6 Signs Your Spouse Is Going Through A Midlife Crisis

A midlife crisis is something like puberty. It will hit you, whether you like it or not. Now you could deal with it with a sense of humor, or you could let your midlife crisis lead to a mental breakdown. Whichever way you deal with it, there is no escaping it if you are between 35 and 50.

When it strikes, it can take not just you, but your partner by storm too. In fact, it can change your entire relationship dynamics with your partner and end up creating new cracks in the marriage, leading to disaster. But that does not mean that we have to be its helpless victims and watch it wreak havoc in our lives, letting it destroy relationships and our partner’s mental health when it affects them.

# Mulling over unaccomplished goals

“I had so much to do, so many dreams, and look at me now. I missed out on everything.” Do you hear your spouse repeating things like this often? This is one of the first and most common midlife crisis symptoms. Midlife is a time when people start thinking if the career decisions they took in life were correct, they start comparing themselves with their peers and sometimes don’t match up to their own expectations.

# Altered appearance

Don’t be surprised if a spouse, who always wore a salwar kurta, suddenly starts experimenting with knee-length dresses and becomes bold with the necklines and hemlines. While women could even be ready to go under the knife or experiment with botox, men tend to hit the gym and become obsessed with the receding hairline.

A radical change in appearance is an obvious symptom of a midlife crisis. Some do lose oodles of weight and genuinely start to look younger but others often keep grappling with a negative body image that hurtles them towards depression.

# Attention seeking syndrome

If your spouse is attending a party or an event, does your spouse make it a point to draw the attention of each and every attendee towards them? Do they revel in the compliments and hate the negative remarks on appearance? Does it seem that they are constantly craving your attention? This is a classic sign your spouse is going through a midlife crisis. Some spouses end up having a fight after every party because one partner does not often take the spouse’s heightened need for attention too kindly.

# Sexual desire

Either there’s more of it or there is none at all. A change in sexual desire is a symptom of midlife crisis and this is when spouses find it difficult to cope with each other since their sexual desires don’t match anymore. Most often there is a dead bedroom and that’s when one spouse starts looking for sexual gratification outside the marriage. So, this is a time when a marriage becomes more vulnerable to extramarital affairs.

# Changes in sleeping habits

A typical sign of midlife crisis mental breakdown in a spouse is sleep evading him or her. You could find your spouse up till late reading a book, even chatting on WhatsApp or watching TV. Sleep tends to elude them.

It could also happen that a spouse, who was always used to waking up early, starts staying in bed longer and sleeping continuously over the weekend while showing next to no interest in making any weekend plans.

A change in sleeping habits and patterns is a tell-tale sign of a midlife crisis.

# Need to lead separate lives

You could have been used to doing everything together from partying to hitting the theatres for a movie or holidaying together, but suddenly your spouse wants to have that all-girls holiday in Europe. Or he wants to hang out at the bar more often with his guy friends. There’s a tendency to touch base with school and college pals, go to reunions more often and look out for old crushes on the internet. Nostalgia is the usual theme of most conversations and you tend not to be a part of it.

He or she is happier with the friends than with the spouse. This could lead to some misunderstandings and, if you don’t understand this symptom of midlife crisis in your spouse, you could end up being all clingy and nagging, which could lead to a worse situation.