outlier, but the standard deviation is much greater than most people imagine. At the other end of the distribution, here in Britain a tenth of all 16 year olds can't understand a bus timetable, fill in a job application, read the instructions on a frozen meal or make change from a ten pound note. I believe matters are significantly worse in the US. Those people have all been dismally failed by a society and a schools system that assumes that children develop at the same pace. Given that in my country half of all prisoners are functionally illiterate, I believe we have paid a very dear price for that attitude.
Age-appropriate is one size fits all; It works fine for average people but fails catastrophically for anyone at the edge of the bell curve. If you think there is such a thing as "age appropriate learning and guidance", spend a day in an elementary classroom and see for yourself just how different a group of young children can be in terms of mental and emotional development. I'll wager that you'll be astonished at just how great the range is.
If not, it doesn't invalidate your observations, but it definitely puts you at a disadvantage. You just have no idea what you don't know until you spend 24/7 raising a child.
I have two kids. They both learn differently and at different rates. As a result, we teach them differently. However, we are still teaching them what is appropriate to their specific stage of development (I call that age appropriate, but you may not).
So, I totally agree that learning should be unique to the individual, but I also think there are very real and distinct stages of growth that each individual goes through and for learning to be most effective it needs to take that into account.
You seem to be taking a very blunt position in the nature vs. nurture debate, which I find a little unsettling.
That said, I don't think the problem with common education today is that it's one of an one-size-fits-all orientation, I think it's rather that the culture at large doesn't value education and reasoning as much as it should. Kids today are so distracted with gadgets these days that it's very hard for them to truly try and develop their intuition with things like mechanical objects (my niece likes to stare at the coffeemaker, and see how it stops, when it stops, etc. It's absolutely fascinating to see her figure it out).
I have kids; they have friends; all are intelligent, responsible youngsters. I live in the American midwest, in Iowa in fact. These kids do chores, cook dinner, read more than one language, do calculus. Maybe we just do things different in Iowa. But its easy to moan about the next generation, harder to do something about it. Consider joining a Scout Troop, the Music Auxiliary, the Debate team. Don't have those things in your area? There's your trouble right there.
I am not jdietrich, but I have a 3-going-on-4-year-old child, and she is certainly a "distinctive individual with unique preferences and aptitudes".
On the other hand, she is certainly different from (say) what she's likely to be in 15 years' time, in ways that are clearly related to her age. There are things I wouldn't say or do with her because they aren't "age-appropriate", though I wouldn't use that particular term. If someone who didn't know my daughter tried to tell me that I couldn't do this, that, or the other because it wasn't "age-appropriate" then I might react in roughly the way jdietrich did; but if my wife did, then I hope I'd give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she meant "appropriate for who and what she currently is". (Though I might have trouble giving her the benefit of the doubt in a situation like the one in the original article...)
As for the original situation, I don't think there's any point trying to pass judgement on what they said to each other in those first few minutes. No one is at their best in that kind of situation. On the face of it, at least, what they ended up doing seems to have worked out well enough for them, but of course it's quite possible that we're hearing a distorted version of the story.
Perhaps I'm misreading you, but this comes across to me like "if you don't have kids yourself you could not possibly understand". That is, I believe, a thoroughly wrong position to take about most anything in life.
Exposure to phenomena like "kids" is rather abundant in most societies. For parents as well as non-parents. Observation and analysis about how those phenomena processes seem to be behave can even sometimes be made more accurate by those not emotionally bound up in the here and now.
I believe there is no argumentative authority arising from the fact that one is or is not a parent.
To settle what might be an authority issue for you: I don't know about jdietrich, but I have kids and I mostly agree with him.
The interpretation I took was "If you have kids there are things you cannot avoid experiencing, and thus knowing first hand. These things are not obvious to someone without kids and are hard to explain to such a person."
No - my question was simply whether he has kids or not. He has every right to his own opinions (which I don't particularly disagree with) - I was simply interested to see if he is a parent or not.
Though I disagree with jdietrich's analysis of the rest of the article, I agree with the thing about age-appropriateness. I also think he showed pretty clearly that he remembers his own childhood, and uses that to validate his feelings about "age-appropriateness", rather than parenthood.
I am not a parent, and I had a good enough childhood (though I think I could have been given better schooling), but I have a four year old niece and she definitely is a person with her own worldview and her own feelings. I can have a conversation with her as I can with somebody else, regardless of age.
If you take people seriously, no matter what they look like, I promise you that you will have a richer life.
I think many children are far more capable than most people think.
