It's Not a Midlife Crisis

By Tim Coleman

It’s Not a Midlife Crisis is a hilarious romp through the myopic world of marital expectations from the dueling perspectives of both men and women. A brutally truthful and cynically hysterical description of the modern day marriage life cycle depicted through tales of blissfully dysfunctional married couples obliterating their marriage contracts...and the amusing manic tidal waves that follow. Comingled with these comedic escapades, the author unleashes his own uproarious marital experiences at the expense of his personal harmony should his wife realize there is a much longer copy of the work than the one she was given to peruse.
It’s Not a Midlife Crisis explores the entire start to finish marital marathon. It categorizes the race contestants and pins a description number tag to their chest and back so you can tell who is finishing the journey and who is not. Male category runners include the Lobotomy Guy, the Empathetic/Apathetic/Quiet Husband Guy, the Cad Itcher, the Ride That Pony to the Glue Factory Guy, the Overly Attractive Guy, and the Hard-liner Guy to name a few. It’s Not a Midlife Crisis explains what certain set of events happen when the female race participant stops to use the bathroom and flushes the part of the marital contract dealing with sex down the rest stop toilet. It details how to survive the therapist’s office and provides useful tools and tips for a successful marital contest finish. Most importantly, it explains why men in their forties buy a Corvette or join a rock band and clearly dictates to the female runner how to permanently deter her husband from joining Flight Attendant Bambi’s relay team.
Let’s put on our running shoes and jump right in. Go get your marriage certificate. Shake off the dust like you are shaking the person responsible for making you sign it. Check all the signatures that reside down at the bottom area with all the frills and flowers that clandestinely try to mask the fine print. Especially note the official head referee under whose authority you operate. Clearly remember his or her name because we are going to have a lot to discuss. Determine who signed it as witnesses. We have some issues with them as well. Now go get a blender. Plug it in. Don’t stick your head in the blender just yet. Set your marriage certificate on the counter next to the blender. Open the book. Start on page one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Coleman
• Release date: Jan 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301774258

Tim Coleman

Tim Coleman is a Captain at a major U.S. Airline. He is 47, married for 17 years and has two boys. He is a Seaplane and Mountain Canyon Flying instructor. He has had short haired jobs ranging from flying a Gubernatorial-pursuing Congressman to piloting search planes on NASA’s Space Shuttle program. He has had long haired jobs ranging from Island hopping in the Bahamas to lead guitarist in a punk rock band. He is a good listener and finds everything in life pretty funny.

Book preview

It’s Not a Midlife Crisis

By Tim Coleman

Copyright 2012 Tim Coleman

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents:

Chapter One: Where are we going?

Chapter Two: The Cocoon

Chapter Three: The Contract and The Show

Chapter Four: Fissures

Chapter Five: Have I got a Category for You

Ellis Has Left the Building

Cad to the Bone

What is So Wrong With Being Attractive

Roughneck Round-up

Chapter Six: I Expected You Would Say That

Chapter Seven: The Goody Bag

Chapter Eight: How Can We Fix Our Problems? Let’s Start With the Girls

Chapter Nine: There is a Storm Brewing

Chapter Ten: How Can We Fix Our Problems? The Boys are Back

Chapter Eleven: How Can We Fix Our Problems? The Co-Ed Assembly

About the Author

Chapter One: Where Are We Going?

If I were to ask you to define the word marriage, how do you think you would do it? Here are a few things I know for sure as you formulate your answer. Your reply will be based upon your sex, your age, your sense of humor, and your moral skeleton.

Therapists and relational counselors love to tell you that the marriage contract is a living breathing entity. Really, it’s not. It’s more like a prepaid phone card. They expound on how it grows and evolves. Not quite...morphs would be a more appropriate descriptor. They relish the use of arm waving Namaste gestures referring to its need to be nurtured. It doesn’t need to be nurtured in a child rearing manner; it needs to be protected from identity theft like a convalesced parent living in your home. Our friendly counselor types will tell you your marriage certificate is a license to learn. Let’s pause for a moment so we can get an extra chuckle in. True enough that the certificate is a license…and you are going to learn some things…no doubt about that…but the marriage certificate itself is intended to be an affirmation of topics you have already decided and agreed upon, not an admission ticket to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

The act of marriage is a contract and a commitment. It may seem to grow and evolve like its organic comparison, but only because the participants grow and evolve. That is not the same thing. There is a major difference between the hard copy screenplay and the slightly off-kilter actor’s artistic interpretation of the script.

