A Look At Female Midlife Crisis

By Amanda Baird


There is a tendency by people to scoff at midlife crisis, dismissing it as a male affair. As a matter of fact, it does not affect men only, and it is only until someone experiences it that they stop considering it as a truism. Despite it being called a mid-life predicament, it can happen at any age to both men and women. This article examines female midlife crisis and some of its contributing factors.

For many women, this predicament may not be as dramatic as one would expect. The less unpleasant symptoms include feeling worthless, boredom, absence of meaning and loneliness, anxiety and depression. Others include repeatedly changing partners or jobs, drinking a lot, or shopping obsessively while never experiencing the satisfaction one is looking to get. It can be set up by a serious disease, divorce, empty nests, redundancy, losing of a loved one, or can merely appear out of nowhere.

The lingering question to ask is why it happens and the deeply-rooted factors causing many women aged between 35 to 55 to experience a frightening, long and isolating change. According to most psychoanalysts, the mid-life crisis is more of a physiological experience than a chronological event.

It is often during midlife that women figure out life may not be as easy as it may seem. They realize that it is possible for bad things to happen to good individuals. Actually, this can be liberating despite it sounding somehow grim, since it can stimulate them to quit floating. It can force women to carefully consider the choices they make, the impact these choices have on other people, and the plans they have for the remainder of their lives.

Nowadays, people live in an aggressively individualistic, competitive and materialistic world. This world worships possessions, money, celebrity and perfection, and never ever lets people take their foot from the treadmill. This is especially the case for women as there is a lot of pressure on them to look young and beautiful. They are measured in terms what they look like as opposed to what is inside.

There is no denying the fact that mid-life predicament is painful and destructive, but on the bright side it can be a wake-up call for women. If some researches were to be believed, there is a difference in the way men and women experiencing mid-life crisis cope with it. Women are twice as likely to hope for better future. When they encounter challenges of the predicament, the evolution that such challenges trigger is mostly positive.

As ladies drop the pretense needed to succeed in lifes first half, they have no concerns about pleasing others anymore, hence taking more risks. Women may be raised in a way that they are supposed to please other, but it reaches a point that they have enough and put their interest first.

There may be no factual proof on how widespread female midlife crisis is. However, skewed evidence suggests either women have more willingness to discuss it or are more vulnerable to it.




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