As to preferences, I had a fairly long hart to hart with my mother over the God question when I was 3. At 2 I decided I don't like fresh tomato's and at 29 I have yet to change my stance.
PS: A friend of mine found out that it was easier to get his children to fall asleep when lowed music was playing than in a reasonably quiet room. If your open to the possibility you can find all sorts of interesting things about your children even at fairly young ages.
I think in this context "I don't buy it" is closer to "I think you are misinterpreting your feelings" rather than invalidation.
With respect to her emotional distance, John Gray's book: "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" has some good insight re Men's need for space and distance when things go bad. I think her actions were very sensible for a long term relationship.
I think in this context "I don't buy it" is closer to "I think you are misinterpreting your feelings" rather than invalidation.
I agree - it's more about her saying something like:
"I'm not going to take your apparent desire for a divorce as 100%, literally true (yet) because I know you've got a lot of emotional 'stuff' going on right now. Go and do your thing, take some space to work things out, and if you do work it out, come back and let's talk again. If you're serious, we'll figure that out at the appropriate time."
which is a very mature reaction, in a way that invalidation wouldn't be.
I think the woman was right. He didn't want to leave his family but just go through all his life he has lived so far. If confronted, he probably would have had to leave.
When a man needs to sort out his life, a wise woman gives him the space and doesn't freak out. Freaking out and scooping him for the answer would just drive him further away.
Such a life-reset is the result of ignoring your own life for decades and you need to take the time, either in small doses over the years or mentally going away once in ten years for a longer time.
When you're going through one, you can't take anything for granted, not your job, not your wife, not your family. You can't reset your idea of who you are now if you do it conditionally: if you don't dare to keep your options open, you can never see which of them you can safely close again.
I suspect that we are ALL reading our own perspectives into this story quite a bit, so I can't say that you're wrong. Where you see "refusing to engage with him emotionally", I see her simply declining to respond to his drama with counter-drama of her own. She had an insight that let her avoid bringing her own ego into his situation, thereby simplifying the path to a resolution.
As an aside, as someone who had a parent who made their own happiness into an ever-present concern for their children, I agree vehemently with the notion that it isn't age-appropriate to do that.
> Where you see "refusing to engage with him emotionally", I see her simply declining to respond to his drama with counter-drama of her own.
Here's another view: he never wanted to leave her, he simply wanted some excitement and passion back in his life. Maybe he wanted to simply see that his wife really still had deep, romantic feelings for him. If it takes a loud, screaming argument to bring that about, then so be it. She came across to me as hyper-controlling and robotic.
Her descriptions of there life seem like it's all really dull, but satisfactory to her. I didn't see anything about him expressing what he wants and her responding to that.
It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larvae passing through 'developmental stages'. I consider it an affront to the dignity of all children and my teeth are set on edge every time I hear it.
For outliers, statistics doesn't work that well (and feels reductive of their uniqueness.... because it is!). And of course this is true of everyone - we're all unique and special and statistics doesn't get to the heart of our own personal story.
But this isn't the point of such things - terms such as age-appropriate are really aimed only at most children, most of the time. Anyone who's enough of an outlier to be offended and upset by the notion - and able to come up with a cogent argument against it - is probably not included within that set of most children.
I used to work for an arbitration group. One case involved a couple that was divorcing, and he had, in fact, said to her that he thought he had never loved her.
And it was self-evident to any third party that he was lying to himself and to her. It was simply a move in the fight.
When I read the article, I also was surprised by the 'age-appropriate' comment, and wasn't too sure that she responded perfectly, but given my personal experience seeing this actually happen with a couple, I assumed that there was a good chance that her basic diagnosis was correct. And if so, the rest of your comment would simply be a misjudgment - even he would be happy with her response in the end.
"you don't matter, I'm the one in this relationship that decides what we feel about things"
Kudos to jdietrich for articulating so well what I was thinking. For this woman only thing that matters is her career as a writer. She is the definition of a manipulative partner. She makes material out of her husband's totally sincere mid-life crisis; she portrays her husband as a sentimental clown who needs her guidance; she portrays her husband as the week partner who is no longer the breadwinner; she portrays herself as the powerful woman who saves her family and so on... All this proves how much she loves her husband: none. Is there any doubt that she puts her career before her husband and her family?
personally, I think that the husband was lucky to last as long as he did without succumbing to torpid disillusionment with himself, his potentialities, and his powers. I'm so jaded and disgusted with myself most of the time that I tend to not trust anybody who doesn't seem to want to blow their own brains out.
I read this a little differently. I think she made a smart bet.