The marriage certificate is the same sheet of paper on both the day you signed it and on your 50th anniversary. It is a hearty little bugger of a document. People are always trying to steal it, change it, destroy it, misplace it, ignore it, and my favorite…unilaterally alter it. No matter how many times you puree it though, it always seems to return to its glass encased proper spot on the wall. It is like The Blob or one of those old geezer oil portraits with the eyes that follow you around the room.

The word marriage and its definition are pretty simple in a chemistry textbook kind of way. You are combing two things in a binding manner. If the subject matter is ham and cheese, then all is good. If it is a man and a woman, who think completely differently and have diverse expectations of what Marriage A.D. is supposed to resemble, well then things become a bit more unstable.

In the following chapters I am going to define marriage for you…the non-chemistry textbook version. I will tell you how men and women think about marriage and each other. I will do that for both pre-marriage and post-marriage because the before/after mindsets are different for one of our groupings. I will lay out the marriage blueprint from a woman’s perspective, so get out your fashionable construction site hardhats. I will tell you how men react to marital contract changes and how it interplays with the true definition of a mid-life crisis. I will give you the exact cosmos cracking definition of this mid-life crisis; how it is formed, why it is mislabeled and how to deal with it. I will share with you several real world examples of the effects of contract surgery on everyday married couples, characterizing both the causes and routes these married couples utilize to arrive at their cesspool post-honeymoon destination. I will categorize every type of normal guy in the world in an easy flow chart and give you several key examples of each type. You will be able to easily categorize the guys in your own universe and react to them accordingly. I will convey to you the importance of your township’s local Sheriff and the methodology this sly individual uses to keep you out of the marital pokey. I will share with you the secrets of marital success and make clear the door-slamming pitfalls to avoid. I will show you the importance and relevance of proper expectations and how to succeed in your marriage using tools orbiting your cranium that you never knew existed.

Ready? Pencils up.

We all start out pretty well. Big wheels, doll houses, one-upper birthday parties, it all goes rather smoothly until we hit about fourteen years old. As individuals, we are all born with a pot of hormone stew on the stove. It has been quietly simmering since birth.

As we enter our teens, our stomping foot meandering around the floorboard eventually discovers the accelerator pedal and the hormone pot begins to rapidly boil. Soon this toxic estrogen/testosterone concoction will bubble up and spill over. No degreaser in the world will be able to alter the emotional stain it leaves behind. Some spills will be small, others will require the extinguisher. As we progress through our lives, the key to relational success is predicting the spill before it occurs by peeking into the pot to check its boiling rapidity. You will not be able to prevent the mess, but you’ll know if you have to run for your life. That is the simple key to relationships. Look in the pot, give it a stir, and be ready to run.

When the Gender Express Limited boards and leaves the train station, there are two separate sets of tracks. The destinations of these two routes’ travels unfortunately do not remotely coincide. Hurtling down one track will be the boys. The boys don whatever garb is closest, no coats of course, hop on, and off they go without a care in the world. The girls board a different train; it requires prearranged seating, snappy dress and unlimited carry-on space. At many different points across the grid of life these two trains meet at the same station and exchange passengers. Some girls get stuck on the boys train, some boys on the girls.

Each train has a string of cars, a community of coexisting hormone purveyors. You can walk from one car to the next before the train stops, but that’s a ginger trek because the occupants of the previous car know where you are and can easily see you. More on that later, but a quick synopsis yields: the deeds you perpetrate in the confines of one car and the recipients of those perpetrations are hopelessly intertwined with the new set of eager perpetratees in the next car. Did you follow that? You’ll try to hastily move a few cars away, trolling for sanctuary from your past, but to no avail. (Advisory note: word of mouth on the girls train travels in Mach.)

The trains don’t ever stop coming. There are trains full of teenagers, some have elderly passengers, some are curiously mixed, and many, many are full of middle aged adults screaming they want off. This is where the fun begins. Sometimes it’s a very long ride between stops.

