Why Did It Take Jim Burden So Long to Find Happiness Again?
When I asked a friend recently how she's doing, she paused and answered, "I continue wondering if this is all at that place is."
She, like me, is 50-something and similar many 50-somethings we are empty-nesters or nigh to be empty-nesters; we're either 20-something years into a wedlock or divorced. We're in the so-called "midlife crisis" years, a fourth dimension when we question what we've done (and, more likely, haven't done) and where we want to be.
It was odd timing, coming just days after I read Monique Honaman's provocative post in the Huffington Post, I Just Wish He Would Have an Affair, in which she details how many wives accept confided in her that they just don't want to be married anymore:
These women are done. They say they aren't happy. They say they aren't in love with their husbands (or any other man — they aren't having affairs). They say they simply wish they were no longer married to him. They aren't fulfilled. They wonder if this is how they are doomed to alive the remainder of their lives (and God-willing, almost of them have another 40+ years alee of them). … The common factor amongst all of these women is that they say that their husbands are really solid, good, squeamish men. … they just don't want to be married to them anymore because they have fallen out of dear.
That's a curious identify to be but non unusual. Ms. Honaman doesn't say how quondam 
Why is midlife then wrought with angst for women? Well, beside the study that plant that age 48 is the pivotal year for women's unhappiness, women tend to be more prone to depression anyhow. But at midlife we're dealing with menopause, the loss of our role equally nurturer, the loss of our youth and dazzler, etc.
And I don't uncertainty that some women accept been inspired by the "Eat, Pray, Dear" life or, what AskMen calls the Second-Human action Syndrome: After raising a family and tending to the dwelling and blistering brownies for the Boy Spotter fundraiser and volunteering to bulldoze on who-knows-how-many field trips while doing paid or not-paid work (and, yes, being a stay-at-domicile parent is piece of work), it's finally "me" fourth dimension. We desire to stop nurturing others and start nurturing ourselves. We want to feel a petty bit selfish instead of selfless.
But does that mean men are out of the picture or just husbands? Since, two-thirds of all divorces are initiated past women and many women tend to exercise well after divorce, it's a valid question to ask.
Blogger Dalrock has an interesting post titled, Are Women Washed With Men Subsequently Historic period 55 in which he believes he dispels the myth that women "are wired to prefer to divorce and live alone afterwards in life."
I don't believe we're "wired" to that, but he's missing an essential point: In that location are many women who do not divorce but live in loveless and sexless marriages for a diverseness of reasons (as do men) even so. Every bit Pamela Haag discovered while researching for her book "Marriage Confidential, "33 percent of respondents agreed that 'even if you're unhappy, yous should stick it out for the children.' That's up from 20 pct in a 1970 survey." And as Pamela Paul detailed in The Undivorced, many couples live together only have split lives. So much for being married happily e'er afterwards.
And then, where does that leave middle-aged divorced women? Are we washed with men?
For some, aye. There are a number who put bated their all their needs, including sexual, to just focus on their kids. There are as well many women who prefer the visitor of girlfriends to men, throw themselves into their career and travel, and relish their freedom. There are many women who want to discover dear again but give upwardly, frustrated, unhappy or uncomfortable with the 50-plus dating scene. And then at that place are older women who are happily dating or in relationships — according to an AARP study, almost divorced women in midlife do find someone new — 75 percent of women in their 50s reported enjoying serious, sectional relationships after their divorces, often inside ii years, compared with 81 percent of men in their 50s (although more older men tend to marry again than older women).
All of which would indicate that, no, women in their 50s and beyond are non done with men.
We simply may be washed with marriage.
- Practice you lot think middle-anile women want nothing more to practise with men?
- Practice middle-aged men experience the same mode?
Source: http://omgchronicles.vickilarson.com/2012/03/12/are-middle-aged-women-done-with-men/
0 Response to "Why Did It Take Jim Burden So Long to Find Happiness Again?"
Post a Comment