It seems to me he was having an affair. Knowing that most relationships don't work out, she positioned herself perfectly to pick up the pieces when it failed.
Would that we all had someone in our lives who knows and loves us so well.
It's not always easy to pinpoint what exactly is it that makes us unhappy. And according to Daniel Gilbert (seriously, check out his book and TED talks), we sort of suck at predicting what does make us happy.
And usually, we know what's better for ourselves than anyone else. That's because we have more information about ourselves than anyone else, of course. But it's easy to get lost in the echo chamber of our minds, and that's when a second opinion becomes priceless.
Steps to writing an annoying article:
1. Deny you're calling your husband childish while comparing him to a child.
2. Proclaim that you're impervious to abuse by touting your toughness as if those in abusive relationships are not physically tough enough.
3. Highlight your suffering martyrdom as much as possible while claiming that you refuse to suffer.
I don't think she is comparing him to a child. I think she is saying that sometimes people behave badly because they lack the ability to understand and/or express what is really bothering them. A toddler having a tantrum is the canonical example of this, and has the advantage of having a large body of literature that explains how to deal with it, but if you think about it for more than a minute there are legions of adult examples.
I did find the litany of toughness a bit grating, but clearly it is something that she needed to convince herself of, never mind other people.
I think the article has some value as a parable, almost, that shows the value in not taking things personally.
> 1. Deny you're calling your husband childish while comparing him to a child.
She was using that as a metaphor. Using an image with which everyone (or at least most people) can identify. Being angry/upset with yourself (or just your situation) and taking it out on others is not something that is restricted to childhood. The metaphor works better in terms of describing the method of dealing with it (i.e. ignoring it, and not allowing the other person to drag you into what is their personal problem).
> 2. Proclaim that you're impervious to abuse by touting your toughness as if those in abusive relationships are not physically tough enough.
When people speak of physical abuse, the usual retort is that one is 'tough enough' to defend his or herself, even if the reality is that people in abusive situations are really emotionally weak/co-dependent. Most people that are trying to 'prove' to others that they are impervious to abuse are usually trying to display something that can be seen/evaluated by others so as to be interpreted as 'proof.' They are not usually thinking about the flip-side (the implication that people that do 'allow' themselves to be abused are lacking these traits).
> 3. Highlight your suffering martyrdom as much as possible while claiming that you refuse to suffer.
This was the only part that I found mildly annoying. She repeats "I will not suffer," while talking about the ways in which she was suffering, but trying to get on with her life. It may be a good internal motto to use in such times, but in reality she was suffering.
Ah, it was just a metaphor. That makes it alright then.
Also, from the follow-up article: "I am a 40-year-old trying to be a 20-year-old, and I realise my career is done with and I have to find something else" - not sure if that is really a victory to be proud of?
> Ah, it was just a metaphor. That makes it alright then.
When we use car analogies to describe tech issues, does that mean we are calling those issues cars? You can try to read into the subtext of why she used that metaphor all you want, but you can't say with 100% certainty why it was chosen, other than to illustrate the point.
> "I am a 40-year-old trying to be a 20-year-old, and I realise my career is done with and I have to find something else" - not sure if that is really a victory to be proud of?
How so? I think that the 'victory' here is not of her over her husband, but of her over herself. The 'easy answer' to the problem would have been to kick her husband to the curb for being an ass (and basically abandoning his family to have his mid-life crisis). She stuck with it believing that he would sort out his issues in his own time. Sticking to her guns while feeling abandoned by her husband is the real 'victory' here.
As far as him coming home with his tail between his legs? He spent the entire summer basically trying to come to grip with reality. It was really his attachment to the past (and to wanting things to 'stay the same') that caused his 'defeat.' He was battling himself and his own misconceptions about how his life was going to be.
Also, from the follow-up article: "I am a 40-year-old trying to be a 20-year-old, and I realise my career is done with and I have to find something else" - not sure if that is really a victory to be proud of?
I took it as quite a positive statement. Realizing that a 40 year old probably shouldn't continuously be trying to act like a 20 year old is generally a good thing, and so is waking up to the idea that you can shift from one career to another (I'm assuming that's what he meant by "my career is done with and I have to find something else").
On the contrary, I found the author to be remarkably mature. Not many people would have had the patience, much less the world-wisdom, to recognize what her husband was going through and let him get through with it ... onhisown.
In one sense, this woman has an extreme faith in her husband. How many people would be able to believe that he would eventually find his own way out of the rut? Such trust, such maturity. Amazing.