So what does all this talk of trains and stew really mean? Previously, I stated that we all start out pretty well. We do. Then we hit 40 and we implode. I realized that somehow I had to explain to my two sons what I have observed pertaining to life’s relationships and what to look for when you peek in the pot. So here we go. We are about to embark on a study of what happens when a man and a woman meet…and the deliberate and non-happenstance set of events that follow ultimately culminating in a marital contract. A marital contract soaked in deception and dried with a sandpaper towel.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the formative years of the marital participants and the art of relational note taking. Both of these topics are very important as you move toward the eventual signing of your own marriage contract. (If you have already signed a marriage contract, I’ll help you recreate the accident scene. It will be very therapeutic…trust me.)

I grew up in a naïve world because my parents were two very funny, happy people. I did not realize how unorthodox that was until after college. Why during my college years I didn’t at some point get Gatorade doused with the realization that the world is made up of emotional magicians trying to mirage the irrational relationship sludge coating their bodies? There are several reasons. My awakening to the silhouetted-squirrels-running-through-the-trees idiosyncrasies of modern relationships was a slow one because of my abnormally normal upbringing. I thought everyone’s relationships were like my parents. There were a lot of pretty funny quips, but not a lot of psychosis. Don’t get me wrong, I noticed the twitching (more on that later) from the girls in High School, but their need to fit in and have a boyfriend far outweighed their blossoming desire to control the hell out of him. Hence, they kept their thoughts silent.

College girls were a case study in the human ability to learn. They observed the communal beating bestowed upon any girlfriend guilty of trying to reign in and unpopularize her happy and unfettered boyfriend, and conversely, the accolades and elevated campus status associated with actually attending parties and having fun with him.

We (men of college age at the time) never talked about relational issues or warped childhoods in college. If a girl brought that stuff up, you would politely excuse yourself to the bathroom and jump out the window. The closest we collectively ever came to therapists in college were the recovering-something mothers of the girls we dated. An entire chapter could be devoted to these individuals and the red flags impaled on their foreheads in unicorn fashion. For now these girlfriends and their mothers were merely the punch cards being fed into the mainframe computer that would quickly evolve into a relational data processing center rivaling NORAD.

Unplanned and unknown to me at the time, my skill for being in the right place to observe this relational firecracker-cluster behavior was uncanny. I now realize that all of my really good guy friends throughout my life have been tipping the top of the good-looking scale. These guys would individually attract packs of migrating Miss-Somewhere-USA contestants. As individuals they would only be able to handle one or two at a time which left me in the envious spot of tending to the rest of the herd. As long as I kept the jokes flowing and order in the ranks everything was great and girls abounded. A scholarly strategy, but completely unplanned. The problem with this scenario from a true to life relationship observation perspective was that this was not a representative sample of real world relationship construction. (Pause before the next sentence.) These women were happy. None of them had blatantly transferred to the dark side yet, and I was too over-stimulated to notice even if they were exhibiting preliminary travel plans. College was a very microcosmic world of men and women coexisting in harmony…certainly not a precursor of things yet to learn.

After the Darwinian island fog of college burned off, a return to the relationship mainland of adulthood brought things into increasingly clear focus. Surviving dating relationships was like Mother Wren kicking her fledglings out of the birdhouse. A long and painful drop to the ground, walking around at first totally bewildered in a vast and frightening world…nothing like the confines and safety of the nest. But a quick adaptation followed through trial and error. Rule number one was learned quickly: avoid the cat. Only way to accomplish rule number one: keen observation skills and the ability to fly.

At first I thought the relational cage matches I was witnessing amongst my newly society indoctrinated peers were flukes; that one or the other party was hopelessly damaged from prenatal smoking or not enough individuality during kindergarten. But as I slalomed my way through my twenties I realized everybody was damaged, it was just the degree that needed to be determined. I was amassing this information for the eventuality of my own marriage.

