How To Survive Your Wife's Midlife Crisis

By Pat Gaudette

When How to Survive Your Husband’s Midlife Crisis was published in 2003, one of the most common questions men on the Midlife Club forum asked was “when is the book for surviving your wife’s crisis coming out?” Men at book signings asked the same question.

Dealing with a wife in crisis isn't easy. A man needs quick answers even if the situation itself can’t be resolved quickly. This book will provide some quick answers without going into a lot of details as to how those answers came about. For those men who need more in-depth reading, I've included a list of books and websites that may be of interest.

The stories in this book are real and I am very grateful to the men who have agreed to let their stories be told so that readers may learn from their successes as well as their mistakes. Even though some of the stories end in divorce, they do not all have unhappy endings for the men who live them.

It’s important to have a woman’s point of view – so I have included some of the advice from women on the forum. I've also included celebrity quotes throughout the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pat Gaudette
• Release date: Jul 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9780984785223

Book preview

Table of Contents

How To Survive Your Wife's Midlife Crisis

How to Survive Your Wife's Midlife Crisis

What Happened to the Woman I Married?

You Can’t Lose What You Don’t Have

Husbands in Crisis

His View

Her View

Reconciling: If She Wants to Come Home

If it’s Divorce She Wants...

Protecting the Kids from the Fallout

Friends and Family

Surviving

Rethinking Forever

Recommended Reading

Online Resources

The Cliff Notes Version

About the Author

How to Survive Your Wife’s Midlife Crisis

Strategies and Stories from the Midlife Club

Published by Home & Leisure Publishing, Inc.

P O Box 968, Lecanto, Florida 34460

Copyright 2014 Pat Gaudette

ISBN 978-0-9847852-2-3 (e-book)

ISBN 978-0-9847852-3-0 (paperback)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911389

First Edition: July 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

While the author has used her best efforts in preparing this book, she makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. This book is not intended as a substitute for advice from a qualified counselor or legal professional. The intent of this book is to provide accurate general information in regard to the subject matter covered. If legal advice or other expert help is needed, the services of an appropriate professional should be sought.

The forum posts included in this book are by current and former members of the midlifeclub.com forum. Forum IDs have been changed. The posts have been edited to protect the confidentiality of members and their families. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo (c) Ostill www.fotosearch.com

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How to Survive Your Wife's Midlife Crisis

When How to Survive Your Husband’s Midlife Crisis was published in 2003, one of the most common questions I heard from men on the Midlife Club forum was "when is the book for surviving your wife’s crisis coming out?" Men at book signings asked the same question. The reality is, there are a lot of books available that discuss female menopause and aging and any man who really wants to understand why his wife may be acting the way she is can find the answers if he wants to dig for them.

Most women are natural readers. They buy books. They read books. Big books, long books. They find comfort in books. They can live their lives through books.

But men? If the men I’ve known over the years are examples, the majority read books to learn something – but not necessarily for the pleasure of reading. I have a male friend who does take pleasure in reading books of all types but he seems more the exception than the norm when it comes to men and books.

So why would a man who doesn’t particularly find pleasure in reading a book want to read this book? It’s for the same reason that he reads a book to study for a vocational license exam or to help him keep his finicky automobile running properly. There are some things he can’t fix without more study.

Dealing with a wife in crisis isn’t easy. A man needs quick answers even if the situation itself can’t be resolved quickly. This book will provide some quick answers without going into a lot of details as to how those answers came about. For those men who need more in depth reading, I’ve included a list of books and websites that may be of interest.

The stories in this book are real and readers may learn from the successes as well as the mistakes. Even though some of the stories end in divorce, they do not all have unhappy endings for the men who live them.

It’s important to have a woman’s point of view – so I have included advice from women on the forum. I’ve also included celebrity quotes throughout the book.

Because I was the one to walk away from my first marriage (at age 38) and the left behind spouse in my second (at age 49), I am including comments of my own where appropriate. My story and reasons for doing what I did are mine alone and should not be considered advice or appropriate behavior for anyone else’s situation.

Be forewarned: It is not unusual for a left behind spouse to display anger and animosity toward the person causing so much turmoil in their marriage which is why I have not edited out the raw emotion in the stories that follow.

It’s important to remember that everyone’s circumstance is different. There are no one size fits all answers to dealing with a wife in the midst of crisis. What works for one man may or may not work for the next.

