Facing The Wreckage Of Midlife

According to the majority of the respondents on my little unscientific survey, what concerns people most about the midlife transition is facing physical deterioration and the loss of youth and beauty. Is it because looking in the mirror starts to remind you of your own mortality? Or, do you feel this way because you're afraid that others won't find you attractive anymore? When your looks begin to 'fade', what does that say about you in your own mind?

Interestingly, this fear of losing your looks and vitality says a great deal about your level of self-absorbtion. The more concerned you become about the passage of your youthfulness, the stronger the evidence that you may be dealing with a level of personal insecurity that you hadn't realized or recognized. The more focused you are on keeping up appearances — above and beyond what's necessary to maintain an appropriate degree of health and attractiveness — the deeper the insecurities you may be avoiding.

An over-blown obsession with youthfulness (especially when it's successful in hiding your true age) can mask a refusal to deal with what's really going on mentally, emotionally and, most importantly, spiritually. You can't avoid the process of the midlife transition without paying a high price. The denial of aging and, ultimately, mortality, builds on a denial of your own feelings and a refusal to enter into the deeper levels of the maturing process. One of the principal mechanisms that people use to maintain their denial of what's really going on inside them is projection. You're using this classical defense mechanism every time you indulge in the blame game. It works this way: you're unhappy with the way you look, the way you feel, the way you're acting, so you look for faults in other people as excuses for your behavior and as justification for yourself.

Consider these time-worn excuses: how often have you thought or said something similar? "If s/he'd only be reasonable, I'd . . . " "S/he just doesn't understand me." "S/he's changed . . . s/he's not the same person I married." "I love him/her; I'm just not in love with him/her anymore." "There are things that s/he does that annoy the hell out of me. If s/he'd only stop doing that, things would be so much better." All of these common complaints demonstrate a kind of projection of personal dissatisfaction onto another, and the demand that the other change to suit the speaker. These are signs of relationships that are in trouble, not because the partners don't love each other, or because they're unwilling to work at the relationship, but because one (or both) of the partners is in denial and projecting the cause on the other. Ironically, the more the blamed partner tries to change to salvage the relationship, the worse the situation becomes, because the real cause originates within the dissatisfied partner him- or herself.

Focusing on the superficial externals of the midlife transition can be a smokescreen to hide the deeper struggles from yourself. So long as you're preoccupied with your looks, your health, your physical energy, etc., you don't have to look at the deeper levels of dissatisfaction growing within you. You can rather safely fool yourself that the friction that you're experiencing in your relationships are coming from changes and annoying behaviors in others. You don't have to face the facts that these deepening levels of dissatisfaction are signs of a process going on within you, so you can comfortably tell yourself that these things aren't your fault, and, what's more, they're not your concern. "If the other person would only . . . "

So long as you're able to hide behind the smokescreen of the physical changes of midlife and with impunity play the 'blame game', your attitudes and behaviors can leave behind them shattered relationships. So long as it's always the other person's fault (at least in your own mind), you'll be condemned to repeat the same patterns of failed relationship after failed relationship. You'll keep wondering why the each new relationship, in its turn, mirrors the relationship you just left. You'll keep wondering why you 'attract' the wrong kind of partner. You may even conclude that there aren't any 'good ones' left out there: they're all defective, broken, and will wind up breaking your heart.

Facing the wreckage of midlife means accepting to the core of your being that the man in the mirror is the real you. The self-image that you cultivated for so many years as a young adult may just be a veneer of wishful thinking. Are you prepared to take the giant leap of faith required to accept full responsibility for the person you are and the person you will become? A successful midlife transition requies that you come to the appreciation that you cannot change persons, places or things; that the only thing that you're able to change in this world is yourself; that, at long last, no one but yourself is responsible for your attitudes, opinions and behaviors. Cleaning up the wreckage of the past (whatever wreckage you've already left behind) begins with your accepting your unique responsibility for creating it. Only then will you be free to let go of your more superficial concerns. Only then will you really be ready for a mature relationship . . . no matter how long you've already been together.