As a twenty-something all my relationships ended in a puff. Not a bang or a convulsion, just a quiet ker-plunk. I would find out later that they could actually end in a very large mushroom shaped cloud with a din that cruise ships use to repel attacking pirates. To me these simple endings were completely innocuous and devoid of meaning. When men end relationships the thoughts that occur with respect to the end of that relationship are singular and self-destructive; in a Mission Impossible, Mr. Phelps sense. The relationship ends, you think about it for a day or so and then it’s gone; forever. Frequently, these endings are post scripted with phrases such as oh well or who’s driving? When a woman ends a relationship the thoughts and feelings are cumulative. The relationship ends, she thinks about what she did wrong and then she throws it on the ever-increasing heap of past relationship thoughts. Relational termination catch phrases such as bastard and institutionalized bounce around the room like a super-ball hurled toward the altar by your four year old at Sunday Mass. I didn’t know it at the time, but every time I wanded the veil of relationship funeral pyre smoke from my face I was up to bat and swinging the emotional damage stick for the fence.

Couple after couple were dropping from the dance contest and resuming their place against the wall. My relational observation scale was starting to register some serious weight. Data was pouring in, quickly being entered, but not yet able to be sorted. That eventuality was marching toward me as quickly as I was marching toward it. When we met it would slap me right across the face.

Chapter Two: The Cocoon

I am going to introduce you a very important occurrence in the male marriage lifecycle: The Chrysalis. When a man hits forty, the little white cue goes off at the bottom of the movie screen and the projector operator switches the reels. Chances are he’s been married for about ten years, give or take a few, and he’s seriously assessing the crisis at hand…which incidentally has the form of an upright, two-legged speaker that dispenses a ceaseless stream of declaratory sentences whether you put a quarter in it or not.

It is at this life juncture where he descends into a somewhat semi-comatose state of consciousness to take stock of this crisis and formulate an actionary counter attack. You may be talking directly to him in an engaging conversation, or so you think. However, unbeknownst to you he is secretly toiling away; lab coat, goggles and all, in his Trojan facade inner sanctum. The time he spends in this skull encased concrete bunker projection room is the most important period of his marital life. He is watching a movie in his head. The movie that is playing is the history of everything that has happened to him to this point from a relationship perspective. Its title is Yikes. He’s going to watch this film and then just think for a while. He may look comatose sitting in front of the TV or on the porch with the dog, seemingly ignoring you, but he is not. He is thinking. In his mind he stands on a single road. In front of him the road divides in several different directions. Some are dirt, some rocky, some paved. He is thinking long and hard about which one to take. When he makes his decision and emerges from this chrysalis…greeted with the customary new item oohs and ahhs…he will be a new husband.

Like the first day of spring, things get pretty crazy right about now. He is free. He has made his choice. Stuff is blooming, animals are getting frisky, some people are dancing on hilltops, and others are sneezing uncontrollably, cigarette and coffee cup in hand. That new husband thing, well new doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody here. New to me means not the same as what was there before. New to my wife means better. Might be…might not. Like the side of a rural country road laden with countless milkweed plants, men are chewing their way free of their chrysalises all over town. When they come out, they hit the ground running like a baby lizard on a hot sandy beach. Where they go and the behavior they exhibit depends on what happened before they cocooned themselves with a Stepford smile and which road they choose, but it has nothing to do with a midlife crisis.

Chapter Three: The Contract and The Show

Torts, Agreements, Breaches; contract law is pretty cut and dried. It’s the interpretations that get fuzzy. Same thing with marriage. Notice we’ve jumped right to marriage. Trying to talk about a plain old dating relationship as a contract is like trying to take geriatric Aunt Betty clubbing; it’s just not going to fly because it is wrong on so many levels. Trying to explain to a Judge why that still single bastard stole the greatest years of your life…and how he told you he would make you happy forever, even though he wasn‘t quite ready to get married but almost…and how he owes you, even though he wouldn’t sign anything…is just going to make the poor adjudicator’s ears bleed. His facial snapshot will be the same as those at the club. Why is Aunt Betty here? Why does she have lipstick all over her face? Where can I get a walker like that because that might come in handy later?… and the biggie: Doesn’t she realize she is out of place? You can attempt to apply the same principals of the marriage contract to dating relationships, but they will end up being out of place and ultimately inadmissible. The dynamics of a legally non-binding relationship are oh so different from a dusty, inerasable, etched stone temple see-you-in-court marriage certificate. Let’s read the marriage contract together.