And, now, let’s get started.

What Happened to the Woman I Married?

Midlife is a hazardous time for long-term marriages. Marriage is give and take, sometimes one partner gives a lot and the other takes a lot, then the giving and taking reverses, or it goes into a more equal giving and taking.

Unfortunately, a lot of marriages begin for the wrong reasons or get started on less than stable foundations setting the stage for future crises in the marriage. Midlife is prime time for marital crisis and women, as well as men, may decide it’s the right time for them to take a journey of self-discovery without the baggage of spouse and family to weigh them down.

The longer we live, the more life experiences we have, and the more our needs change. Not every man or woman is ready to accept that the life they have today is the one they want tomorrow.

Like building a house on a foundation of slippery sand, a weak marriage doesn’t always grow stronger. Some marriages can’t withstand pressures from family, career, or changing emotional needs.

The following are some reasons that women abandon their marriages at midlife. While some, like menopause, are age-related, others are deeply rooted in unfulfilled needs.

It should also be noted that women who do walk away from their marriages at middle age are more apt to stay gone as opposed to men who may want to return after a time away. This may be because most women take a longer time to make the decision to leave, and they’re better equipped to fend for themselves on their own.

Putting a Baby before the Vows

Unexpected pregnancies account for many marriages that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Regardless of other options which may be available, if marriage is the choice for an expectant couple, they begin their lifelong commit on a weak foundation. Marriage should happen because a man and woman love each other so much they cannot comprehend life without one another. That depth of love will help them through a lot of the rough spots that occur in every marriage.

The unexpected pregnancy marriage brings together two people who may only have had a strong lust connection and no thoughts of lifetime commitment. Sometimes the pregnancy was the woman’s way to force marriage.

Even if they are able to bond together long enough to raise their child, or children, when the children are grown the woman’s feelings of is this all there is may become so strong that she decides to run away from her marriage. Sometimes her husband goes into crisis first, forcing her to cope with the chaos of his midlife journey.

Following the Crowd

In decades past, the normal progression for a child growing up was to complete their schooling, get a job, and marry their high school sweetheart. Pretty simple steps but not always the best plan for everyone involved.

A couple, fearing that distance will pull them apart, may rush into marriage before they’ve completed their education. Sometimes their education comes to a halt as they deal with marital responsibilities. If they’ve grown up assuming the old traditional roles for men and women, he now becomes the main breadwinner and she becomes the homemaker and secondary breadwinner until children force her into yet another role, that of mother.

Mistaking Lust for Love

The quest for sex can be dangerous, ask any man who thought he couldn’t live without the woman he married only to find that once the lust was gone, so was the desire to remain married. If a relationship is given enough time to develop, lust will fade and if there is real love the relationship will continue and grow stronger.

Dating should last long enough for couples to move from lust to love but many couples – caught in the heat of lust – pledge their undying love for each other and then announce their engagement to the world. Wedding planning begins in earnest. Family and friends become more deeply involved in the couple’s life.

And then lust cools. The couple feels less attraction – or perhaps only he feels less attraction. She might be too engrossed in wedding details to really focus on the changing relationship. He’s irritable much of the time but she figures he just can’t deal with the pressures of the wedding.

She, too, may begin having second thoughts but she’d rather get married – despite her growing doubts – than call off the wedding. To her, the embarrassment of calling off a wedding is far greater than going through with it and then dealing with the problems of an imperfect marriage and the possibility of divorce.

Running Away from Home

I grew up during a time when girls didn’t leave home unless they were going to college far enough away that they couldn’t commute or they got married. As much as I needed and wanted to be on my own prior to marriage, I folded to parental pressure and stayed home.

After I left college and got a full time job every attempt to strike out on my own was met with parental disapproval. The only suitable option was to find a man to marry.

The primary reason I got married – and I knew it then as I knew it all through that marriage – was to run away from home. I traded one bad situation for another but didn’t compound it further by having children since neither of us wanted to be parents.

Because I grew up believing that there were no excuses good enough to warrant divorce, I stayed in my marriage until I was in my late-30s and the words is this all there is? kept a savage beat going inside my brain.

Menopause – the Short Course

Menopause might be the most disturbing time in a woman’s life. It signals the end of her childbearing years and many women take that to mean they have reached the end of their usefulness. If her children are grown and on their own, her role as full-time mom is also over. What woman wouldn’t be upset?