Almost everything gets compared to cars, but I don't think most people are actually accusing those things of being car-like. I have never understood exactly what causes it, but some people very often read far too much into comparisons. The two things being compared don't have to be alike except in the particular respects that are being compared.
It's unfortunate, because comparisons are really useful for illustrating ideas to pattern-matching machines like our minds, but people like this make comparisons almost useless because they always lash out at anybody who makes one.
It's a highly pervasive cognitive bias: http://lesswrong.com/lw/vx/failure_by_analogy/ Granted, that link is not directly about this issue but a moment's thought shows it trivially extends to the ever-present "argument by analogy" on the Internet.
(At this point, I all but flip the idiot bit on someone if they post an argument containing an analogy. Using it for a description is logically defensible but usually very dangerous. I've been trying to eliminate them from my writing and thought.)
I think you've missed a great deal of the point of the article. Read the followup too (see tokenadult's comment).
This is one of those rare cases where "passive aggression" (stonewalling) is actually the most effective thing to do. If your partner claims to be unhappy with your relationship, but you're really sure they're actually miserable with some other aspect of their life, then this seems like a workable strategy.
I think you got confused because another instance where stonewalling is an effective strategy happens to be dealing with childrens' tantrums.
> If your partner claims to be unhappy with your relationship, but you're really sure they're actually miserable with some other aspect of their life, then this seems like a workable strategy.
Wouldn't it be a lot quicker, more respectful, and less hurtful to simply express this to your partner? Maybe encourage him/her to attend some counseling before committing to a decision?
I liked the article. But whether or not I agree with the author is irrelevant. What strikes me here most is to see things like this discussed in depth and intelligently in Hacker News. That's magnificent and somehow heart-warming. I have to say: I love this site :-)
I think that wishing for it to be one way is what makes it not work. This woman's husband didn't want an understanding partner, he wanted a battle. And she didn't want to understand, she just wanted to not get caught up in it herself.
>The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.
It sounds like her dreams were achieved. His dreams we never hear about.
I remember when this came up on Reddit a year ago.
Summary: hold on to your man by emasculating him, then wait for enough depression to kick in that it suppresses his urge to improve his life.
Also, I'm going to guess that most of her fond remembrances of romantically planning their future together primarily reflect what she hoped for, not what he did.
In other news: people who write long-winded, self-obsessive essays and books tend to be self-absorbed.
He wasn't emasculated. He was free to actually leave any time he wanted. She just called his bluff and he turned out to be unwilling to really go through with it.
I wasn't there to hear how she said it, but I took it as sincere. I thought she was really offering to let him do whatever he needed to do to find his happiness again.
"Man Cave" is married-folk slang for "some personal space where I don't mess with your stuff."
Have a gaming rig on a table that your wife can't go near? That's a man cave. How about a car project in the garage? Fishing boat out back? Electronics bench full of parts and tools?
My issue with "man cave" is that it's derogatory. A man has a personal hobby he enjoys, which she doesn't understand, so it's addressed with terminology like, "man cave." Really, do you want you wife referring to you as a neanderthal?
As for trekking in Nepal, it struck me as a tremendously abbreviated comment. Could, "trekking in Nepal," possibly describe the sort of action a man so distraught wants to take?
This is akin to my wife being upset at my emotional distance and refusal to address her needs and, when called on it, I simply say that it's fine if she buys some new shoes.
Seems she was only willing to let him do these things once she thought she may lose him. Why couldn't he do these things at any time if that's what he really wanted.
I have the bad habit of throwing myself completely into my work, and not doing any of the other things that I know would make me happy. When I inevitably get close to burning out, my wife has to remind me (often quite forcibly) that I should spend some time doing those things.
The wife in this story may have been in a similar position - completely willing to let him do those things, but having to remind him that he's been meaning to do them for a long time.
Heh, that article is crazy. Have fun with your 20 acre plot 3 kids and pony... Who wants to get married in today's society? Your kids will just send you to an "adult home" anyway. I'd rather be driving a high end bimmer/mercades and be dating a woman 20 years younger than me when those years come around. The "American dream" is a fabrication, have fun with your 20+ years of kids leaching off you, 9-5 job, and all. How about legalizing prostitution, drugs, getting rid of speed limits, compulsory education (12 years of brainwashing) -- then there might be some fun.
This piece nicely sets forth how a wife stuck through a pretty tough time with a husband who was adjusting pretty badly. It is a great story of how patience, perseverance, and wisdom can see us through trials. The lesson is that grace should control and guide us where our emotions would lead us to do things we might otherwise regret.