An unmarried woman is like a three ring Vegas circus act. She’s courageously taming lions in one ring, making you non-figuratively laugh your pants off with her comedy clown routine in another, and cranking up the seductive tractor-beam dance show in the last, all at the same time. (Literary note: the next few sentences are to be read in a really loud internal voice, almost as if I’m shouting at you.) The worst part is that it is all an illusion…and you paid to get into this show. Worse yet, the fire marshal (read judge, minister or ship captain) has locked the doors and you can’t get out…ever. You’ll never see another show again. You might, but if you do it’ll be the most expensive friggin’ show you’ve ever seen. Think that‘s bad? If you get busted just watching another show, let‘s not even talk about audience participation, the dog catcher is going to return you to the original show, glue your ass to the seat and the whole crowd (town) is going to stare at you until the next guy gets busted and diverts the wrath attention away from you. Try explaining to the crusty booth-bound admissions coot guarding the entrance that you‘ve been hoodwinked, that the whole show was really a Freddie Kruger hologram and you want your money back and she’s going to flip the Open sign over to read …Closed: No Refunds. You let out a primal scream and BAM, here comes the dog catcher again and back you are center stage. (You can now slowly yoga your internal voice back down.) So the salient point here is read the reviews before you see the show. You need to know the ending before it even starts. Trust me if you don’t it will be a surprise, not a Luke/Darth Vader surprise, more like a Crying Game surprise…not pleasant. You don’t want to be the guy locked up in the back of the dog catcher’s van. The only way to prevent that from happening is to realize why ticket holders (newly married men) jump the fence in the first place.

When you walk up to the admissions window for her show, you pay money to get in. Innocuous? Yes. Optimistic? Yes. Trepidation? Nope, too stupid. Meaningless? Absolutely not. By purchasing that ticket you are creating your part of the binding marital contract. Big Print: I will watch this show until the end of time whether it gets boring or not. I will always (pretend to) like it and (pretend to) pay close attention to all the crap happening in each ring. I will always applaud and shout praising adjectives. I will tell all the other show-presenting ringmasters how great your show was and will never sneak notes containing honest, accurate, yet suicidal assessments of your show to critics waiting outside. I will always have enough money for concessions. I will be your roadie and carry all your stuff no matter how effeminate. Small Print: none. I wish men were smart enough for small print, but we’re not.

Logical question: Can you leave a performer’s show that has already started? You can, but the length of time you watch before you punch out is critical. Akin to a Spectravision hotel room movie-on-demand system, you get a free five minute preview. I agree that it’s almost impossible to gauge a movie’s worth by watching a five minute teaser. Incidentally, the word teaser’s association with film clips and unscrupulous women is not coincidental. You’ve got to be a quick quality assurance inspector to judge your girl’s show that expeditiously. This five minute freeview is completely without jeopardy. You can leave basically unimpugned, free to travel to the next train car unscathed. Perhaps a stray derogatory adjective dart will be blow-gunned at you, but that is about the extent of the damage.

If you stay in her venue longer than the first five minutes, it becomes a very slippery slope. The formula for the drag coefficient of an aircraft is as you double your speed you quadruple your drag. This equation is congruent with the length of time you watch the show. As you double your length of time (in minutes), you quadruple your jeopardy (in brain cells).

Senator McCarthy is alive and well on our relational train system. If you stay longer than a brief period (meaning the five minute preview) and then you decide to leave, i.e. escape, your name will be added to a blacklist that is written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic paint. This list is updated daily and disseminated to every show presenter and her admissions booth personnel (remember the unsympathetic crusty coot.) No chance you’re watching the show of any presenter in a remotely adjacent train car and chances are you’ll have to switch trains. You also will not be able to duck the Gatling gun rounds of insulting ammo coming your way. You are going to take some hits. (There is usually a medic, i.e. therapist, on every train, but they are shell-shocked, battle weary, PTSD ridden individuals.) You’re chance of bodily harm is high. This will all be in public.

If you indulge yourself for more than half of her show, meaning you have met her parents and her green eye shadowed Aunt Sophie, who incidentally loves giving you a hug, you are now subject to the wrath of the dog catcher. If you sneak away you will be collared, tagged and returned.

Did you ever see the look on a goat’s face that’s tied to a stake in the center of the arena on Kiddie Rodeo Day? The goat’s expression is actually pretty content in a naïve way. That’s you as you enter her venue. At least the goat