Girls become young women when they start menstruating, usually as they enter their teen years although the onset of menstruation can be as early as the pre-teen years and as late as the mid to late teen years. In order to attract the best sperm donors a woman’s body develops in ways that are meant to attract the most virile males. Her ovaries produce estrogen and progesterone which enhance her breasts, skin, hair, and other organs. She becomes her most attractive to men.

Unlike men, women have limited years during which they can reproduce. For most women their fertile years extend into their forties at which time they enter perimenopause – during which their bodies make the transition to menopause, the end of monthly periods and the ability to bear children.

A woman doesn’t just wake up one morning not having to deal with cramps and yet another period. She may have months or years of perimenopausal symptoms during which time her ovaries stop the production of eggs and sex hormones.

Until she actually does reach menopause she may still be able to get pregnant, although perhaps not as easily as in her more fertile years.

For some women, menopause may be the byproduct of medical procedures such as hysterectomy (the removal of the ovaries) or treatments such as radiation or chemotherapy that may cause the ovaries to stop working. These women won’t go through the perimenopausal winding down, and as such, they may have even more severe symptoms to have to work through.

When her body stops producing the quantities of estrogen it did during her fertile years, she may begin suffering from any number of unpleasant symptoms of menopause: hot flashes, irregular periods (before they terminate completely during menopause), mood swings, nervousness, depression, poor memory, fatigue, insomnia.

Want even more bad news for her? Now that her body has decided to shut down as a baby factory, it makes itself less attractive to the male of the species. Her hair gets brittle and/or starts falling out. Her skin loses its elasticity and becomes more prone to sags, bags and wrinkles. Her breasts drop, her rear sags, and her stomach puffs out. Since the vaginal area is no longer needed as a fertilization and breeding ground, the reduction in estrogen within her body causes her vagina to become drier, thinner and more inviting to urinary tract infections.

The bad news doesn’t stop there. Lower estrogen levels can affect her bladder so that with everything else she’s dealing with, she also may have to deal with bladder infections, an increased frequency to urinate, and/or the embarrassment of incontinence (releasing urine when sneezing, coughing, and laughing or otherwise straining). The drop in hormones puts her at higher risk for heart disease and osteoporosis.

With lowered estrogen levels, sex may be more painful due to the physical changes in her vagina, and she may be embarrassed at her body’s physical changes which she believes makes her much less attractive.

The Fear of Aging

Entering middle age means we’re going to have to deal with unpleasant side effects as our bodies mature: graying hair, balding, weight gain, wrinkles, age spots, and a host of diseases that seem to plague the older generations. Our physical body is reacting to our physical age.

We’re learning we can’t live forever in this physical world of ours.

Not all women will suffer all the ill effects of perimenopause, but all women will suffer some of the effects. How she feels about herself and the success of her life to date will play a major role in how she handles much of the negative impact of growing older.

Once perimenopause begins, she has no way of denying that she is growing older, that her days on this earth are winding down, and that her usefulness as a perpetuator of the human species – other than as secondary caregiver – is over.

Even though men go through hormonal changes as they grow older, these changes don’t impact them with the force that going through menopause impacts a woman. Even with thinning hair and sagging muscles, a man can still make a baby or two or three or more.

For a woman, her journey to menopause closes a lot of doors – even if she never planned on giving birth, the option to do so is no longer hers. At no other time do some women feel more helpless and hopeless.

And, it is at precisely this time that some men decide they don’t want to be married to a woman who has started reminding them of their mother.

What can a man do to help his wife at this time? He can understand the seriousness of what she’s going through and treat her with kindness, respect, tenderness.

He cannot expect her to snap out of it when he’s tired of listening to her complaints. He can encourage her to get counseling if she’s having a particularly rough time.

He can talk with her doctor and ask for suggestions to help her move through this traumatic time in her life.

He can tell her she’s beautiful and keep telling her until she believes him. He can hug her and comfort her and pamper her even when she’s being particularly mean-spirited.

Codependent No More

Codependency plays a major role in some relationships. Are they really soul mates or do their dependencies mesh perfectly?

A woman raised with an abusive parent is drawn to a man who abuses her. A woman who grew up in an alcoholic home is drawn to a man with

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